Katoikos: Europe’s identity problem: Tsipras, Greece and the undesired agreement

By 2015, the combination of various pernicious events made evident the structural shortcomings of the EU and prompted debate. Disputes such as those on the acceptance of refugees or Greek debt restructuring soon took on a clear moral character. But moralities across Europe are different – see, among others, the different trends of secularisation and the cultural gap between member states – and this constitutes a major problem in European relations, impairing decision-making.

The first Tsipras government rose to power in January 2015, backed by the Greek masses. Since then, it has concentrated its greatest efforts on the purpose it was elected for: negotiating more bearable conditions for public debt reduction. As early as its first public addresses and statements on the negotiations, the government tied its policy proposals to Greek national identity and pride.

Studies, such as Koumandaraki A.’s The Evolution of Greek National Identity, have recognised that Greek identity is very much reliant on ancient Greek achievements: philosophy, democracy, theatre, the arts. These components have a special significance in Greece (e.g. the invention of democracy and the special charge of the Greek roots of the word ‘democracy’) and foment a singular national pride for their history and culture that is unique in the EU. The cultural homogeneity of a country relatively untouched by stabilised mass immigration contributes to making Greek values quite uniform and, therefore, the Greek people particularly sensitive to appeals to their strong identity.

Prime Minister Tsipras often made clear that Greek pride and values, which he claimed to be the founding values of the EU, were at stake. The combination of cultural authority and economic expertise constituted the government’s strategy: Tsipras tried to compensate for the weak position of Greece and gain his country leverage by placing it in a position of primacy at the cultural-foundational level of the European Union. Take, for example, the victory speech of 25 January 2015 in Syntagma Square in Athens, and the peroration before the European Parliament of 8 July 2015.

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VICE: Rebel Rabbis

Meet the Ultra Orthodox Jewish group, Neturei Karta, who campaign against Zionism and for the immediate dismantling of the state of Israel.

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The Atlantic: Obama Leaves the Constitution Weaker Than he Found it

History will likely ponder long before rendering a clear verdict. The best we can say now is that, even for those like me who admire Barack Obama, the constitutional record is disturbingly mixed. Obama leaves the Constitution weaker than at the beginning of his terms. It now will pass into the hands of a chief executive who appears to have no respect for its limits. [...]

Compared with most presidents of the past half-century—and especially with his predecessor, George W. Bush—Barack Obama has in fact been quite reticent about asserting inherent “executive power” under the Constitution. Consider the use of “signing statements”—documents issued by a president when signing a bill, sometimes indicating that the executive branch will refuse to follow parts of the new law because it believes them unconstitutional. George W. Bush issued more than 160; Obama, in the same time period, 31. [...]

Obama has never formally subscribed to this strong-executive theory. On paper, at least, he has insisted that he is working hard to fulfill the intent of Congress as expressed in statutes. This is a strategy I call “aggressive compliance”—it pushes the language of a statute as far as it can go in order to avoid a constitutional claim. In practical terms, the result is often the same—the executive gets its way––but there’s no corresponding assertion that Congress has no power. If, by some bizarre series of events, Congress collected itself to change a statute, and managed to overcome a presidential veto of that change, then, Obama would say, of course he would change his actions. [...]

It’s better than simply proclaiming a president beyond the law. But it sometimes skates close to the edge of legality. Consider the administration’s claim that it could, without Congressional authorization, commit U.S. naval and air forces during the 2011 intervention in Libya. The action seemed to violate the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires a president to notify Congress before introducing U.S. forces into “hostilities,” and seek permission if that intervention lasts more than 60 days. Many presidents have claimed that the Resolution was an unconstitutional limit on their power. Obama instead issued a careful opinion admitting that the Resolution was valid—but suggesting that more than 100 cruise missile strikes, and dozens of air missions, were not, somehow, “hostilities.” It was too clever by half, and it is a lasting blot on Obama’s constitutional copybook.

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Motherboard: Alien Hunters Spent the Last Century Looking for the Black Knight Satellite

In 1899, Nikola Tesla heard from aliens.

The pioneer of radio had constructed a massive tower at his home/laboratory in Colorado Springs for the purpose of experimenting with wireless power, but instead may have accidentally become the first human being to receive a message from the cosmos.

“I have a deep conviction that highly intelligent beings exist on Mars,” Tesla told a reporter from the Albany Telegram in 1923. “While experimenting in Colorado...I obtained extraordinary experimental evidence of the existence of life on Mars. I had perfected a wireless receiver of extraordinary sensitiveness, far beyond anything known, and I caught signals which I interpreted as meaning 1--2--3--4. I believe the Martians used numbers for communication because numbers are universal." [...]

The history of the Black Knight is actually a conglomerate of several independent stories, all of which involve an unidentified object in orbit around Earth, but outside of a common moniker, share little else in common. No one is quite sure when the myth began or who started it, but its history spans from Tesla’s turn of the century experiments to the launch of the International Space Station, and the evidence in support of the Black Knight’s existence ranges from internet hearsay to photographic "proof."

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Al Jazeera: Finland introduces basic income for unemployed

Finland has become the first country in the world to pay a basic income to randomly picked citizens on a national level in an experiment aiming at dismissing poverty, motivate people to join work force and decrease unemployment.

The experiment is conducted with 2,000 randomly picked unemployed participants between the ages of 25 and 58. For two years, participants from different parts of the country will receive an unconditional monthly tax-free basic income of 560 euros ($586).

The plan aims to find ways to reshape the social security system in response to changes in the labour market, according to the website of the Social Insurance Institution or Kela, which manages the project. It also seeks to reduce the bureaucracy and simplify the complicated benefits system, Kela says. [...]

Many Finns stay out of the job market for years as they do not want to lose their welfare benefits.

Professor Olli Kangas from Kela says that there are many incentive traps in the present system that are caused by a number of income-tested benefits paid on top of each other. [...]

Consequently, when the participant gets a job, he or she will receive both the salary and the basic income. And he or she will continue to claim other income-based benefits such as housing or childcare in line with his or her income, like every other citizen.

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CityLab: America’s Economic Distress Belt

Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder.

But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty.

A new study from the Population Reference Bureau by Beth Jarosz and Mark Mather tracks the dramatic growth in inequality and poverty across America’s 3,000-plus counties over the past two-and-a-half decades.

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Motherboard: Obama’s Administration Sold More Weapons Than Any Other Since World War II

President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, will leave office in a few weeks with the dubious honor of having sold more weapons than any other American president since World War II. And experts say President-Elect Donald Trump will most likely sell even more.

Most of the arms deals totaling over $200 billion in the period from 2008 to 2015 have ended up in the Middle East, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in December. The report, produced by the non-partisan government agency attached to the Library of Congress, breaks down the weapons sold which included surface-to-air missiles, tanks, and supersonic combat aircraft. [...]

Saudi Arabia is spearheading a coalition of Arab nations in a bombing campaign closing in on two years against the insurgent Houthi militias in Yemen, who took over the capital Sanaa in September 2014. The United States has sent special operations forces to assist the Arab coalition in a grinding war that has seen over 10000 killed, 2.2 million displaced and nearly half a million children on the brink of famine from the ensuing crisis. [...]

“What’s changed during the Obama administration is that increasing arms sales has become a standardized component of diplomacy at all levels of government, not just in the defense department,” Bockenfeld told Motherboard. “For US diplomats to become the salesmen, that has been a new element which really increased exports.”

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Politico: Marine Le Pen calls for return to ECU-style currency after ‘Frexit’

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said on Tuesday that Europe should retain a single currency even if France withdraws from the euro zone, nuancing her previous position.

The National Front chief has long called for “Frexit,” a French withdrawal from the European Union. This would happen after a referendum on EU membership if she was elected next May (Le Pen has suggested that she would step down if the French rejected her preferred outcome).

But this time she said that after a referendum, Europe should retain a common currency, the euro, in parallel to the French franc. It was the first time Le Pen had recognized, however implicitly, that withdrawing from the euro zone unilaterally could bring about currency fluctuations, which the ECU was designed to prevent. Most French voters do not support withdrawal from the European Union, according to polls in 2016.

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Politico: Moldovan leader strips ex-Romanian president of citizenship

The new president of Moldova on Tuesday stripped a former Romanian leader of his Moldovan citizenship over calls for the two countries to become one.

Igor Dodon took to Facebook to say that former Romanian President Traian Băsescu had “urged repeatedly the liquidation of Moldovan statehood through annexation to Romania.” He added that Băsescu, who stepped down in 2014 after 10 years in office, refused to recognize the existence of the Moldovan people and Moldovan statehood while he was president of Romania. [...]

Băsescu and his wife became Moldovan citizens in November 2016. He said at the time it was a dream come true as he felt linked to Moldova through a common culture and language, according to Romanian media.

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