openDemocracy: Was 2017 the year that the tide finally turned against fossil fuel projects?

The AXA decision comes just weeks after BNP Paribas broke the news that it will no longer finance new shale or tar sands projects, nor work with companies that mainly focus on those resources. Last Friday, Norway’s largest life insurer, KLP announced that it would exclude from its portfolio any firms that derive 30 percent or more of revenues from the extraction of tar sands. In the same week the World Bank announced it would cease financing upstream oil and gas after 2019.

It’s welcome news. Based on the financial risks, climate impacts and indigenous rights violations, we have seen a significant shift in financial institutions backing fossil fuels. The Bank of England now recognizes the monetary risks associated with climate change and is advising the central banks and governments to get out of highly polluting fuels due to the pending carbon bubble and the bad business associated with ‘extreme’ energy extraction. As a result BP, Shell, Exxon and others have pulled out of major tar sands projects and pipelines. [...]

The Canadian government has done little to recognise indigenous land titles. Tar sands expansion continues at an alarming rate, with even more pipelines being approved. We cannot rely on Prime Minister Trudeau’s support to join the climate action force anytime soon. [...]

All of these decisions and ‘wins’ need to be grounded in an intersectional divestment movement that takes the time to think about the reinvestment strategies, that is twinned with a just transition model and opens up the seats at the table for dialogue with those most impacted by climate change and holding the climate solutions. If we can do this, 2018 is going to be an incredible year for our movements and hope for the climate.

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openDemocracy: What motivated the 60,000 people who joined the far-right Polish Independence March?

On November 11th, the same woman who had taken it upon herself to spread Szczęsny’s words, Gabriela Lazarek, entered a Catholic Church where the far-right Independence March organisers held their pre-demonstration mass. She held a sign that quoted the late Polish Pope John Paul II: ‘Racism is a sin that constitutes a serious offence against God’. She was pushed out of the church while the priest lectured about the importance of nationalism and Polishness. The congregation later joined 60 000 people in the Independence March.

In Poland, we rarely talk about racism – it is wrongly understood as something that Poland has little historical encounter with. Racism has a long, if not often talked about, history in Poland. Racism in Poland is expressed through ways in which racialised people have been treated in the country, including Jews, Roma and Muslims. We can’t ignore the connection between race and Polish homogeneity, where whiteness and racial politics have become key to a nationalist project promoted by the current Polish government that perceives heterogeneity as a threat. [...]

Nationalism expressed through racist sentiments has become mainstream in Poland. In Poland, like other parts of Europe, racist views are on the rise and becoming more commonplace acceptable with the shift to the right following the election of the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party. As Rafał Pankowski of the Nigdy Więcej [Never Again Association] emphasised, there is a climate of acceptance for extreme nationalist ideology. In 2016, the organisation recorded the ‘biggest wave of hatred’ in the country’s recent history, reporting several incidents taking place every day. While the mainstreaming of racist discourse and corresponding violence has to be partially attributed to the current ruling party, the phenomenon of racism in Poland is not new, even if it is rarely discussed. [...]

The Polish Law and Justice (PiS) government needs to take concrete actions against the culture of hate that is growing, and going unpunished, in Poland. It is time for Poles to recognise that Poland has a problem with racism, that the nationalism currently promoted by its government and right-wing groups is intimately tied to a long history of dangerous racial exclusion. It is time that the call to action of Piotr Szczęsny be answered by all sections of the Polish society: “We, ordinary human beings, like you, hear your call – and we won’t wait any longer!”.

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Foreign Affairs: Europe's Authoritarian Equilibrium

For the time being, EU politics is trapped in an authoritarian equilibrium. In this half-baked steady state, the union has become politicized enough that the EU-level allies of these semi-authoritarian governments have both the tools and the incentives to protect them from censure; but the EU has not become sufficiently politicized for the opponents of these governments to intervene in order to rein them in or break their grip on power. Ironically, the EU, which has done so much to promote democracy across Europe—indeed it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 partly for that reason—now provides a safe haven (and ample funding) for semi-authoritarian regimes such as those in Hungary and Poland. The Commission’s latest action on Poland is a step in the right direction, but the EU will not escape this authoritarian equilibrium until it addresses the situation in Hungary as well.

Why has the EU more forcefully countered attacks on the rule of law in Poland than in Hungary? In part, the difference can be explained by the blatantly unconstitutional nature of the PiS government’s attack on judicial independence and its brazen dismissal of the Commission’s efforts at dialogue. Although Prime Minister Viktor Orban has successfully taken over the judiciary in Hungary, his government had a legislative supermajority that enabled it to amend the constitution to allow for the takeover. And when the European Commission did challenge aspects of Hungary’s judicial reforms, the Orban government at least pretended to take these complaints seriously and make some superficial changes to address them.  [...]

Kaczynski has fewer friends. His PiS government does not enjoy the protection of a powerful EU-level party such as the EPP—it is a member of a small, marginal group of nationalists called the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). The ECR’s only other significant party is the British Conservative Party, which left the EPP in 2009 for being insufficiently euroskeptic. The Tories have attempted to protect their PiS allies, supporting them even as the vast majority of the European Parliament—including most EPP members—voted in November to condemn Poland’s attack on the rule of law. British Prime Minister Theresa May has also done her part: during a visit to Warsaw on December 21, she hinted that her government might support Poland against the European Commission, saying, “These constitutional issues are normally, and should be primarily a matter for the individual country concerned.” But with the United Kingdom soon to leave the EU, May has little leverage and PiS finds itself nearly isolated.[...]

For a start, they might expel Fidesz from the EPP, making a clear political statement that the party’s attacks on the independent judiciary, the free press, civil society organizations and the media have no place in the alliance of the democratic center-right. They should also make it clear that in the next multi-annual EU budget, beginning in 2021, EU funding will be tied to respect for democratic values.  Finally, they could take the long overdue step of triggering Article 7 against the Orban government as well, a move that could prevent Hungary from vetoing sanctions against the Polish government.

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Vox: How Trump makes extreme things look normal

The scariest part of Trump's first year as president isn't how abnormal he is, it's how normal he makes everything else look by comparison.

“Don’t normalize this” has become a kind of rallying cry during President Trump’s first year in office -- a reminder to not get too acclimated to Trump’s norm-breaking and erratic behavior. But the real danger of the Trump presidency might have less to do with Trump’s abnormality and more to do with how “normal” he makes other Republicans look by comparison. And the concept of the “Overton Window” helps explain why our politics and media might be warped long after Trump’s presidency comes to an end.

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: How to Make an Elephant Explode with Science – The Size of Life 2

Politico: Republicans warn Trump of 2018 bloodbath

The backstage talks provide a window into how those closest to Trump are bracing for a possible bloodbath in the 2018 midterms, which could obliterate the Republican congressional majorities and paralyze the president’s legislative agenda. The potential for a Democratic wave has grown after Republican losses this fall in Virginia, New Jersey and Alabama, and as the president’s approval ratings have plummeted to the 30s.  [...]

Among GOP leaders, however, there is widespread concern heading into 2018. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said privately that both chambers could be lost in November. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has told donors that he fears a wave of swing district Republican lawmakers could retire rather than seek reelection. [...]

Trump is well aware of the dangers his party faces in 2018, those who’ve discussed it with him say. During political briefing sessions, top aides highlight positive developments — but also more concerning ones, such as his declining numbers among well-educated voters and higher earners. He has peppered advisers with questions about his approval ratings, and about whether he is getting enough credit for his accomplishments. [...]

“There are 10 months to improve the fundamentals here, and the Senate map is, on paper, good. But maps don’t make majorities and I think there’s a realization that there’s at least a 50 percent chance one or both chambers could fall,” Jennings said. “In less than one year, this first term could be, for all intents and purposes, over if the Democrats take control of either chamber.”

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The New York Review of Books: South Africa’s Cattle King President

Ramaphosa is a Soweto homeboy, the son of a police sergeant, who now lives in a grand home in Hyde Park, one of Johannesburg’s wealthiest suburbs. He qualified as a lawyer—no mean feat in apartheid South Africa—but his roots are in the labor movement and he played an important part in the downfall of the apartheid regime, mobilizing mineworkers. He has long been an avid fly-fisherman and now owns a cattle-ranch. When I profiled him for a South African newspaper in 1996, just after he left politics and joined the country’s largest new black-owned business, New Africa Investments, I described him as “charming and unflappable, entirely in control”:  [...]

I have followed Ramaphosa’s career for three decades. I was astounded by his skills in the 1990s, when he led the ANC’s negotiating team, thrilled at the possibility that he would be Mandela’s successor, and then disappointed by his hubris when he flounced out of politics: he refused, even, to attend Mandela’s inauguration in 1994. When I wrote that profile two years later, I was warily interested in the way he was leveraging his political credibility to gain a place at the high table of industry, as a beneficiary of the official policy of “black economic empowerment.” But some fifteen years later, in 2012, I was—like so many South Africans—distressed by the way he used his political connections to insist that the police take action against a wildcat strike at a platinum mine in which he held a stake. In the resulting “Marikana massacre,” thirty-four striking miners were killed by police, in an echo of the 1960 Sharpeville shootings. [...]

Even if these regal cattle and this glossy book are signs of swagger, or hubris, Ramaphosa has always been intensely conscious of his image. I have no doubt that there is a plan to the way he has cultivated his cattle-obsession and put it into the public domain. Released in the middle of his leadership campaign, Cattle of the Ages is Ramaphosa’s equivalent of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father. “Somewhere in the depths of my soul is the connection my father had to his cattle, the hills of Khalavha and his people,” he writes. “My love for cattle could be a reflection of my father in me; or some form of agency on behalf of my father, Samuel Mundzhedzi Ramaphosa,” because as “in most African cultures, cattle are a sign of wealth and stature among my father’s people,” the vhaVenda. Samuel Ramaphosa had tended his family’s herd but he had no opportunity to acquire his own, as he was forced in the apartheid era to migrate to the city for work. [...]

In his victory speech on Thursday, Ramaphosa diverted from his prepared notes to address the party congress’s standout resolution: to revise the country’s constitution so that land could be expropriated, without compensation, for redistribution to black South Africans whose ancestors were dispossessed by the 1913 Natives Land Act. When black people lost their land, he said, “poverty set in, because our forebears… [had] led a fulfilled life from the land. They were able to feed their families. And when the removals and dispossession took place, poverty became a partner to the people of our country.”

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My Modern Met: 100 Gigantic Skulls Spill Through the Vast Halls of a Museum

Australian artist Ron Mueck has unveiled his largest installation ever with Mass, a collection of 100 monumental hand-cast skulls. Commissioned specially for the National Gallery of Victoria's International Triennial, the imposing and ominous skulls pour through the galleries, each skull artfully placed into a tumbling mass.

Mueck, known for his hyperrealistic sculptures, forgoes his typically obsessive detail in bringing to life his hyperrealistic sculpture by focusing on what remains long after our bodies have decayed. “Mass intrudes into the 18th Century Galleries like a glacier inching across a landscape, crowding out the powdered, bewigged lords and ladies, a reminder of all our fates,” the artist shares.

Each hand-finished skull, cast in resin, is also a tribute to Mueck's artistic dedication to precision. The slight variations in form individualize each of the 100 skulls, adding his signature realistic touch to the surreal installation. Mass is just one of the pieces in the inaugural Triennial, which is hosting 100 artists from 32 countries. Twenty of the pieces, including Mueck's, were commissioned specifically for this ambitious exhibition, which runs through April 15, 2018.

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Politico: Marriage Italian (right-wing) style

As Italy heads toward a March general election, the two major right-wing parties —Silvio Berlusconi‘s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Northern League — hope to join forces in a coalition to maximize their chances of winning individual constituencies, which have taken on more importance since the introduction of a new electoral law, and taking power from Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s Democratic Party (PD).

The deal is almost done, but there is one small detail stalling the negotiations: The charismatic 44-year-old leader of the Northern League fears that the rejuvenated 81-year-old Berlusconi is already eying up the PD. To avoid this scenario, Salvini wants the three-time premier to put his commitment to the coalition deal in writing — which Berlusconi has so far refused to do.

With the Italian political landscape highly fragmented, and dire predictions of ungovernability abounding, the current front-runners in the opinion polls are the anti-establishment 5Star Movement (currently polling at 29 percent) and just one point behind them — the PD, which is still run by Gentiloni’s hyperactive predecessor as premier, Matteo Renzi. However, neither party appears to have a realistic chance of reaching the 40 percent level of support needed to establish a governing majority and the 5Stars have diagnosed themselves as allergic to coalitions of any sort. [...]

Under Salvini’s leadership, the League has gained popularity by moving further to the right and is considering dropping “Northern” from its name to reflect its geographical spread. The party now occupies a roughly similar space to Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France.

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