The Atlantic: Why Trump’s Republican Party Is Embracing Russia

Through his public statements and presidential appointments, Donald Trump is remaking Republican foreign policy in two fundamental ways. The first concerns Russia. Previous GOP leaders like Mitt Romney and John McCain described Moscow as an adversary. Trump describes it as a partner. The second concerns Islam. Previous GOP leaders—most notably George W. Bush—insisted that the U.S. had no beef with Islam, or with the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. Trump and his top advisors disagree. They often describe Islam itself as a hostile force, and view ordinary Muslims as guilty of jihadist sympathies until proven innocent. [...]

To understand this shift, it’s worth distinguishing two different strains of conservative foreign-policy thinking during the cold war. Civilizational conservatives like Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan saw the cold war as a struggle between two countries defined primarily by their view of God: The Judeo-Christian United States versus the atheistic Soviet Union. Ideological conservatives like Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams, by contrast, saw the cold war as a conflict between two countries defined primarily by their view of government: the liberty-loving United States versus the totalitarian USSR. (A third group, composed of realists like Henry Kissinger and George Kennan, saw the cold war as a traditional great power conflict between two countries defined primarily by their geopolitical heft.) [...]

Partly, they’re aping Trump. But there’s something deeper at work. Ideological conservatives loathe Putin because he represents an authoritarian challenge to the American-backed order in Europe and the Middle East. But many civilizational conservatives, who once opposed the Soviet Union because of its atheism, now view Putin’s Russia as Christianity’s front line against the new civilizational enemy: Islam. Among the alt-right, Putin is a very popular man. He’s popular because he resists the liberal, cosmopolitan values that Muslims supposedly exploit to undermine the West. Richard Spencer, who was until recently married to a pro-Putin Russian writer, has called Russia the “sole white power in the world.” Matthew Heimbach, another prominent figure in the alt-right, recently told Business Insider that “Russia is the leader of the free world.” In 2013, Pat Buchanan penned a column entitled, “Is Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative? In the culture war for mankind’s future, is he one of us?”

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Jacobin Magazine: Neither Washington Nor Brussels

In fact, the turnout was reasonably high: at 72 percent, it was higher than any national election since 1992, and three million votes higher than in the previous year’s general election. The 52:48 margin of victory for the Leave camp wasn’t huge, but it was clear enough; crucially, there had been no requirement for a quorum or a supermajority imposed when the referendum was called, so demanding one afterwards smacks of special pleading. [...]

The argument that the referendum was not binding is legally correct and politically useless. Nobody thought they were voting in a glorified opinion poll last June; everyone understood that it was a straight choice between staying in the European Union and getting out. There were plenty of lies told by the politicians who spearheaded the Leave campaign, but ruling a referendum invalid on that basis is a very dubious idea (how many elections and referendums, in Britain and elsewhere, would have to be struck out on the same grounds?). [...]

The 52 percent who supported Brexit weren’t all signing up to a hard-right, xenophobic agenda, even if the effect of their vote has been to strengthen that agenda: they included about one-third of Labour and Scottish National Party (SNP) supporters, and one-third of black and Asian voters (in a marked contrast to the vote for Donald Trump, who was supported by less than 10 percent of African-Americans). [...]

A speech by Corbyn in early January was flagged up in the media as heralding a major shift in policy, but only served to muddy the waters: the party leader stated that Labour was “not wedded” to free movement in principle, but would not rule it out either, and refused to say that current levels of immigration were too high and would have to come down. This rhetorical fudge managed to annoy some of Corbyn’s strongest supporters, without offering any satisfaction to those right-wing Labour MPs who want full-scale capitulation to UKIP.

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Politico: Wolves in nationalist clothing

The movement’s claim to stand for the “working man” and for national interests is particularly specious considering the new right’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin — someone who blatantly disregards nations’ right to self-determination.

“Nationalism works,” writes Trump supporter and author Mike Cernovich, pointing to the example of “another nationalist,” Putin. The Russian president’s ideology is supple, but if it has centered around anything over the last few years, it is the idea of restoring Russian imperial greatness and crushing the nascent democracies in its former colonies, as evidenced by its aggressions in Ukraine.

In fact, the wave of protests against Putin in 2012 were partly informed by a nationalist surge. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, himself a nationalist, flirted with — for many alarmingly — strong anti-immigration policies. In his calmer moments, Navalny argued Russia needed to grow beyond its imperial mindset to become a “normal” European nation state. Now Navalny has been convicted on trumped-up charges and barred from running in elections, while Putin the imperialist indulges in neocolonial adventures.

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Political Critique: Who’s Listening to the Victims of Paedophile Priests? [Interview]

What I suppose is missing in Poland – and that is the difference I see from Germany and Western European countries – is the lack of influence and activity by civil society. There are a lot of activists and NGOs, but they don’t have power in Polish society . The victims are speaking out, trying to get heard, but there is no reaction from society, so how can they achieve anything? [...]

In Germany, I must say, when the story broke, society was soon willing to listen to us. In the decades before 2010 – dating back to the seventies – there were movements, especially of women, that talked about violence in relationships and sexual violence against women and children. There was already a network of counselling services all over the country, so there was a society prepared to receive this news, this truth, that the Catholic Church also has a history of sexual abuse. And this made it easier for us to negotiate with the Church, because society and the authorities were supporting us. [...]

Of course, there are cases of violence committed by Protestant priests as well, but the numbers are quite different: the number of crimes committed by Catholic priests are much higher. Of all those who called and said ‘I was abused within an institution’ – meaning a school, sports organisation, a college or so, 40% were in the Catholic Church. This means the Catholic church has an issue – nearly half of the victims are on their side. We have to take the other institutions into account as well, but if you compare the numbers, it is obvious that there is a difference. It could be structural – in Protestant churches, priests can marry, and while – of course – a married man can abuse children, he also has a chance to have a happy sexual and emotional life. Another aspect is that you can have a female ministry in Protestant churches. What makes the Catholic church so difficult is this spirit of masculinity– they stay together as a bunch of guys who support each other and they create a special climate within the organisation. And this is really hard to overcome when it comes to disclosure of sexual violence and prevention.

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Political Critique: On Truth Telling, or Why the Holocaust is Considered a ‘Controversial Topic’ in Lithuania

Vanagaitė’s book, which came out in Lithuania in early 2016 (it is due to appear in Polish in 2017), has by now sold around fifteen thousand copies. This is an unprecedented figure for a country of just about 3 million Lithuanians where nonfiction bestsellers usually have a print run of a few hundred and thousand if that, and higher numbers are hardly ever reached. In short, from a publisher’s perspective, Vanagaitė’s book in Lithuania—and, of all things, on the “controversial topic of the Holocaust,” as a Lithuanian historian at Vilnius University informed me 5 years ago, upon my return to Lithuania after 10 years abroad—has been a colossal publishing success.

Vanagaitė’s book has unquestionably struck a sensitive cord with the Lithuanian public—and, to everyone’s astonishment—with all of its segments. Without any hesitation, her book attacks, in the full sense of this word, the current form of Lithuanian collective memory, ever more nationalist and dogmatic over the past 26 years of independent self-governance and stumbling efforts at liberal democracy. This same memory, however, has not garnered much support among the younger generation of Lithuanian activists who did not experience the Soviet Union for long. It resonates even less with a number of intellectuals and scholars who have come to question the Lithuanian nationalist take on its gruesome wartime history. [...]

In my view, the publication of Vanagaitė’s book in Lithuania is timely. It encourages its reader, if somewhat clumsily to my taste, to engage in self-reflection and critical thinking. After all, isn’t this a condition of growth for a mature person and society? I understand, of course, that collective memory, like any kind of memory, tends to cling to things that are beautiful and worthy of admiration and worship. It is through goodness that we give meaning to our life and the world around us. But memories, like human beings, are also fallible. I think it is high time we look at human nature in all of its dimensions. Or, to paraphrase Vanagaitė, we, Lithuanian citizens, have to learn the truth about ourselves, or “our people.”

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CityLab: Are Refugees Dangerous?

But there is a substantial body of fact-based evidence on the links between refugee populations and crime in U.S. cities. The latest addition to this field of study comes from an analysis by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a consortium of bipartisan political and business leaders for immigration reform. [...]

Their analysis revealed that after refugees moved in, crime usually went down. Nine out of ten cities on the list saw their property and violent crime levels decline—some by drastic amounts. In Southfield, Michigan (in bright green), for example, violent crime dropped by 77 percent between 2006 and 2015. Decatur, Georgia (in bright green), which lies outside Atlanta, saw a 62.2 percent decrease between 2007 and 2015. The lone exception was West Springfield, Massachusetts (in grey), which experienced a significant rise in crime during this time. But the town was a hotbed of opioid drug-related crime even before the refugee resettlement happened. [...]

If not local crime, what about the threat of terrorism? Over at the Lawfare blog, Nora Ellington, a Harvard Law student who previously worked as an analyst at the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, took a deep dive into the data. Since January 1, 2015, the FBI arrested four refugees on terrorism-related charges, two of whom were from countries on Trump’s list. Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan came to the U.S. from Iraq in 2009 and was charged with “providing material support” to the Islamic State. Iraqi-born Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab came from Syria in 2012. Per the Justice Department, he went back there for a few months in 2013 and 2014 to fight alongside terrorist groups.

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FiveThirtyEight: Cancer Rates Are Dropping — But Not In Rural Appalachia

Located along the Kentucky River on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, Owsley County had one of the highest percentage increases of cancer mortality per capita in the U.S. from 1980 to 2014, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Deaths per 100,000 people went up 45.6 percent. But this small, rural county provides just a snapshot of the larger cancer epidemic in Appalachia. According to new research out of the University of Virginia, cancer incidence has declined in much of the country since 1969 — but not in rural Appalachia. In rural Appalachian Kentucky, the cancer mortality rate is 36 percent higher than it is for urban, non-Appalachian people in the rest of the country; in rural Appalachian Virginia it is 15 percent higher; in those areas of West Virginia, 19 percent. People in much of rural Appalachia are more likely to die within three to five years of their diagnoses than those in both urban Appalachian areas and urban areas across the U.S. [...]

Although people outside of Appalachia may not know about the region’s cancer crisis, researchers and community organizations in the region have been studying and fighting cancer for decades, focusing efforts on four cancers with the highest incidence and mortality rates: lung, colorectal, cervical and breast. Unhealthy lifestyle factors undoubtedly contribute to these numbers. About 42 percent of Owsley County adults smoke, compared with about 26 percent of adults in Kentucky and 15 percent in the U.S. overall. More than 34 percent of adults in Kentucky are obese, and nearly 70 percent are overweight. [...]

However, the biggest issue, experts said, is lack of access to care — whether it’s preventive screenings or cancer treatment. If one of Owsley County’s 4,600 residents needs to visit the doctor, they have three choices: the health department or two clinics. But doctors are not always available or working, and opportunities for screening vary. For instance, mammograms are only offered once a month at the clinics, and colon cancer screenings are referred out of the county, and cervical cancer screenings are done weekly at the health department and daily at the clinic, Lucas said. The three regional hospitals are at least a 30-minute drive away on narrow, curvy mountain roads. The Markey Cancer Center in Lexington is a far drive for people in rural Appalachia.

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BBC: Life after death? Resurrecting a modern ruin

About 20 miles west of Glasgow lies a modern ruin. St Peter's Seminary was built only 50 years ago, yet by the 1990s it was derelict. However, plans to breathe new life into the building are now close to being realised.

The concrete ghost is hidden in woods on the north side of the River Clyde - the shell of an ambitious 1960s modernist building which the Catholic Church had planned to use to train 100 novice priests.

But the seminary - at the back of a golf course on the edge of the village of Cardross - was built in changing times. The Church would soon shift away from training priests in seclusion, instead placing them in the community. [...]

The post-war years saw the break-up of many of the traditionally Catholic areas in Glasgow - as sections of the old inner city were demolished and people moved into new high-rise homes or out to new towns like East Kilbride or Cumbernauld.

In this photo taken in the mid-60s, newly-built 20-storey flats in the Gorbals area of Glasgow overlook St Francis Church and Friary.

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Jacobin Magazine: How to Socialize Love

With the decline of feudalism, however, a new organization of productive relations based on wage labor became predominant. In this system, what we see emerge is a clear-cut hierarchy between home and workplace. As wages became necessary for survival, only time spent in the workplace appeared to be valuable. The labor required to ensure the worker was ready to come back each day for more gradually slipped into the shadows of the domestic sphere. At the same time, the costs for the reproduction of labor power were of course not reimbursed by the capitalists dependent on it. [...]

But Valentine’s Day was only the vanguard. As Schmidt notes, it paved the way for the mass-marketization of numerous other holidays including Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day. Their new purpose under capitalism was to satisfy a desire for festivity, while at the same time domesticating it. With the consumer revolution of these holidays, rituals were refashioned from local, community fêtes to national family and friend-centered holidays. Valentine’s Day epitomized this shift when it transformed from a communal festival of pairing games, fortune-telling, and drinking in streets or churchyards to the private exchanges of standardized greetings. [...]

In the short term, this could take the form of welfare and more generous social provisioning that acknowledges the central role care work plays in the social reproduction of our society. A strong social support system will enable everyone to participate in political life and in the shaping of society. But it will also level the playing field for those most vulnerable to market pressures, for those who have to rely on low-wage jobs while raising and caring for their families.

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