FiveThirtyEight: Why High-Profile Events Like Mass Shootings Often Don’t Lead To Policy Change

The idea that events should change policy is appealing. After each incident of gun violence in the U.S., someone retells Australia’s story. Twelve days after a mass shooting there in 1996, the legislature took up anti-gun measures, including a buyback program and various restrictions on the types of guns that could be sold. But in the U.S., gun control policy has often appeared impossible to pass at the federal level: A common response after Las Vegas seemed to be, “If nothing changed after Sandy Hook, nothing will change now.” Does public opinion — and, as a result, the policy process — actually respond to events? Let’s look at a few schools of thought in political science and public policy. [...]

Major events that dominate the news — such as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill — have the potential to alter how the public thinks about an issue (what scholars call “frames”). Because of their ability to shift public opinion, these moments can help interest groups mobilize and pressure elected officials for change. After the Exxon Valdez spill, for example, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. After the Sept. 11 attacks, we saw the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which strengthened the power of the federal government to investigate perceived terrorist activity, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. [...]

Although events may dominate the news, that’s not the same thing as changing how citizens and policy-makers think and talk about them. As Thomas Birkland wrote in a study of the event’s impact, “September 11 only threw open the window of opportunity for policy change based, in large part, on preexisting ideas.” For example, the Department of Homeland Security was not a brand new idea when it was formed after Sept. 11; lawmakers had been debating for several years about how to coordinate counterterrorism efforts. In other words, the attacks brought terrorism to the top of the priority list, but they didn’t introduce new ways of thinking about how to prevent terrorism. [...]

In both cases, attitude and policy change has come not from a major event that changes people’s understanding of a topic, but rather from more long-term structural changes in society as a whole that result in a gradual reframing of the issues at hand.

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BBC4 Thinking Allowed: Whither the Welfare State?

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Jacobin Magazine: Egypt’s Rainbow Raids

Egypt does not officially outlaw homosexuality, but the country’s “Morality Police” have become experts at fabricating charges based on the country’s vague laws against “debauchery” and “prostitution.”

Some detainees have been sent to court swiftly and given prison sentences, while others are still undergoing interrogation. Among them is Sarah Hegazy, a prominent pro-LGBTQ leftist. Her defense lawyers say inmates beat and sexually abused her after a police officer incited them to violence. Other detainees have faced similar treatment, including humiliating anal examinations.  [...]

Members of the LGBTQ community members I spoke with told me that, until 2001, the government had largely adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. Though gay people faced occasional arrest, the state informally tolerated specific bars, cafes, and events that served as centers for the gay community. Some leading government officials, intellectuals, and artists were known to be gay, but, because they never spoke openly about their sexual identity or raised the issue in wider circles, they generally avoided harassment. [...]

Since 2013, the EIPR has recorded the arrests of at least 232 “LGBTQ suspects.” Meanwhile, the government instructed the mainstream media to “boost anti-gay coverage,” and now sensationalist stories about the arrest of “Muslim Brotherhood queers,” “wife-swapping networks,” and “foreign conspirators promoting homosexual marriage” appear regularly. The Morality Police intensified their online entrapment efforts on social media and dating apps. [...]

As it stands, the future of the Egyptian LGBTQ community appears bleak. But the crackdowns have pushed the cause of gay rights to the forefront, providing a litmus test for the opposition. As the Egyptian left builds a force capable of confronting the Sisi regime, these are the struggles it can’t ignore.

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Political Critique: Unspoken lives: Romania beyond the statistics and the return of ‘backwardness’

Other data, related to what one might call the daily life of Romanian society on the whole, further illustrate this tricky state of affairs. Romania ranks third in Europe in terms of alcohol consumption, on a continent that boasts one of the highest development levels in the world. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it also ranks third in the EU, after Portugal and Italy, in the awareness of domestic violence against women as a common societal problem, according to the latest Eurobarometer on the topic of gender-based violence. The implication then is that the overall quality of life, and the cultural space that Romanians inhabit are not only lacking but deeply flawed. [...]

Aside from threatening the livelihoods and lifestyle of some of Europe’s last ‘traditional farmers’ this also reflects Romania’s odd almost colonial-like cape. This is a reality which many are lamenting, perhaps not too loudly,  as they try to articulate a last resort criticism against what is ultimately an inevitable historical process. Resistance in the form of “slow-food” and “slow lifestyles” is becoming a popular way to fight the incessant speed, mass-production and over commercialization of everything and anything. Meanwhile, families and communities in Romania continue to dismantle, largely as a result of a wave of migration leading individuals to better, though not necessarily more fulfilling lives. According to the 2015 International Migration Report issued by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs the growth rate of the Romanian diaspora is second only to Syria. [...]

This sense of lacking, of ‘inappropriate backwardness’ is now dictated by very different coordinates. Looking at the scale of change that Romanian society has undergone in the lead up to EU accession and in the decade following, it would be fair to assert that a deep dismantling of a certain cultural fabric is taking place, one that goes beyond the transformation that statistical measures alone can be expected to provide. Cultural change is, for example, one of the underlying currents in the debate around the referendum soon to be held on whether gay marriage should be allowed. One can be easily trapped in the quagmire of emotional and perhaps political contagion throughout the region – its widespread illiberal tendencies – without recognising the deeper contextual arguments about families in Romania who have been struggling to cope with such a vast scale of transformation.  [...]

Cross-regional differences in the EU are perhaps likely to diminish in the medium to long-term, but the current implications of over-reliance on statistical-based reasoning and reporting does not convey the transformation and dismantling, of a diverse and rich culture. Understanding this context is increasingly important for anyone willing to truly pay attention to nuance as a marker of quality in understanding and reporting on a country. For Romanians and others there is something unfair, even dangerous, in looking at ourselves primarily through the lens of our misgivings and shortcomings. Western Europe should not be used as the benchmark against which all other definitions and understanding pale.

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The Economist: Xi Jinping, China's president, is the world's most powerful man

Is Xi Jinping the worlds most powerful man? The world's balance of power is shifting. For the past five years president Xi Jinping, China's leader, has ruled with an iron fist and has been pursing a new model of great power relations. 

Vox: Why 23 million Americans don't have fast internet (Sep 26, 2017)

 High-speed internet service is lacking in much of rural America. The causes are complicated, but non-competitive cable markets, misguided government funding, and infrastructural obstacles have limited expansion up until now. Despite the troubles, some rural Americans are receiving internet via both wireless and wireline systems, but the internet service many receive falls short of the 25mbps up/3mbps down set by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 during the Obama Administration. Receiving that level of service typically requires a wireline connection provided by fiber optic cable, which many rural residents don't have because the remote territories that would be served are hard to reach and require massive investments that private cable companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast aren't willing to make. If service is available, it is often much more expensive than similar service in urban markets. An idea for solving the problem might be to adopt the funding model similar to the one that helped expand rural electrification during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At that time, the government paid local electric cooperatives willing to do the work to provide electricity in their communities. Unlike electrification, there are many models for broadband deployment, including cooperatives, but also municipal broadband, private companies and other public-private partnerships. If Trump's government plans to spend more money on rural broadband, then following the model of electrification might help correct some of the funding troubles that have plagued broadband expansion up to this point.

FRANCE 24 English: The return of Japan's imperialists (Mar 1, 2017)

Nippon Kaigi, or the so-called Japan Conference, is the country's most influential conservative lobby. Its members deny Japanese wartime atrocities and want to create a new nation centered on the Imperial family. Now they oppose plans to allow Emperor Akihito to abdicate, possibly in early 2018.

A programme prepared by Patrick Lovett and Elise Duffau.

Haaretz: Why Didn't the U.S. or UN Stop the Genocide in Sudan? read more: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.817917

The pleas of officials and residents fell on deaf ears. The U.N. did not send peacekeeping troops to stay in Yei, and the U.S. continued to support South Sudan’s military, possibly in violation of U.S. law, an AP investigation found. The investigation is based on more than 30 internal or confidential documents from the U.N., White House or State Department, and dozens of interviews with current or former officials and civilians.

In a matter of weeks, Yei became the center of a nationwide campaign of what the U.N. calls ethnic cleansing, which has created the largest exodus of civilians in Africa since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. More than 1 million people have now fled to Uganda, mostly from the Yei region. And while there is no tally for how many people have died in South Sudan, estimates put the number in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. [...]

Still, the U.S. continued to believe it could fix South Sudan’s military. In September, President Barack Obama sought a “long-term military to military relationship” with South Sudan, according to a letter to Congress obtained by AP. The letter, which allowed military training and education for South Sudan’s army, circumvented a law blocking U.S. support for countries that use child soldiers. [...]

The centerpiece of the U.S. response to South Sudan was a push for an additional 4,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force to protect civilians under attack. The U.S. got the force approved by the Security Council. At a press conference in South Sudan in September 2016, Samantha Power, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., described an agreement with President Kiir on the extra 4,000 peacekeepers, known as the Regional Protection Force.

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Al Jazeera: 'Bury me in the flag': Elderly Catalans speak out

For Bou, and many Catalans regardless of their age, a discussion about independence isn't complete without mentioning the brutality of Spain's civil war, which began in 1936, and the Franco period, which lasted from 1939 to 1975. [...]

The Franco government was responsible for a wide gamut of human rights abuses and was known for its efforts to homogenise Spain. Catholicism was the only state-sanctioned religion. Minority languages and culture, such as Catalan, were made illegal. [...]

"I quickly realised they were the same dogs with different collars," Bou said of post-Franco Spanish politicians. "Nothing changed … so in the [first free] elections in 1977, I didn't vote."

Though there is no official count of the people killed or disappeared during the Franco government, Human Rights Watch (HRW) placed the number at more than 100,000 between 1936 and 1951. [...]

If the Spanish government does enact Article 155 and national police are again sent to Catalonia, Soler said Catalan people would "take the path of Gandhi. It's the only choice we have."

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Al Jazeera: US knew of Indonesian anti-communist massacre

The US government had intimate knowledge of the mass killing of alleged communists in Indonesia in the mid-1960s when half a million people were slaughtered, newly declassified documents show. 

The documents also reveal that Indonesian army intermediaries told Western embassies they were considering toppling then President Sukarno less than two weeks after the mysterious killing of six generals that sparked the bloodletting.  [...]

The murders were used as a pretext for an anti-communist pogrom by Indonesia's military and proxy groups that led to at least 500,000 deaths.

One of the worst massacres of the 20th century, the killings in 1965 and 1966 have never been officially investigated and perpetrators have never faced justice.

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