BBC4 In Our Time: Baltic Crusades

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Baltic Crusades, the name given to a series of overlapping attempts to convert the pagans of North East Europe to Christianity at the point of the sword. From the 12th Century, Papal Bulls endorsed those who fought on the side of the Church, the best known now being the Teutonic Order which, thwarted in Jerusalem, founded a state on the edge of the Baltic, in Prussia. Some of the peoples in the region disappeared, either killed or assimilated, and the consequences for European history were profound.

With

Aleks Pluskowski Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading

Nora Berend Fellow of St Catharine's College and Reader in European History at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge

and

Martin PalmerDirector of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education, and Culture

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Politico: Emmanuel Macron’s enemy within

While far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s odds of victory are long nearly two weeks before the runoff, Macron faces multiple dangers, from soft turnout to another embarrassing gaffe, that could narrow his margin of victory and undermine his authority as president, even though an outright upset isn’t yet feared.

Macron may be his own worst enemy, his team of aides and supporters feel. The independent centrist candidate, who came first in the presidential election’s first round with 24 percent of the vote, celebrated in an exuberant fashion that would have been more appropriate if he’d actually been elected president. “The key word should have been sobriety, and we forgot that,” said an aide in his inner circle. [...]

According to a Harris Interactive poll, 47 percent of Fillon voters, 52 percent of Mélenchon voters and 76 percent of those who went for Hamon say they will vote for Macron on May 7. [...]

Another possible pitfall would be a Russian hack attack. Computer security firm Trend Micro confirmed that the Macron campaign’s emails had been the target of numerous attacks from the Russian hacker group known as Fancy Bear, but so far, according to Macron aides, to no avail.

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The Conversation: More people than ever before are single – and that’s a good thing

Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. – and many other nations around the world – is unprecedented. And the numbers don’t just say people are staying single longer before settling down. More are staying single for life. A 2014 Pew Report estimates that by the time today’s young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have never married. [...]

I’m a social scientist, and I’ve spent the past two decades researching and writing about single people. I’ve found that the rise of single living is a boon to our cities and towns and communities, our relatives and friends and neighbors. This trend has the chance to redefine the traditional meaning – and confines – of home, family and community. [...]

But studies have also shown that single people are bucking those trends. For example, they are more likely than married people to encourage, help and socialize with their friends and neighbors. They are also more likely to visit, support, advise and stay in touch with their siblings and parents.

In fact, people who live alone are often the life of their cities and towns. They tend to participate in more civic groups and public events, enroll in more art and music classes, and go out to dinner more often than people who live with others. Single people, regardless of whether they live alone or with others, also volunteer more for social service organizations, educational groups, hospitals and organizations devoted to the arts than people who are married.

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Vox: How sanctuary cities actually work

Motherboard: In the Future, the Holocaust Is Just Another Hologram

Gutter's entire body is displayed on a giant, vertical, flat screen TV. When I push a button to talk, my question is processed by speech recognition and natural language processing to fetch the right answer from a library of over 1,900 video clips of Gutter, who's in his mid-80s today. The clips were recorded over 20 hours of interviews, so Gutter is able to answer almost any question about his life, including a whole line of interrogations about Holocaust denial.

The videos were captured with 120 4K cameras from all angles in order to future-proof Gutter's testimony, and he's not only able to respond to questions via a screen. At the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend, USC premiered a version of the survivor's story where he walks viewers in VR through the Majdanek concentration camp. In the future, USC hopes to turn Gutter into a responsive hologram that can be rolled into classrooms. [...]

The Illinois Holocaust Museum will be the first location to host a permanent installation of New Dimension in Testimony starting in October, but I also got to see a prototype of an online version that anyone will be able to access in the future.

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The Guardian: 100 days of gibberish – Trump has weaponised nonsense

Sixteen times during the interview, which took place in the Oval Office, Trump’s speech is recorded as “unintelligible”, either because he was mumbling like a weirdo or because an aide was talking over him and didn’t want to be quoted in the interview – both of which, the Toronto Star notes, are “highly unusual”. Highly unusual is our normal now.

Whether or not Trump is capable of calculation (and, judging by his largely noun-free syntax in this interview, it’s debatable), his rhetorical style, untethered from both meaning and reality, serves his agenda well. Language is where we find common ground, where we define ourselves and teach others how to treat us, where we name problems so we can see and fight them. There’s a reason why social justice movements care about things such as pronouns and racial slurs and calling a Nazi a Nazi and saying “abortion” out loud – it’s the same reason why rightwingers, Trumpists in particular, are so eager to cast language as a frivolous abstraction and any critique as “political correctness”.

Without language, there is no accountability, no standard of truth. If Trump never says anything concrete, he never has to do anything concrete. If Trump never makes a statement of commitment, Trump supporters never have to confront what they really voted for. If his promises are vague to the point of opacity, Trump cannot be criticised for breaking them. If every sloppy lie (ie: “Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower … This is McCarthyism!”) can be explained away as a “generality” or “just a joke” because of “quotes”, then he can literally say anything with impunity. Trump can rend immigrant families in the name of “heart”, destroy healthcare in the name of “life”, purge minority voters in the name of “justice”, and roll back women’s autonomy in the name of “freedom”. The constitution? Probably sarcastic. There are “quotes” all over that thing!

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The Conversation: Witch-hunts and surveillance: the hidden lives of queer people in the military

Officially, gay men and lesbian women were banned from serving in the Army, Airforce and Navy until 1992, when Prime Minister Paul Keating had the political courage to overturn the ban. Until then, it was argued that homosexuality threatened military cohesion and morale. By contrast, the US kept its “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which officially barred entry for gays and lesbians to the military while allowing them to join as long as they didn’t disclose their sexuality, for two more than decades.

Before 1992 in Australia, those who did serve were forced to hide their sexuality, facing discharge if their homosexuality was exposed. The ban on transgender service lasted even longer, a further 18 years. The contribution of intersex personnel (those born with aspects of both sexes) is still to be fully unearthed. [...]

These men and women are courageous not just because of their military sacrifice, but also because they served knowing they were still considered unequal. Within the military, many were subjected to witch-hunts, surveillance, homophobia and dishonourable discharge, with all the future challenges that would present, ranging from limited employment opportunities to ongoing stigma in a homophobic society. Transgender personnel were treated with ignorance and denied the opportunity to serve in the capacities and at the levels they were worthy.

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CityLab: What Was Lost in the Fires of the L.A. Riots

The public life of Rodney King begins on March 3, 1991, when the African-American man was clubbed and kicked relentlessly by a gang of LAPD officers during a traffic stop. It ends on June 17, 2012, when he was found dead in his swimming pool at age 47. The autopsy showed that King an “alcohol and drug-induced delirium” led to his drowning. Before that point, he had been revolving in and out of rehab for substance abuse, a problem he attributed to trauma from the beating he took from cops. His death was ruled both accidental and self-inflicted, which is a common ending for the concussed.

Riots are also a common feature of communities that have been beaten down and traumatized by racism and poverty. Such was the case for South Central Los Angeles, which erupted in flames and violence on April 29, 1992, hours after a jury refused to convict the four LAPD officers who attacked King. The police got off the hook even though the beating had been captured on home video: That clip hit the local news, then CNN, and achieved pre-internet virality. [...]

A common refrain when unrest grips black communities is that black rioters are only hurting themselves by burning and looting businesses in their own neighborhoods. That wasn’t the whole story in the ‘92 riots, though. Much of the damage was done in Koreatown, where over 1,700 businesses were destroyed, compared to 2,800 African-American businesses elsewhere. Koreans were targeted because they owned and controlled so much real estate across South Central, while African Americans felt they didn’t have the same entrepreneurial opportunities. The Harlins killing only accentuated the disconnect between these two communities. One Asian-American man captured in a news clip in the doc tries to make the connection, though, noting how no fire trucks were coming to Koreatown to put out the fires. “This is no longer about Rodney King,” says the man, who’s not identified. “This is about the system against us, the minorities.”

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Al Jazeera: Inside Tehran's monument to US 'arrogance'

The embassy building - which still contains much of the old equipment used by US embassy staff to send coded messages - became a collection point for anti-American posters, sculptures and paintings. In years past, officials have opened its doors to mark special occasions, such as the anniversary of the hostage crisis. But a few months ago, it was formally established as a museum accessible to the public year-round - and the timing, coming on the heels of the election of US President Donald Trump, is no coincidence. [...]

Payam Mohseni, the director of Harvard University's Iran Project, noted that in light of Iran's "long arm" in conflicts throughout the Middle East, the Trump administration cannot approach any major regional crisis without dealing with Iran in some capacity. "Iran will be a top priority for Trump's Middle East policy, and whether he chooses to increase tensions or de-escalate, he will be forced to deal with Iran over issues ranging from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen to Persian Gulf security in the Middle East," Mohseni told Al Jazeera. [...]

"They view it as their pride and their strength," Torfeh told Al Jazeera. "Khamenei still models himself on Ayatollah Khomeini, and has not as yet taken Iran out of that revolutionary mode 38 years later. In almost every speech, he makes references to the legacy of Khomeini. Yet there is hardly any legacy that could be put to Khamenei's own name once he passes away. And his one and only image, sitting or standing in his long black robe on a raised platform addressing his loyal followers, is symbolic of the fact that he has been frozen in the same political position, almost too worried to do anything different to his predecessor."

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