Haaretz: The 'Two-state Solution' Only Ever Meant a Big Israel Ruling Over a Palestinian Bantustan. Let It Go

This is a skewered view, to say the least. In fact, every Israeli government since 1967 has failed to live up to those proud liberal values by pursuing an expanded Israel ruling over a truncated Palestinian Bantustan, even if they did it under the guise of a "two-state solution."

Within weeks of the start of the occupation in 1967, the Allon Plan (under Labor prime minister Levi Eshkol) already proposed Israel annexing territory surrounding and isolating the Palestinian population centers. [...]

By Oslo’s end in 2000, there were 400,000 settlers in massive "settlement blocs" that fragmented the Palestinian territory into some 70 tiny enclaves of Areas A and B, plus the prison that is Gaza. Today, the settler population approaches 800,000.

If the two-state solution is gone, it is because of successive "sane" Israelis in government, in particular those of Golda Meir and Ehud Barak, as well as of the Likud, Kadima and the religious right, and the Zionist left, "hard" right, and the always malleable center that put them into office. [...]

But Yoffie is also wrong about how he characterizes what he calls the "hard left's" one-statism. Left groups who acknowledge the death of the two-state solution have not moved to a one-state alternative – at least not yet. Jewish Voice for Peace, which Yoffie demonizes because of its support for BDS, does not actively advocate for such a solution. And the rest of the "hard" left is still wrestling with where to go.

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Haaretz: Abbas Is Right. Why Does Israel Keep Saying He's Wrong?

From Nadav Eyal ("a wacky, despicable speech") to Ben Dror Yemini ("delusional ideology"), they all competed for who will attack Abbas more. Nobody faced up to what he said. After all, he swore at Donald Trump, the champion of refined rhetoric, "may your house be demolished," and the Israelis with their sensitive ears were oh so appalled. And he said colonialism, and the self-victimizing Israelis yelled: "anti-Semitism." Nobody said what was incorrect in his speech and what was anti-Semitic about it. Except perhaps for "the Dutch fleet that brought Jews here," Abbas spoke the truth. It's hard to swallow. Israel chose to shriek. It always does when it has no answers.

Abbas said the Oslo agreement was over. Indeed, what is left of it, some 20 years after the final-status agreement was due to be signed? Israel did everything it could to sabotage it. Every soldier who invades A territories every night and every prisoner left in prison from before the Oslo agreement is a violation of it. [...]

Wasn't he telling the truth when he protested against Trump's deranged argument that the Palestinians foiled the negotiations? A super power that punishes the occupied instead of the occupier – that's an inexplicable matter. Instead of stopping to finance and arm the occupier, the United States is stopping the funds to the rescue organization assisting the occupied party's refugees. It's insane. Abbas responded with restraint. American ambassadors Nikki Haley and David Friedman are indeed friends of the occupier and enemies of international law; how can those two oddballs be described in any other way?

But the main shock happened when Abbas touched the rawest Israeli nerves and classified Zionism as part of the colonial project. What is incorrect here? When a sinking colonial power promises a country it isn't ruling yet to a nation whose absolute majority doesn't live in it, while ignoring the nation that does – what is it if not colonialism? When more than half the country is promised to less than a tenth of its residents, what is it if not a terrible injustice?

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Politico: How Juncker can make his final year count

The widening divisions between North and South, East and West — prompted by the refugee and euro crises — are also potential blemishes on his record. The fault lines created by these crises have weakened the relevance of the Brussels-based institutions, and have put his legacy in jeopardy. [...]

His first target should be to deliver on the idea of a “Europe that protects.” As populist and far-right parties continue to gain traction across the bloc, it’s crucial that the EU show its citizens it can protect and empower them, rather than make them feel vulnerable and lacking in agency.

Europe’s citizens care less about spreading universal values and enlarging the Union than they do about feeling protected. That will only become more true as the threats of terrorism and cyberwarfare become more acute and authoritarian powers continue to agitate outside the EU’s borders. The EU needs to become a more muscular union in response to these threats. [...]

But the early signs of the Permanent Structured Cooperation agreement (PESCO) are worrying. Rather than push ahead with a few determined members countries, PESCO includes an unworkably high number of countries — 25 so far — including spoiler nations such as Cyprus, whose main goal is to block EU-NATO relations. This will cripple the agreement’s effectiveness. [...]

The world’s tech giants listen to what Brussels has to say, because they know a Commission decision could change their regulatory environment worldwide. This is especially true after the Commission hit Apple and Google with extraordinary fines in antitrust cases. If Europe challenges the way tech giants do business, so might other regulators who lack the economic weight to take them on by themselves.

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Social Europe: Why The European Parliament’s ‘Democratic Defici’t Is Unfounded

Figure 1 indicates that average party voters are broadly well represented in the EP, but also that the two distributions are different to a statistically significant degree. The two points of the curve where there is a lack of overlap are the left-of-centre and the right-wing sections. Figure 1 indicates that there are more political parties in the section slightly left of centre than there are party voters, and that there are more voters in the right-wing section than there are parties. The average position of European voters (slightly left of centre) is therefore over-represented by political parties serving in the EP7. The EP7 very accurately represented the middle of the 2009 party voters’ ideological distribution. Political parties representing extreme voters, however, appear to have moved towards the centre, leaving some ideological positions without representation, especially on the economic right. The representation deficit of the European Parliament is, therefore, at most a ‘pluralism’ deficit given that the majoritarian norm of democracy seems respected. [...]

Social class differences in political participation and in the composition of parliaments have previously been documented. However, these structural disadvantages of the working classes do not seem to lead to higher incongruence at the European Parliament level. If anything, the upper classes seem to suffer from slightly higher incongruence. The social class non-finding is heartening, given the class biases in political representation that have been documented in established democracies. [...]

The analysis shows that the average European is very well represented in these ‘inputs’ to the EU political system, and that representation flaws are due to voters’ extremism, to voters not voting appropriately (e.g. selecting a party whose constituent base is ideologically ‘far’ from them, or engaging in second-order/protest voting) or to voters not following the European Parliament election campaign. Social group biases due to structural inequalities are not at all evident in the European Parliament.

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Social Europe: Racing The Machine

How many existing human jobs are actually “at risk” to robots? According to an invaluable report by the McKinsey Global Institute, about 50% of time spent on human work activities in the global economy could theoretically be automated today, though current trends suggest a maximum of 30% by 2030, depending mainly on the speed of adoption of new technology. The report’s midpoint predictions are: Germany, 24%; Japan, 26%; the United States, 23%; China, 16%; India, 9%; and Mexico, 13%. By 2030, MGI estimates, 400-800 million individuals will need to find new occupations, some of which don’t yet exist.  [...]

The first concerns the length and scope of the transition from the human to the automated economy. Here, the past may be a less reliable guide than we think, because the slower pace of technological change meant that job replacement kept up with job displacement. Today, displacement – and thus disruption – will be much faster, because technology is being invented and diffused much faster. “In advanced economies, all scenarios,” McKinsey writes, “result in full employment by 2030, but transition may include periods of higher unemployment and [downward] wage adjustments,” depending on the speed of adaptation. [...]

The report also recognizes the need to ensure that “wages are linked to rising productivity, so that prosperity is shared with all.” But it ignores the fact that recent productivity gains have overwhelmingly benefited a small minority. Consequently, it pays scant attention to how the choice between work and leisure promised by economists can be made effective for all.  

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Quartz: A history of the unified flag the two Koreas will march under at the Winter Olympics

Though South Korean president Moon Jae-in is hailing the agreement as a significant achievement in his bid to bring peace on the Korean peninsula, it isn’t something that all of South Korea can get behind. Another agreement, the decision to field a joint South-North Korean women’s hockey team at the games, has also been met with mixed reactions, not least from the South Korean female hockey players themselves. On Saturday (Jan. 20), the Koreas will meet International Olympic Committee officials in Switzerland to hammer out the details, including about the flags they’ll carry. [...]

Discussions for a joint North-South Korean sports team had been taking place since the 1960s. Officials from the two sides met in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong on May 17, 1963 to discuss competing in the Olympics as one nation for the first time since the division of the peninsula. However, the negotiations failed to come to fruition (pdf, p.6). [...]

However, ahead of the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing, representatives from the two Koreas came up with what is now referred to as the Korean unification flag, which features a blue illustration of the Korean peninsula over a white background. Even though the efforts to create a united Korean team for those games were not realized, the first-ever joint cheering team (pdf, p.9) appeared during those games. [...]

This time, it’s also clear that many in South Korea are not on board with the decision for their athletes to jointly compete with North Korea and march under a unified flag. With the Winter Olympics just three weeks away, a recent poll showed only four out of 10 South Koreans are in favor of using the unification flag. Opposition was especially strong among conservative South Koreans, with 68.5% of conservatives polled opposing the use of the flag.

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Politico: Angela Merkel’s Austrian frenemy

Kurz, who rose to political prominence in Austria as foreign minister by taking a hard line on refugee policy, has proved the theory wrong. In last fall’s election, he took the center-right Austrian People’s Party from third to first place by focusing its message squarely on migration, an issue that had been the bread and butter of Europe’s populists for a generation. [...]

Instead of adopting far-right rhetoric with its neo-fascist overtones, Kurz focused on policy. His efforts in 2016 to close the main migration route for refugees through the Balkans towards northern Europe made him a hero at home, all the more so given that he did so in the face of stiff resistance from Europe’s most powerful politician, Chancellor Merkel. [...]

Even if Merkel succeeds in building another coalition with the Social Democrats, few doubt she has entered the twilight of her political career. While there is no obvious successor waiting in the wings, the younger generation of leaders in her party is decidedly more conservative than the chancellor, who many in the party believe has taken it too far to the left. [...]

Though he says he supports reforming the bloc, Kurz opposes the idea of a two-speed Europe put forth by Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. Instead, he has aligned himself with Central European countries that want more emphasis on national sovereignty. With Austria set to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of this year, when the reform debate will be in full swing, Kurz is likely to be an important voice.

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Al Jazeera: Trump: Dangerous because he is effective

In fact, he campaigned on the elite's failure to understand the depth of frustration among ordinary people hit by globalisation. He plays by his own rule book, is in his own way consistent, knows what he is doing, what he wants, and how to get there.

To succeed, he needs friends outside the establishment. And he got them. American politics have been taken over by the big oil companies and corporations. The big ambition is to engineer a swing from the US, being the third-largest global net importer of fossil fuels, to a net exporter, mainly through export of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The larger goal is to create protections for big business, both domestically and internationally. [...]

Deregulation normally linked to the 1980s almost dwarfs, compared with the sweeping dismantling of regulatory frameworks that has been happening over the past year. Restrictions on financial institutions introduced after the global financial crisis are disappearing, and the door is opening for financial institutions to repeat the reckless behaviour that provoked the 2008-2009 crisis. [...]

Trump likes to operate through executive orders, circumventing the legislative branch. Congress has been pushed aside and almost no time has been set aside for building coalitions. Trump's partnership with the Republican congressmen has mainly been focused on removing Obama-era regulations.

Trump's administration has also challenged the judiciary, which has tried to block some of his executive orders. Almost surreptitiously, he has taken advantage of a high number of judicial vacancies to appoint more federal judges, in his first year as president, than any of his predecessors.

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CityLab: The World's First Minister of Loneliness

The scope and effects of loneliness are unquestionably devastating. Half a million British people over 60 only talk to another person once a week or less. People who self-report as lonely are more likely to experience dementia, heart disease, and depression. When it comes to life expectancy, the long-term health effects of loneliness are equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The toll taken by loneliness is immense, but still a sense of stigma inhibits many lonely people from reaching out for help. According to research by Britain’s Campaign to End Loneliness, a majority (56 percent) of British adults say that admitting loneliness is difficult. And when lonely people seek to reach out, suitable networks aren’t necessarily available, inadvertently causing pressure on the health system. In one of the most poignant findings by the campaign, more than three quarters of British general practitioners said they saw one to five patients a day who had made an appointment (free at point of contact in the U.K.) mainly because they were lonely.  [...]

Stronger political advocacy on loneliness could, for example, affect thinking on public transit. If a bus line is re-routed or canceled, authorities could be encouraged to consider the effect that might have in raising social isolation for people who live along the route—an effect that could potentially raise their costs elsewhere.

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