Jacobin Magazine: The Bolsheviks and Antisemitism

The February Revolution transformed Jewish life. Just days after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, all legal restrictions on Jews were lifted. More than 140 statutes, totaling some thousand pages, were removed overnight. To mark this historic moment of abolition, a special meeting was convened by the Petrograd Soviet. It was the eve of Passover, March 24, 1917. The Jewish delegate who addressed the meeting immediately made the connection: the February Revolution, he said, was comparable with the liberation of Jews from slavery in Egypt. [...]

Without doubt, the soviets had become, by mid-1917, the main political opposition to antisemitism in Russia. An editorial in the newspaper Evreiskaia Nedelia (the Jewish Week) captured this well: “It must be said, and we must give them their dues, the soviets have carried out an energetic struggle against [pogroms]. In many places, it has only been thanks to their strength that peace has been restored.”

It is worth noting, however, that these campaigns against antisemitsm were aimed at workers in factories and sometimes activists within the broad socialist movement. In other words, antisemitism was identified as a problem within the social base of the radical left, and even sections of the revolutionary movement itself. What this revealed, of course, is that antisemitism did not simply emanate from “above,” from the former tsarist establishment; it had an organic base within sections of the working class, and it had to be confronted as such. [...]

What underscored moderate socialist concern about the capacity of antisemitism and revolution to overlap was the way Bolsheviks mobilized the masses, and channeled their class resentment. On October 28, when the revolution was in full flow, the Mensheviks’ Petrograd Electoral Committee issued a desperate appeal to workers in the capital, warning that Bolsheviks had seduced “the ignorant workers and soldiers,” and the cry of “All power to the Soviets!” would all too easily turn into “Beat the Jews, beat the shopkeepers.” For the Menshevik L’vov-Rogachevskii, the “tragedy” of the Russian revolution lay in the apparent fact that the “the dark masses (temnota) are unable to distinguish the provocateur from the revolutionary, or the Jewish pogrom from a social revolution.”

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The New Yorker: Saudi Arabia's Game of Thrones

On Wednesday, King Salman, who is eighty-one and frail, ousted his more seasoned heir—a fifty-seven-year-old nephew who crushed Al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia during decades as the counterterrorism tsar—in favor of Prince Mohammed, the monarch’s seventh and favorite son. The sprawling royal family has traditionally shared power among the first generation of sons of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the founding father of modern Saudi Arabia. When he died in 1953, he had fathered forty-three sons and even more daughters. Since then, an artful balancing act has distributed politics, privilege, and financial perks among the royal family’s many branches. The arrangement preëmpted serious dissent.

Now, in a royal decree, the king’s move has bypassed his own brothers, hundreds of royals in the second generation who thought that they had a shot at the kingship, and even his own older sons. Prince Mohammed is the youngest heir apparent in Saudi history—by decades. In a country long ruled by men who grew up without air-conditioning or direct-dial phones, the new crown prince talks of growing up playing video games, carries an iPhone, and talks openly about idolizing Steve Jobs. [...]

The transformation happened overnight. Upon King Salman’s ascension, he appointed Prince Mohammed, still in his twenties, to be the country’s top decision-maker on defense, oil, and economic development, with total control over the royal court and the king’s agenda. He became the youngest defense minister in Saudi history—and the “youngest holder of this position in the world,” according to the House of Saud Web site, despite no military training. He was also chosen to head a newly formed Council for Economic and Development Affairs and to chair a new Supreme Council for Saudi Aramco, the body that oversees the world’s largest oil-producing company. The last title alone provides influence well beyond Saudi borders. Aramco pumps some ten million barrels of oil a day—or about one in nine barrels consumed daily worldwide, according to the Financial Times. [...]

The new crown prince also has Trump on his side. The President called Prince Mohammed within hours of his appointment. They committed, the White House said, to “close cooperation to advance our shared goals of security, stability, and prosperity across the Middle East and beyond.”

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Politico: Battered and bruised, Theresa May limps into enemy territory

In the queen’s speech setting out the government’s policy agenda Wednesday, much of the prime minister’s planned legislative program as outlined in the Conservative Party manifesto was either ditched or kicked into the long grass. The bulk of what remained was all about Brexit. [...]

Should she survive the queen’s speech vote next week, her next major test will be the “Repeal Bill,” without which there can be no Brexit. The bill repeals the act of parliament which gives EU law its legal status in Britain. It also downloads the entire body of EU law onto the U.K. statute book. [...]

Adding a further layer of complexity, the prime minister revealed to MPs Wednesday that part of the Repeal Bill may need the approval of the Scottish parliament. “It’s possible that a legislative consent motion will be required in the Scottish parliament,” she said. It’s hard to see Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon not making hay with that.

Such is the precariousness of May’s situation that any of her top team of ministers could oust her with one well-timed public intervention. “If DD [Brexit Secretary David Davis] said her lack of authority was stopping him negotiating Brexit she would be gone in minutes and he would be PM,” one senior former government aide said on condition of anonymity.[...]

Labour MP Wes Streeting gave the most brutal of many brutal put-downs during the debate on the queen’s speech. “She asked for a personal mandate in the election and didn’t get one,” he said to cheers. “The only question is, why is she still here?”

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influenceatwork: Science Of Persuasion

http://www.influenceatwork.com This animated video describes the six universal Principles of Persuasion that have been scientifically proven to make you most effective as reported in Dr. Cialdini’s groundbreaking book, Influence. This video is narrated by Dr. Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin, CMCT (co-author of YES & The Small Big).

About Robert Cialdini:Dr. Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State University has spent his entire career researching the science of influence earning him a worldwide reputation as an expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance, and negotiation.

Dr. Cialdini’s books, including Influence: Science & Practice and Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, are the result of decades of peer-reviewed published research on why people comply with requests. Influence has sold over 3 million copies, is a New York Times Bestseller and has been published in 30 languages.

The Atlantic: Scenes From Hong Kong, 'Pearl of the Orient'

Hong Kong—a former British colony, now an autonomous territory within China—is a vibrant city of nearly 7.5 million residents, all packed into an area smaller than 425 square miles (1,100 sq km.) About 40% of the land in Hong Kong is set aside as country parks and nature reserves. As architects and developers continue to maximize the use of buildable land, apartment blocks and office towers reach for the sky, leaving Hong Kong with more skyscrapers than any other city in the world. Gathered here are recent images of the vertical cityscape, street scenes, monuments, people, and natural landscapes of Hong Kong.

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The Atlantic: A New, New Right Rises in Germany

Kubitschek is the architect of Germany’s “Neue Rechte,” or New Right, a movement rooted in the concept of an ethnopluralist clash of cultures, whereby dominant national cultures and identities co-exist but do not merge. He and his wife, Ellen Kositza, began cultivating a self-described conservative elite in 2000, through the think tank Institut für Staatspolitik (Institute for State Politics), Antaios, a publishing house, and a bi-monthly magazine called Sezession (Secession). Kositza has become the face and voice of the publishing house, reviewing books and promoting Antaios’s new releases on her YouTube channel, while Kubitschek is one of its ideological doyens. [...]

Most experts trace the Neue Rechte’s beginnings back to the 1960s, when a left-wing radical student movement swept West Germany, recalibrating government institutions, media, education, gender politics, and popular culture. Like the parallel Nouvelle Droite school in France, the Neue Rechte considers itself a counter-revolution battling to correct the left’s wildly deviant course. But unlike its French counterpart, the Neue Rechte is haunted by the shadow of Germany’s past. Its forebears are political thinkers from the last century, such as Armin Mohler, Ernst Jünger, and Carl Schmitt, all of whom had controversial ties to the Nazis. To cast off charges of neo-Nazism, Kubitschek has sought to fashion the Neue Rechte as serious and highbrow, focused on identity and culture, not race and ethnicity. [...]

According to Kubitschek, Islam is a religion to be respected at its origin. But Muslims have no place proselytizing in Christian countries, particularly ones that have lost sight of their Christian values. Volker Weiss, historian and author of the book The Authoritarian Revolt: The New Right and the Downfall of the West, writes that the Neue Rechte’s true enemy is “not Mohammad’s message, but rather global modernity with all its consequences.” Kubitschek indeed spends more time lamenting decadent secularism, left-wing liberalism, and political correctness. [...]

The AfD is on course to win around eight percent of the vote in September’s federal elections, according to the weekly “Sonntagsfrage” poll, but its peak numbers have fallen. Still, the party was founded only four years ago, and is already represented in 13 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. Barring catastrophe, it will enter federal parliament after September’s elections. Most significantly, the AfD has also forced Merkel’s government to adjust to its rhetoric. Earlier this month, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere from Merkel’s party triggered widespread controversy when he presented a ten-point plan to cultivate a dominant German culture. It was widely seen as a nod to right-wing voters.

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America Magazine: Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister is no liberal hero

As he navigates the early days of his leadership, Mr. Varadkar has positioned himself as a leader of “the new European center” and “a republic of opportunity.” He has benefitted from the positive coverage his election generated in the international press, who lauded the election of an openly gay son of an Indian immigrant as a sign of how progressive our tiny little island had become. The New York Times wrote that his rise is evidence that Ireland is rapidly “leaving its conservative Roman Catholic social traditions behind.” [...]

But more significant, his election was not widely hailed as a move toward a new liberal Ireland. Though Mr. Varadkar’s views on contentious issues have softened, he is still among the more conservative members of the Irish parliament. The leadership contest that preceded his election was defined by Mr. Varadkar’s own declaration that he wanted to be a leader for “people who get up early in the morning.” He later clarified that he was describing “a country that rewards work, that rewards people who work hard, that want better lives for themselves, their families, their communities,” but the implied logic was that he had little concern for those who do not get up early or could not get up at all. [...]

But the shift Mr. Varadkar represents is not just a focus on individualism. Former Prime Minister Enda Kenny was known for being evasive and closed off and for his ability to talk around parliament’s questions without giving a clear answer. Leo Varadkar, meanwhile, positioned himself as a straight talker willing to take a contrarian view on contentious issues. And despite the fact that Mr. Varadkar did not bring sweeping changes to the cabinet, when he chaired his first meeting as Taoiseach at Áras An Uachtaráin last Wednesday, it was undoubtedly seen as the changing of the guard from one generation to the next.

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The Huffington Post: Sturgeon’s Last Stand

One of the main reasons the SNP froze Council Tax from 2007 was because they wanted to court the Tory vote. This has been an extremely popular measure in Scotland, yet it has inflicted a massive amount of austerity upon local councils, with the council tax freeze leading to Scottish local authorities facing £14.8billion of debt, and having to make frontline cuts.

The general election paid testament to how reliant the SNP are upon conservative voters. Labour did make seven gains increasing their vote share in every seat. But it is conservative voters leaving the SNP who they really owe their seats to. Just look at Gordon Brown’s former super safe Labour seat of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath, that he won with a majority of 23,009 in 2010.In 2017 although Labour won the seat with 17,016 votes, the number of Labour votes was down from 2015 when they lost with 17,654. This was because the Conservative vote surged with 13.4% swing from the SNP to them, doubling their votes to 10,762 whilst halving the SNP vote from 27,628 to 16,757. Even in seats where Labour did get substantial swings such as Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill or Glasgow North East were pretty much matched by the Conservatives. [...]

Of course Davidson is at odds with the hard brexit, social conservative brand of conservatism that became central to Mayism. Davidson is one of last Cameronians standing in a prominent position within the conservative party. She is socially liberal, a remainer and unlike the Cameroons ambivalent towards austerity. So the Conservative revival is very much down to Davidson’s brand of conservatism and unionism. She and her MP’s are now in a coalition with the conservative party. Her 13 MP’s are central to the Conservatives being the largest party and will be even more pivotal than the DUP at holding the Conservative party together.

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