Political Critique: Citizens Confront Estonian State Over Excessive De-Forestation

In March 2011, a new forestry development plan is put under consideration at Riigikogu (the Estonian parliament), and the National Audit Office, environmental associations, and ordinary citizens alike speak out against it. A popular environmentalist movement, “For the Estonian forest!,” promises to picket at Toompea until autumn. A few weeks earlier, environmental journalist Ulvar Käärt writes on the opinion page of Eesti Päevaleht that the new development plan poses great danger to Estonia’s forests: “By lowering felling ages we spit on many endangered insects, plants, birds, and animal species…the area of old forests in which they make their home will decline steadily.” The National State Audit is critical both towards the plan to increase cutting capacity and the one to loosen conditions for cutting permits, finding that the forest increment has been overestimated and is not based on national stocktaking data. The latter finds that the growing forest reserves have been in constant decline.

The State Audit’s opposition notwithstanding, Riigikogu adopts the development plan. MP Tõnis Kõiv of the Reform Party is straightforward about the matter: “The forest is foremost a source of revenue.” This statement is in direct contradiction with the Ministry of Environment’s official policy, which states that the ministry should strive for balance between the interests of environmentalists and industrialists. [...]

Suddenly, it is revealed that many people have painful stories related to the forest. After all, forest clearings are rampant, and animals and birds become fewer and fewer. All kinds of materials about the bleak situation of forests start circulating on social media. Global Forest Watch, comprised of independent forestry experts, has calculated by comparing aerophoto data, that the forest area of Estonian forests has declined about three times faster than new forest has grown, by measuring the apparent canopy density. . The forest activists groan. National news is quiet.

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CityLab: The Cars That Ate Paris

Last September, the lower quays of central Paris’s two-tiered Seine embankment closed to all motorized vehicles, limiting drivers of the double-decked waterfront highway to the upper quay. Now, at 6 p.m., the upper quay is packed with cars creeping home to the suburbs—still moving, but in a viscous molasses-like flow rather than a steady stream. Meanwhile the lower quays, now reserved for bicycles and pedestrians, are all but empty, with just a cyclist here, a skater there. The landscaping that will eventually turn them into a lush succession of lawns, copses, and flowerbeds is only beginning to emerge, so the quayside still looks like a road—a road you can’t drive on. [...]

Paris City Hall hasn’t shut down the quayside without good reason, however. The move is part of a concerted effort to reduce the number of private cars on its streets. Not only is Paris clearing cars from its quays, it’s banning the most heavily polluting vehicles from the city altogether, having created a system of shields detailing a vehicle’s age and emissions that all cars must display or face a fine. Already it has instigated alternate driving days or total driving bans during pollution peaks. Moving in from the river, Paris will slash the number of lanes on other major axes and turn whole neighborhoods into car-calmed, pedestrian- and bike-dominated zones. It is already in the process of redesigning seven major squares to reduce vehicle lanes and parking while increasing pedestrian space and greenery. [...]

Paris is doing all this because it needs to. The French capital’s reputation for beauty and charm may still be repeated to the point of cliché, but during the 1960s and ‘70s, this city—like so many others—was profoundly reshaped by car-centric planning. The postwar automotive boom turned the city’s quiet avenues into gasoline-filled arteries, flattening historic buildings and throttling the city core with a beltway that has become a byword for congestion and pollution. That inner Paris survived this onslaught in largely good visual shape is remarkable. [...]

That the Gallic car-fighting efforts have been partially successful of late is due in part to the capital’s unusual boundaries. The official city contains 2.2 million residents, while the wider metro area holds 11.8 million. Its frontiers—which frame an area referred to as Paris Intramuros, or “Paris between the walls”—have not expanded since 1860, meaning that even some historic, densely built neighborhoods are deemed suburbs. This means the electorate Paris City Hall has to cater to are all inner-city dwellers, relatively few of whom rely on cars for daily transit. The commuters most affected by car-calming policies cast their votes in suburban municipalities. And they are not happy.

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Jacobin Magazine: Abe’s Japan Is a Racist, Patriarchal Dream

The way Shinzō Abe sees it, Japan has learned all the lessons of war. “Now is the time to make a start on carving out a new era beyond the ‘postwar’ era,” the prime minister said in January in his first policy speech before the Diet. “[We will] take on the challenge of building up our nation anew.” As Japan celebrates the seventieth anniversary of the country’s postwar constitution, part of that “new nation-building” means rescripting it; the first order of business is shedding a shameful past. [...]

The US’s support for Japan remilitarization — longstanding, and reaffirmed by the Trump administration — has emboldened Abe’s militarism. Last December, his administration approved a record defense budget of $42.5 billion, the fifth consecutive increase during his term. The antiwar demonstrations that saw tens of thousands of people gather in front of the parliament have now largely subsided. And this February, the Abe administration moved to draft its first set of constitutional amendments. [...]

But what propelled the scandal into international headlines was not the school’s prewar curriculum or its unabashed xenophobia, but its connection to Japan’s first lady, Akie Abe. When it came out that she accepted a position as “honorary principal” at a new elementary school owned by Kagoike, the focus quickly fell on her husband. An inquiry into the private elementary school, originally named after Abe, soon revealed that the school had bought government-owned land at a discount, spurring accusations that Abe and his wife helped Kagoike with licensing and land acquisition. Last week, Kagoike testified under oath before the Diet that the first lady secretly donated $9,000 to set up the ultra-nationalist school. [...]

Backlash came with a vengeance. Beginning in the mid-1990s, conservative politicians and far-right groups began accusing feminists of being communist sympathizers using “gender” to subvert Japanese tradition. “Feminism and its gender-free movement is working to undermine Japanese culture and to lower our moral standards,” Michiyoshi Hayashi, a professor at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and a member of Nippon Kaigi, wrote in 2002. “Formerly the Marxists, feminists now emerge as the power that will destroy our nation.”

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Jacobin Magazine: An Unholy Alliance

This alliance is not exactly new. For some time, the far-right parties of Europe have been outspoken in their support of Israel, all while courting hardline nationalists who often hold racist and antisemitic views. Even in the United States, this alliance has been around for a while. In the 1970s, Richard Nixon — a severe antisemite — provided significant financial and military support for Israel, allowing the country to prevail in the Yom Kippur War. [...]

The alt-right is antisemitic. This point should not be controversial. We can see it when Milo Yiannopolous referred to a reporter as a “thick-as-pig shit media Jew” or when the Trump administration released a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews (or any other targeted group, for that matter). Antisemitism has been central to the alt-right’s program. When they speak of “global special interests,” they are really just rebranding the old antisemitic trope of a global Zionist conspiracy. [...]

This ideology — that ethnicities should be separate and that minorities should be expunged — is precisely what is driving the alt-right. This allows us to understand why the alt-right can simultaneously hate Jews and love Israel. The alt-right is fine with Jews, as long as they’re over there, far away from the United States.

And because they consider Jews “more white” than Arabs, the alt-right is happy to use them, through the state of Israel, to keep those uppity Muslim states in check. This has been Israel’s historical role. It was the case in 1956, when France and Britain entreated Israel to invade Egypt in order to stop Gamel Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal.

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The Atlantic: Benoît Hamon: France's Utopian Candidate?

In the past few weeks, Socialist leaders like Jean-Yves Le Drian, the defense minister, and Thierry Braillard, the sports minister, have thrown their support behind Hamon’s independent rival Emmanuel Macron, signaling a divide within a party already bruised by the deeply unpopular presidency of François Hollande. This division only widened Wednesday after Valls announced his decision to defect from the Socialists and endorse Macron—a candidate he once dismissed as “populism-lite.” Valls told French broadcaster BFMTV that his decision “isn’t out of love for the candidate” but rather “about being reasonable.”

But for Hamon, the lack of support from his party’s more centrist members may not be such a bad thing. The 49-year-old Brittany native has actively tried to distance himself from the current Socialist government, in which he briefly served as finance and education minister before quitting in August 2014, citing opposition to the government’s more centrist economic policies. In response, Hollande reportedly asked: “What would Benoît Hamon be without the Socialist Party?,” to which he himself answered, “Not much.”

Hamon has long represented the far-left of the center-left party—a role that has earned him comparisons to Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the U.K. Labour party. His more than 100-point platform, which Hamon says aims to “make France’s heart beat,” would reduce the 35-hour working week by three hours, impose a “robot tax” on automatization that replaces workers with machines, and establish a universal basic income of 750 euros ($815) for all citizens—an endeavor opponents say could cost as much as 400 billion euros a year (though Hamon estimates it will cost closer to 300 billion euros). [...]

Though Hamon’s left-leaning platform may successfully distance himself from his deeply unpopular predecessor, it does little to solve another challenge: distinguishing himself from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the similarly far-left candidate. The 63-year-old former education minister and veteran Socialist politician quit the party after 35 years in 2008 to create the Parti de Gauche, or Left Party. In this current presidential bid, however, Mélenchon has no formal party backing, opting instead to run under the banner of a movement he calls La France insoumise, or “Unsubmissive France.”

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CityLab: Berlin Preserves Its Trippy 1980s Subway Stations

The seven stations are all located in western Berlin, part of a city subway network where preservation orders are far from unheard of—with good reason, given their frequent beauty. What’s striking about today’s plans is just how new the stations are. They all date to that bygone golden age for Europe’s architectural heritage, the years 1980 to 1984. The seven newly protected stations are in one of the last sections of the subway system to be constructed exclusively within West Berlin, extending the network into Spandau, a suburban town still sitting within the confines of the Berlin Wall. [...]

Designed by architect Rainer G. Rummler, the stations are postmodernist affairs, their brightly colored tiles, pillars, and occasional splashes of shining metal making clear reference to the late 19th century Vienna Secession. There are art deco-ish dark green and gold accents here, a few ancient Egyptian capitals there, while the bold color schemes are part Gustav Klimt, part psychedelic album cover. Cheerful without being sugary, they are a notable bright spot in an often grey city. As an architect whose work is experienced  daily by thousands of Berliners, but rarely discussed, Rummler could actually be one of the great unsung heroes of partitioned West Berlin. [...]

When there were no obvious local references to guide a station’s style, however, Rummler truly went to town. Paulsternstrasse Station, for example, is in a bit of a no-man’s land with no obvious landmarks nearby. Lacking local sources to draw from, Rummler got especially creative. His design was inspired by imagining the trees, flowers and stars that might have been visible on a carriage ride between Berlin and Spandau 200 years previously, when the inn of a certain Paul Stern, after which the street was named, was serving travellers. The result is charming, odd, and more than a little trippy.

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The Intercept: U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley Doubled Down on Threats to Punish Criticism of Israel

U.N. AMBASSADOR NIKKI HALEY repeated her prior threats to punish criticism of Israel on Monday, boasting about creating a climate of fear at the U.N. in which other diplomats are frightened to speak to her about recent efforts to condemn Israel’s illegal colonization of the West Bank. [...]

Since her confirmation Haley has moved quickly to silence any criticism of Israel at the U.N. In her first speech at U.N. headquarters in New York, Haley promised to “have the backs of our allies,” and added that “for those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.” [...]

Throughout the hearings, Haley claimed her willingness to silence criticism of Israel as a chief qualification. She reminded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that as governor of South Carolina, she was the first governor to sign a law punishing businesses who participate in boycotts of Israel – a law that inspired dozens of similar bills in other states. She was eventually confirmed by the full Senate by a vote of 96-4.

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The Intercept: You Shouldn't Blame Islam for Terrorism. Religion Isn't a Crucial Factor in Attacks.

Yet according to a report from the New America Foundation, “every jihadist who conducted a lethal attack inside the United States since 9/11 was a citizen or legal resident.” A recent study in Britain, which last week endured its worst terrorist atrocity since 2005, revealed that more than two out of three “Islamism-inspired” terrorist offenses were carried out by individuals “who were either born or raised in the UK.”

The common stereotype of the Middle Eastern, Muslim-born terrorist is not just lazy and inaccurate, but easy fodder for the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam far right. Consider the swift reaction of White House official Sebastian Gorka to the horrific terror attack in London last week. “The war is real,” he told Fox News while the bodies of the victims were still warm, “and that’s why executive orders like President Trump’s travel moratorium are so important.” [...]

“Terrorism is really political violence, first and foremost,” Sageman told me last year. Atran, when I interviewed him for my Al Jazeera English show in 2015, said, “If you dialogue with these people, if you look at how they actually move into ‘jihad’ … there is very little discussion of religion.”

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Motherboard: The Number of Heroin Users in America Grew Five Times in a Decade

Last week we wrote about how rampant opioid addiction is lowering the lifespan of poor, white men in rural America. This week a new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health looked at the rising number of heroin users in the country, and most of them, again, are middle-aged white men without a college education.

According to the JAMA Psychiatry study, heroin use increased around five-fold, from .33 percent of the population between between 2001 and 2002, to 1.60 percent of the population between 2012 and 2013. Within that uptick, heroin use was higher among white Americans than non-white Americans, 1.9 versus 1.1 percent, respectively. The people most vulnerable to heroin use and heroin disorders were single white men in their thirties and forties who had either no degree or just a high school degree.

There are several reasons white men could be increasingly turning to heroin. For one, the middle class is shrinking, and white Americans, men and single people have made fewer economic gains than in previous decades, according to Pew Research Center. This dismal economic state has also fueled a mental health problem, and men are less likely to seek social support or medical care, instead turning to drugs to self-medicate, said Silvia Martens, author of the study and an epidemiologist at Columbia University.

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