Vox: The new war on drugs

It’s something Bevin had long pledged. In 2016, Bevin set up a panel to study criminal justice reform. In an op-ed for the Washington Times that year, Bevin touted legislation that lets some former inmates expunge their records. “The practice of ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ in our criminal justice system is an approach whose shot at effectiveness has run its course,” he wrote. “This misguided mantra propelled the United States’ prison population to unprecedented heights, far outpacing the rest of the world in per capita incarcerations.” [...]

Kentucky’s story, however, isn’t atypical. There has been much discussion of criminal justice reform in the past several years. And there has been a lot of talk about treating the opioid epidemic — the deadliest overdose crisis in US history — as a public health, not criminal justice, issue, unlike past drug crises. The cliché about the crisis, said by both Democrats and Republicans, is that “we can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”

Yet the rhetoric doesn’t tell the whole story. In my own investigation, I found at least 13 states, including Kentucky, that passed laws in recent years that stiffened penalties for opioids painkillers, heroin, or fentanyl — largely in response to the epidemic. In sharp contrast to all the talk about criminal justice reform and public health, these laws risk sending even low-level, nonviolent drug offenders — many of whom are addicted to drugs and need help for that addiction — to prison for years or decades. [...]

But as the opioid epidemic continues to kill tens of thousands of people in the US each year, many state lawmakers have gone back to the old criminal justice playbook to fight the crisis — even as the empirical evidence remains clear that tougher prison sentences are not an effective means to stopping the epidemic. The new laws are just one example. Several states have also dusted off old laws to lock up more opioid users and dealers. [...]

This is happening at the federal level under President Donald Trump. In 2014, the Obama administration told prosecutors to avoid charges for low-level drug offenders that could trigger lengthy mandatory minimums. But the Trump administration, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has rescinded those instructions — letting prosecutors pursue the most stringent penalties even against low-level, nonviolent drug offenders.

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European Council on Foreign Relations: Rise and fall of populism

Not so long ago, 2017 was set to become the annus mirabilis in European politics, a year in which the liberal establishment in key EU countries would be blown away, opening up space for their populist competitors. Representatives of the illiberal tide who had already taken power, such as Kaczynski in Poland or Orban in Hungary, saw themselves as the avant-garde of a new European mainstream. The Polish national-conservatives (PiS) were so certain that the zeitgeist was in their favour that they declared the Eurosceptic United Kingdom to be their key ally in the EU (instead of Germany). PiS strongly believed that the Polish-British idea of less Europe and more power for the capitals was destined to gather momentum. But that prediction proved to be wrong. Instead, the history books will mark 2017 as a moment in which Europe could take a breath, with special thanks to Emmanuel Macron and his German counterpart (whomever it will be). It is now safe to predict that upcoming changes in the architecture of the EU will follow a different script than that advocated by Kaczynski, Orban or (in the past) Cameron. [...]

There are multiple studies, including one by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, which confirm this new pattern in Western politics. The classical division of the left and right, defined by the attitude of voters to economic and social issues (the role of the state in the economy, the scale of redistribution) has lost its dominance. A new conflict has begun to polarise Western societies, one centred on cultural values: attitudes towards the so-called others in terms of race, community and globalisation. It is precisely these “combined with social and demographic factors [that] provide the most consistent and parsimonious explanation of voting support for populist parties”, Inglehart and Norris wrote. While some people view globalisation, immigration and cultural/religious pluralism as something either neutral or positive (if requiring some modification), others reject these phenomena as being in conflict with national interests and traditional values or undermining their identity. The divide between these two approaches largely defines the very strong cultural subtext of modern politics. [...]

There is no silver bullet for liberals attempting to hold their ground. It will take time until they fully adapt to the new circumstances and grasp the magnitude of the challenge posed to them by identity politics. As things stand, however, resistance against the proponents of nativism and illiberalism will not succeed unless liberals rethink at least three key components of their political agenda. First, the populist appeal benefits from people’s need for community and belonging. Liberals are not good at thinking in terms of community. They tend instead to underline the values of individualism and diversity. But the ideas of common good, social cohesion and unity are not at odds with liberal fundamentals. In fact, the opposite is true. Liberals have simply ignored the importance of these concepts and left their definition to the right or, most recently, to populists. The rise of the nationalconservatives in Poland would not have been possible without liberals having fully abandoned the issues of history, national identity and culture as non-political. In the era of identity politics, this approach is a recipe for failure. Politics has become (highly) emotional again, and to win the game one needs to find ways not to let the opponents monopolise the discourse about identity and culture. A new liberal narrative must therefore take the value of community seriously, but shape it in line with its own principles.

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The Washington Post: The shameful silence of Aung San Suu Kyi

There's a population of around a million people living in fear right now, facing the likely wrath of an uncaring government that doesn't seem to recognize their claim to the country they have always called home. The crisis along the Burma-Bangladesh border has dramatically intensified over the past week, with more than 125,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing a Burmese military offensive in restive Rakhine state, according to aid organizations. Reports keep flooding in of mass killings carried out by Burmese security forces, as well as torture, rape and the systematic razing of Rohingya villages. [...]

But when it comes to the Rohingya, Suu Kyi has shown little interest in “reconciliation.” Burma's population is a fractious, multi-religious patchwork of dozens of ethnic groups, but no community has been more neglected than the Rohingya, whom the junta stripped of their citizenship rights in 1982. They have lived in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine ever since, and observers see the growing insurgency there more as the symptom of decades of government abuse and persecution than the flourishing of foreign Islamist militant networks on Burmese soil. [...]

“I recognize that the armed forces retain great power in Burma, and that Aung San Suu Kyi does not exercise effective control over them,” wrote Guardian columnist George Monbiot. “I recognize that the scope of her actions is limited. But, as well as a number of practical and legal measures that she could use directly to restrain these atrocities, she possesses one power in abundance: the power to speak out. Rather than deploying it, her response amounts to a mixture of silence, the denial of well-documented evidence, and the obstruction of humanitarian aid.” [...]

While some critics are now calling for her Nobel Peace Prize to be rescinded, an editorial in The Washington Post urged Suu Kyi to heed the words of her own 2012 Nobel acceptance speech: “Ultimately our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless,” Suu Kyi said, “a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace.”

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Financial Times: The long Brexit decline

Janan Ganesh, the FT's chief political commentator, and Miranda Green, political columnist, discuss the future of Britain and the latest Brexit developments.

The Conversation: When it comes to North Korea, China is happy to make Trump squirm

In fact, China may have already lost most of its direct influence on North Korea through past unsuccessful attempts to control the rogue state’s behaviour. It does still have more leverage on its neighbour than any other country because it supplies most of the oil to North Korea, which in turn fuels Kim Jong-un’s military and industrial machinery.

But China is unlikely to completely cut off crude and refined oil supplies to its troublesome ally. This is because it believes it is unlikely that North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons and delivery systems any time soon. [...]

Kim Jong-un has gone a step further in rebuffing the Chinese leadership. Since becoming North Korea’s leader in 2011 he has never visited China, not even when it celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war by hosting a grand military parade in Beijing in 2015. Not surprisingly, Chinese President Xi Jinping has also not visited Pyongyang. [...]

It is believed that, in an effort to persuade its estranged ally to desist from developing nuclear weapons, Xi had sent a senior envoy to Pyongyang with a message that China would no longer abide by the security provisions of its 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance with North Korea. Instead of buckling under pressure, Kim Jong-un decided to accelerate his nuclear weapons program because he could no longer rely on China’s support. [...]

Nevertheless, the most we can expect from China, in addition to the measures it has already taken – for example, stopping coal imports – is a reduction in oil supplies. The Chinese leadership does not want to do anything that could bring about the collapse of the North Korean regime and, in the process, provoke its leader to lash out at China.

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Politico: State of the Juncker

“While I am not an integration fanatic, I am very much in favor of deepening the European Union and at the same time respecting to the fullest extent justified, national interests,” he said. He excluded treaty changes in the short term, “even though they would be necessary” down the line. [...]

Juncker’s proposals, to be pursued in his final, full work-year before the 2019 European election, will include expanded military cooperation, concerted action on trade and trade defense, and the transformation of the European Stability Mechanism into a permanent safety net to protect not just national budgets but the pocketbooks and quality of life of the bloc’s citizens. [...]

What he envisions is an EU where decision-making is streamlined, allowing the bloc to act more nimbly in areas where greater cooperation is needed and desired, while also drawing bright lines around areas of national sovereignty where he believes the capitals are right to demand their due deference. [...]

Criticized for ignoring and almost never visiting the Eastern EU states, Juncker insisted he was aware of the need to balance their desires with those of older, Western members of the club. “This weighs on my thinking and doing, because I always have to ask myself: If I propose this or that, then I immediately have a difference between East and West,” he said. “That’s a topic for the future that we need to tackle right now. I put a lot of effort into [talking to Slovakian Prime Minister Robert] Fico and [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán.” [...]

The creation of an EU finance minister, which already has the crucial support of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, would further cement Juncker’s legacy as a champion of the EU, and allow him to boast of fulfilling a major promise from his campaign for Commission president in 2014.

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Politico: Macron heads to Greece with big ideas but few specifics

The French president will, in line with the policy of his predecessor François Hollande, reiterate his support for the Greek government’s effort to clinch a deal with its eurozone partners to restructure the country’s massive public debt. But he will also use an open-air speech on the Pnyx — the hill where citizens of ancient Athens used to hold their meetings — to restate his vision for the future of the EU, and the need for a more integrated monetary union.

Macron’s aides were keen this week to underline the symbolic nature of the French president’s visit and speech in one of the cradles of democracy. But the same aides also implicitly acknowledged that Macron would be long on ideas and short on specifics — because most of the plans he has for Europe haven’t yet been seriously discussed with his other European partners, most notably Germany, where a general election is just weeks away. [...]

Macron’s visit and speeches, however, will not only be aimed at other European leaders and citizens. On the domestic front, he is implementing the first phase of his reform agenda with an overhaul of labor laws, and is currently the most unpopular French president of modern times at this stage of the presidency. He wants to hammer home that his focus on a new French push for European integration is not an exercise in gratuitous self-aggrandizement, but a way to bring more prosperity at home down the road.

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JSTOR Daily: Flying Spaghetti Monsters and the Quest for Religious Authenticity

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster began in 2005 with a satiric open letter written by then-25-year-old Bobby Henderson in response to the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to teach the theory of intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools. Henderson argued that schools ought also to devote class time to teaching the theory that a flying spaghetti monster had created the universe. This, he reasoned, was as probable a version of intelligent design as any other. The letter inspired a biblical flood’s worth of memes and launched a religious group that now claims a global membership. As this so-called Pastafarianism has grown, some branches of the FSM church have started demanding the rights and privileges enjoyed by more established religious organizations. What started as a fake religion is now angling to be an authentic one. [...]

When the Brandenburg court decided on August 2nd, 2017 to deny the FSM church recognition as a religious group, it did so because “the critique of beliefs expressed in it is not a comprehensive system of thought.” For the court, Pastafarianism’s satiric origins, along with the fact that its iconography and rituals are so clearly intended to hold an absurdist mirror to Christianity, render it inauthentic. This is a hard charge to deny. At the same time, the court implicitly devalued the humor and play at the heart of Pastafarianism as valid elements of authentic religion, privileging instead history, solemnity, and intellectual coherence.

Spearheading the church’s quixotic fight with the German judiciary has been Rüdiger Weida (aka Brother Spaghettus) who upon hearing the ruling accused the court of judging the FSM church not by its German branch (or is it tentacle?) alone, which Weida insists is a secular humanist organization merely adorned in cookware and eye patches, but by its American counterpart, which he has described as “relatively ridiculous. It is only about partying and pasta recipes. There is only a marginal social concern there.” Perhaps Brother Spaghettus’s frustration with his colander-clad brethren on the other side of the Atlantic will soon propel him into the role of a Pastafarian Luther. This might even help him when he takes his case next to the European Court of Justice, since nothing is more authentically religious than a good old fashioned schism.

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The Guardian: The Brexit bill is cataclysmic. Only a swerve will save us

Their frivolity was summed up by David Davis dismissing EU negotiator Michel Barnier as “silly”. But silliness is now Britain’s official position. Those who holidayed in the EU this summer will have met that amazement from taxi drivers, bartenders, students and old-timers alike: they think we are mad. And so we are. What else can they make of a country with Boris Johnson as foreign secretary? According to Sunday’s Survation poll, he is favourite to take over from Theresa May, with Jacob Rees-Mogg in second place. As if despairing of politics, many voters seem to prefer any alternative reality to the one we face.

In just a year the deal must be done, in time to be ratified by the 27 nations by March 2019. Our government has approached it like a bunch of England football fans, shouting: “Who won the war?” Supposedly sober politicians boast loudly that they need us more than we need them: “We hold all the cards!” Those with delusions about Britain’s importance should note that in Sunday’s election debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schultz, Brexit was not mentioned once. The EU faces many crises – migration flows across the Mediterranean, Ukraine at war with Russia, Donald Trump and North Korea – and the relentless burning and flooding of our planet. [...]

The UK’s realm of fantasy unravels embarrassingly fast. Only two weeks ago one policy paper proposed an “innovative” and “unprecedented” system to abolish customs checks by electronically tagging goods, cleverly passing on any dues to the EU. It was pure magic, as the EU protested. Only a fortnight later Davis had to take it off the table because no one has invented it: “It was a blue sky idea”, he said with that jovial nonchalance whose charm is fast wearing thin.

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