The Atlantic: The High Price of Presidential Impeachment

The incident provided a powerful metaphor for the way impeachment turned a substance politicians could usually handle into something highly explosive. After months of drama, Lincoln’s former secretary John Hay concluded: “Impeachment is demonstrated not to be an easy thing. The lesson may be a good one some day.” The lesson, as good in 2017 as it was in 1868, is that removing a president is an ugly process, which can dangerously inflame tensions in an already divided nation. [...]

There were, still, millions who sided with Johnson. White Democrats, especially in the lower north and the south, felt overwhelmed by Republicans. To them, Republicans were social-justice warriors intent on revolutionizing race relations and centralizing Federal power; most Democrats just wanted to return to the old union and old Constitution. Such Democrats launched the most bitterly racist campaigns in American history, rallying behind Andrew Johnson as a symbol of their struggle against change. [...]

But impeachment means more than merely a trial in Washington. As news spread across the nation, many citizens assumed that politics was once again bleeding over into violence. Some braced for a second Civil War, this time fought not just by north and south, but also between Republicans and Democrats in places like New Jersey and Ohio. One man in Illinois was reminded of “Fort Sumpter times. Everybody is for fight,” while a Massachusetts woman, tired of warfare, merely shrugged: “Another revolution is upon us (Heaven help us that it be a peaceful one).”

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The New York Review of Books: Egypt: The New Dictatorship

That fall, Sisi launched a sweeping crackdown on civil society. Citing the need to restore security and stability, the regime banned protests, passed antiterrorism laws that mandated long prison terms for acts of civil disobedience, gave prosecutors broad powers to extend pretrial detention periods, purged liberal and pro-Islamist judges, and froze the bank accounts of NGOs and law firms that defend democracy activists. Human rights groups in Egypt estimate that between 40,000 and 60,000 political prisoners, including both Muslim Brotherhood members and secular pro-democracy activists, now languish in the country’s jails. Twenty prisons have been built since Sisi took power. [...]

Donald Trump, who has spoken bluntly about “radical Islamic terrorism” and appears to share Sisi’s view that the Muslim Brotherhood is involved in such activity, quickly signaled his support for the military government. Sisi was the first Arab leader with whom Trump spoke after his inauguration, and in April the US president invited him to the White House for what was described as a cordial private meeting. According to reports, Trump did not broach the subject of human rights violations, and observers believe that his embrace may embolden the Egyptian leader to extend his repressive policies. [...]

International peacekeepers describe the fighting in Sinai as starting to resemble the conflict in Afghanistan, with a committed army of religious fundamentalists, rocket and sniper attacks on foreign military observers, and defections by government troops angered by the state’s persecution of Islamists. “They are globally inspired local insurgents,” Major-General Denis Thompson, the Canadian former commander of the peacekeeping force, said in a recent interview. “And their effort is really to use the [ISIS] brand to attract recruits, and locally they’re trying to redress many long-standing grievances they have with the Egyptian government.” Abuses by the military may also be drawing more local men to the ISIS cause. In late April, Human Rights Watch urged the US government to suspend military aid to Egypt after a video surfaced showing troops executing eight captured insurgents, then planting rifles next to their corpses to make it look as if they were killed in combat. [...]

By the late 2000s, Shenker writes, “unemployment had risen so sharply that one in four Egyptians was out of work; among the millions who had been born since 1981 and knew no other leader than Mubarak, the jobless figure was estimated at over 75 per cent.” On the surface, Mubarak’s Egypt was stable, secular, and welcoming to tourists, but few of those who came to gaze at the pyramids and cruise down the Nile had any sense of the corruption, police brutality, and gross disparities of wealth that were breeding discontent among the population.

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CityLab: Britain Debates Nationalizing Its Rail System

As Britain’s Labour Party closes the gap with its Conservative rivals in the June 8th general election, there’s at least one part of the party’s platform that’s widely popular: nationalizing the railways.

According to the party’s manifesto, a Labour government would end the outsourcing of passenger services to private companies, a practice that began in 1994. The idea might seem complex and expensive, but it has become a significant feature of Britain’s current election campaign—and it’s an idea that many U.K. citizens seem to like a lot: A recent survey found 52 percent of respondents favored renationalization, versus 22 percent against. That makes the idea currently more popular than the party that proposed it. [...]

The short answer is yes, the long answer is maybe. A state takeover might be easier than it sounds, because Britain’s train companies aren’t truly private enterprises. Britain’s railways currently have a fiddly, tripartite structure that already mixes public and private ownership. In a vital difference from the United States, the tracks are still owned by the state, via a body called Network Rail. The trains are owned by private companies known as ROSCOs, or rolling stock companies. Actual passenger services, meanwhile, are run by another set of private companies, including Virgin Trains, Arriva UK Trains, and Abellio ScotRail, among others who bid to run services on five- to seven-year leases granted by the government. [...]

There’s also a curious trans-European twist to Britain’s privatized rail system. Many of the passenger companies are joint ventures with, or offshoots of, European rail companies that remain in public hands. Arriva Trains, for example, is owned by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, while Abellio Scotrail is a subsidiary of Dutch national carrier Nederlandse Spoorwegen. Both of these companies charge lower fares in their domestic market (despite Britain’s flexible pricing offering some bargains) leading to accusations that profits skimmed from privatized British rail are essentially a subsidy for more affordable public fares on the European mainland.

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Al Jazeera: Poland's Bialowieza: Losing the forest and the trees

As of January 1 of this year, Poland has become the European front line in the war on the environment, and, particularly, on plant life. On that day, the so-called Szyszko's Law, named after Polish Minister of Environment Jan Szyszko, came into effect. According to the provisions of this law, owners need not inform the authorities if they plan to cut down trees growing on their privately held lands, nor are they required to do any replanting to offset tree felling. 

The new provisions have been subject to heated contestation and protest both from the European Union and from diverse groups within Polish civil society. Most emblematically, a group of women under the leadership of Cecylia Malik took the initiative to create Mothers on Tree Stumps, whose members breastfeed their children while sitting on recently felled trees. The photographs of their collective actions are posted on social media and show a near-apocalyptic atmosphere with stark contrast between infants, representing hope for the future, and the scenes of devastation unfolding around them.

Yet it seems that Szyszko's law has not entirely satisfied the forestry industry in Poland. Currently, the state itself is engaged in a massive logging programme at the Unesco-protected Bialowieza ecosystem, considered to be Europe's last primaeval forest. Nearly 10,000 acres of Bialowieza is earmarked for logging. Here, too, protests have abounded; earlier this month, hundreds of writers and artists sent an open letter to the Polish authorities imploring them to stop the assault on Bialowieza. [...]

Does the rhetoric of those in power in Poland not reiterate the long-standing mantra of the sacrifices to be accepted for our own good? "To protect the forest, we need to chop it down" translates seamlessly into "To protect our democracy, it is imperative to give up basic democratic rights". Political management reverberates, as though in an echo chamber, with forest management.

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Political Critique: Golden Dawn and the Classics

The first book that Nikos Michaloliakos, leader of the Golden Dawn, published was, perhaps surprisingly, a collection of poems on the ancient Greek gods. When asked why he writes about the Greek deities he replied that so did Angelos Sikelianos and dozens of other poets, so why not? The truth behind this is that many of the Golden Dawn neo-Nazis are pagans, as were many of the original Nazis. Christianity was considered a branch of decadent Jewishness: National Socialism was the ideology of paganism, while Marxism and Liberalism were the ideological agents of Judeo-Christianity.

By 1992, the GD chose to conceal its pagan beliefs in order to address larger audiences. They also sided with some Christian fundamentalists, followers of the old calendar, united by their common hatred against Jews. In fact, not only did they suppress their beliefs from their public profile, they have even participated in rallies against a theatre performance in which the figure of Jesus Christ was supposedly insulted. This is because their pagan faith wouldn’t go down well with Greek voters. [...]

This is intended for a general audience. Meanwhile the official journal of the Golden Dawn reads: “the presence of the swastika in Vergina is no coincidence. It confirms the high levels of racial realization of an elite portion of the Greek nation, which knows and honours its Aryan origins.” [...]

National pride derives from what we achieved in the classical past. This “we” is the single greatest unchallenged fiction of all, it is very rarely questioned in the popular reception of the classics. This is not confined to the Golden Dawn. It pollutes the Greek right in general. This is our current minister of public defense, celebrating “the victory over the Persian invader, which was crucial for the survival of western civilization.”

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Salon: “Do it harder”: The right-wing backlash behind the brutal lashing of gay men in Indonesia

Aceh, a Muslim district of Indonesia governed under Sharia law, expanded its criminal code in 2015 to stipulate that men found guilty of homosexual activity be subject to 100 lashes. That law, as human rights advocates explain, has made vigilantes out of ordinary citizens. The two men publicly flogged on May 23 were discovered naked in bed together after neighbors — who suspected them of being gay — broke into their hotel room to videotape their encounter. The couple was subsequently beaten and dragged to a local police station. [...]

Although homosexuality is legal in Indonesia, Aceh is a special case. The conservative district, which counts more than five million residents, has long lobbied for its independence from the rest of the archipelago. In 2006, the federal government struck a deal with Aceh to keep it from seceding. The tiny province would be ruled by sharia law, although any local guidelines that conflicted with national policies would be overruled. But because the Indonesian government doesn’t have laws on the books preventing discrimination LGBT people, anti-gay policies aren’t technically illegal. [...]

The situation further deteriorated from there. Musni Umar, a well-known sociologist, likened homosexuality to “terrorism” and “Armageddon.” Zulkifli Hasan, who is currently the highest-ranking official in the national legislature, even called for same-sex activity to be banned. Most bizarrely, Tangerang mayor Arief Wismansyah claimed that instant noodles would turn the city’s children gay.

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The Washington Post: Trump’s pro-Saudi, pro-Russia, anti-Europe foreign policy

Merkel's remarks are likely an indication, wrote German magazine Der Spiegel, “that she is losing hope that she can ever work constructively together with Trump.” After all, the American president used his pulpit at NATO headquarters to scold his European counterparts about not paying their fair share — but specifically did not reaffirm the United States' commitment to defend alliance members if attacked. 

And at the Group of Seven summit in Sicily over the weekend, Trump balked at reiterating U.S. support for the 2015 Paris climate accord. That led to a sharp rebuke on Monday from German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who contrasted that impasse with Trump's warm visit to Saudi Arabia and the $110 billion arms deal inked between the two nations. [...]

In other words, despite the anger from America's traditional allies and many American voters, Trump's cordial relations with Putin and other autocrats seem to take precedence over concerns about values and shared interests. And the more Spicer and other administration officials attempt to portray this as normal, the more abnormal it seems to be.

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Quartz: Macron is draining the swamp in France—or trying to

Sex and money are hot topics for which my two countries exhibit inverted cultural hangups. Here in the US, we freely discuss our money, but experience a countrywide conniption when a singer shows a tiny bit of nipple. In Paris, we happily discuss carnal mischief but would never think of asking someone how much they paid for their apartment—it’s tantamount to grabbing someone’s pudendum. The French demonize money just like we Americans demonize sex. Money is a very private affair. [...]

During France’s recent presidential election campaign, we were treated to revelations of corruption that led to the indictments of two candidates and a few close associates. Angry shouts of “tous pourris” (they’re all rotten!) were heard at both ends of the political spectrum, from the extreme leftist Jean- Luc Mélenchon and the no-less-extreme Marine Le Pen on the right (who herself was embroiled in the kind of financial shenanigans she accused the “rotten” political class of condoning). [...]

Next up: There’s a parliamentary election mid-June, with 577 seats in play. If Macron is to implement the reforms he articulated during his presidential campaign, he needs an indisputable legislative majority at the Assemblée Nationale, colloquially referred to as a majorité de gouvernement (governing majority). These reforms—modernizing France’s paleo-marxist labor code, cleaning up unemployment compensation, making retirement regulations and payments more equitable for present and future generations—will arouse opposition from a wide range of stakeholders, and Macron’s parliamentary support will inevitably suffer defections as afflicted voters put pressure on their representatives.

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