Vox: The bizarre political scandal that just led to the impeachment of South Korea's president

The country’s leader, Park Geun-hye, has been mired in a scandal so strange it sounds like something out of a comic book. Whereas most politicians fall from grace due to banal things like corruption or marital infidelity, the fall of South Korea’s first female president has resulted from her relationship with a shadowy figure from an obscure religious cult that critics have derided as a “shaman fortuneteller” with sinister, Rasputin-like influence over Park. [...]

Choi reportedly communicated regularly with the president’s staff, provided input on top political appointments, and received presidential briefings, and, by Park’s own admission, was allowed to edit a number of Park’s major policy speeches. She even apparently controlled the president’s wardrobe, dictating which colors to wear on which days. [...]

Students and faculty at the super-competitive women’s private school finally got fed up with all the preferential treatment Chung was getting and in October of this year began holding public demonstrations on campus, eventually pushing the university’s president to resign.

Media coverage of the university scandal quickly began to shift, though, focusing on the much juicier story of Chung’s mother, Choi Soon-sil, and her disturbingly close relationship with the South Korean president, prompting Choi to flee to Germany to escape the increasingly intense media scrutiny.

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The Conversation: Friday essay: what is it about Versailles?

When the triumphant Donald Trump welcomed Nigel Farage to his $100 million penthouse apartment in Trump Tower on 13 November, the two posed in his lift of gleaming gold. Trump’s hyper-bling apartment is his Versailles fantasy, where the oversized mirrors, picture-frames and furnishings speak of the wealth and power of America’s new Sun King. Despite the massive scale of his apartment, however, the furnishings are garish rather than exquisite, cluttered and over-large rather than inviting. But he is keen for us to take a virtual tour of his temple of tawdriness: [...]

The timing is perfect for the National Gallery of Australia’s “blockbuster” exhibition Versailles, Treasures from the Palace, opening today. The exhibition of more than 130 pieces is a stunning array of brilliant craftsmanship, almost all from the Museum of Versailles itself and from the Louvre. The objects in the exhibition have not left France – or even Versailles – before. It is a triumph for the NGA and for its Director Gerard Vaughan. [...]

The final cost of the palace, with its 700 rooms, 1,250 fireplaces and garden façade of 575 metres is impossible to ascertain, since much of the manual labour was done by soldiers when not at war. But it was certainly several billions in today’s terms – and as much again has been spent on restoration since 1950.

The palace was redolent of the might of a monarch with absolute powers – responsible to God alone for the wellbeing of his people. The Sun King’s successors – Louis XV (1715-74) and Louis XVI (1774-93) – continued the awe-inspiring display of majesty. By 1789, there were about 60,000 inhabitants, and 10 per cent of the monarchy’s annual tax revenues were spent on the palace and its surrounds.

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VICE: “Film is my tool”

This December, several hundred film fans from around the world are expected to gather in Kampala, Uganda. There will be no red carpet, no palm trees, and no billboards, just a series of text messages directing the guests to a series of otherwise undisclosed locations. Welcome to the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, the only gay film festival organized in a country where homosexuality is illegal. [...]

Kamoga Hassan is the lead organizer of the festival and one of a committed core of LGBTQ activists who dare to make their voices heard in one of the world’s riskiest places to be gay or lesbian. A 2014 Amnesty International report found that openly gay Ugandans have faced arbitrary arrest and sexual harassment, including when reporting crimes. Local NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda reported more than 260 “acts of intimidation” aimed at LGBTQ people in 2014 and 2015, of which 35 were violent vigilante attacks and 73 concerned loss of property or job loss. When openly gay or lesbian Ugandans organize public events, arrests are a regular occurrence. A 2014 anti-homosexuality act proposed the death penalty for gay men under certain circumstances. It was later nullified on procedural grounds, but human rights groups warn that vigilante groups continue to use the law to justify arbitrary violence. Under British colonial laws that have remained on the books, LGBTQ Ugandans still face a minimum two-year prison sentence for openly expressing their identity. [...]

I’ve been doing this work for almost six years now. I wanted to start earlier than that, but I felt it was too risky. In 2011, David Kato, who we consider the father of our gay rights movement, was killed. The entire community was shocked. Everyone was in fear; we didn’t know what to do. Should we run away and leave our country or should we stay behind and fight on? Then there was another incident where a guy working for an advertising company was outed — his photos and contact details were put in the newspapers. He lost his job and he was kicked out of the place he was renting… and then he was killed. They said he was a motorbike thief, but we think someone who knew about his sexuality used that excuse to justify that barbarity. That was when I decided to make my first [LGBTQ-related] film, “Outed,” based on his story. [...]

When you look at Uganda, it’s a very Christian country, 90 percent of the population, and it’s a poor country. We have a problem with radical evangelical pastors who come from outside Uganda, from countries like the U.S. They can’t pass antigay legislation in their own countries, so they’re doing it here, through our local religious leaders. It’s easier, because in a country where people are poor, people can be used. And a lot of people in the LGBT movement don’t have anything to fight back with.

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Vox: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

At the same time, America’s major coastal cities are overcrowded. They suffer from endemic housing scarcity, massive traffic congestion, and a profound small-c political conservatism that prevents them from making the kind of regulatory changes that would allow them to build the new housing and infrastructure they need. Excess population that can’t be absorbed by the coasts tends to bounce to the growth-friendly cities of the Sunbelt that need to build anew what Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland already have in terms of infrastructure and amenities.

A sensible approach would be for the federal government to take the lead in rebalancing America’s allocation of population and resources by taking a good hard look at whether so much federal activity needs to be concentrated in Washington, DC, and its suburbs. Moving agencies out of the DC area to the Midwest would obviously cause some short-term disruptions. But in the long run, relocated agencies’ employees would enjoy cheaper houses, shorter commutes, and a higher standard of living, while Midwestern communities would see their population and tax base stabilized and gain new opportunities for complementary industries to grow. [...]

My work over the years has largely focused on the idea of trying to persuade Silicon Valley, Greater Boston, and New York City and its suburbs to agree to build more. That remains a good idea under any scenario. But it’s also absurd for a great nation to leave its long-term economic trajectory so fully hostage to the whims of the Palo Alto planning commission and a motley assortment of New York community boards and snob zoning groups on Long Island.

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Politico: Italy’s ‘iron’ president takes charge

A patrician figure sometimes described as cold and reserved, 75-year-old Mattarella is the first president in the history of the republic to hail from Sicily. Elected in early 2015, he is so far untested by the kind of challenge that earned his predecessor Giorgio Napolitano the nickname “King George.” Until now, Mattarella has been seen as a man promoted to the job on Renzi’s wishes in the hope that he would stick to the ceremonial aspects of the role. [...]

In Italy’s stormy politics, where prime ministers last an average of just one year in office, presidents often have to steer the ship through choppy waters. This weekend, following consultations with party leaders, Mattarella will have to decide whether to appoint a temporary replacement for Renzi, or give the 41-year-old incumbent a new mandate until fresh elections can be called, probably in 2017.

Since the mani pulite corruption scandals two decades ago that wiped out the traditional parties, the president of the republic has become “a referee of situations that political forces didn’t manage to control anymore,” said Stefano Stefanini, who was an adviser to Napolitano. [...]

One characteristic of the current crisis in Italy is that, unlikely on previous such occasions when serving presidents have turned to the Bank of Italy in the search for a safe pair of hands to run technocratic governments — such as Lamberto Dini and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who later became head of state — this time the speculation includes Pietro Grasso, the former head of the national anti-Mafia bureau who now presides over the Senate.

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Vox: Senators in both parties are trying to protect young immigrants from Donald Trump

More than 700,000 immigrants have no idea what their lives are going to look like six weeks from now. They’re currently protected from deportation and allowed to work legally in the US under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (which began in 2012), but President-elect Donald Trump could revoke those protections on day one of his presidency if he so chose. [...]

It’s not clear whether the bill will pass Congress — or whether Trump would want to sign it if it did. And even if it did pass, the BRIDGE Act would only protect a fraction of the unauthorized immigrants currently worrying about their futures under Trump. [...]

Only 28 percent of Americans, according to a post-election poll, want to see Trump strip protections from those immigrants; 58 percent would oppose it. If Donald Trump, who kicked off his campaign by talking about immigrant rapists and murderers, kicks off his presidency by revoking work permits from, say, 20-something engineers with Southern accents, he might face a serious political backlash — and so would Republican legislators. [...]

Of course, the element of Trump’s base that is already salivating at the possibility of mass deportations would be disappointed and furious if Trump doesn’t revoke DACA — and even more disappointed and furious if he signs a bill allowing hundreds of thousands of people to stay. (And Trump’s own attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, would probably counsel the president not to sign the BRIDGE Act.) But if Trump wants to play dealmaker, he’s going to end up upsetting those people anyway.

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BBC: These photos are a love letter to London’s unseen edges

Philipp Ebeling walked the 155-mile border around the UK capital. The photographer’s new book is a love letter to the city’s edges and ‘in-between places’. [...]

The next morning, Ebeling went on to Dagenham. He photographed children playing tennis on a court half-flooded by the rain of the previous day; then he lingered at Dagenham’s Sunday market, “taking pictures of cut glass figurines, make-up and cosmetics, umbrellas, push-up bras, fake fur coats, Adidas trainers, toilet paper, cleaning products, mobile phone cases, and a man with a machete opening coconuts.” [...]

The series is a love letter to the city, but one that is conflicted, unvarnished and not blind to the tensions, complexities and unease of the London beyond the moneyed centre.

Blending street portraits, architectural studies and great panoramic cityscapes, the series exhibits Ebeling’s eye for the small, easily overlooked details that make London such a varied, unpredictable home: a black Congregation at Holy Trinity Church in Tottenham Green; an old-school Turkish barber in Green Lanes, Harringay; a pie and mash shop in Waltham Forest; a Korean Air jetliner coursing over the trees of Hounslow; a temporary fairground in North Cheam, Sutton; the cormorants basking on the islands of Walthamstow Reservoirs.

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The Guardian: Brexit and the new devolution crisis: what are the issues?

In the supreme court, Northern Ireland QCs and Scotland’s lord advocate argued it was not only MPs and peers in Westminster who deserved consultation, but also devolved legislatures in Stormont and Edinburgh. [...]

Politically, this all reflects the referendum’s varying results up and down the country. “We are a united Kingdom in name only,” said the London Labour MP and remain campaigner Chuka Umunna.

Legally, Brexit has opened a constitutional can of worms. “Britain has two sovereignty problems: one relating to the internal sovereignty of Westminster over the regions of the United Kingdom, and the other external, the relationship between Westminster and the European institutions,” says Sir David Edward, a Scottish former judge at the European court of justice. [...]

“The most interesting question concerns exclusive and shared EU competencies that will be repatriated by Brexit, but are they to be exercised by Scotland as devolved competencies?” asked Edward. “Does it mean that when powers are repatriated in relation to fisheries, that the Scottish government and parliament acquire exclusive competencies, because none of them are reserved, or will the UK be able to re-reserve some of the competencies that are coming back?”

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