Jacobin Magazine: The Corbyn Generation

Today, those frustrated hopes and freezing afternoons appear in a different light — as the first signs of the generational divide that has come to define the country. After Labour’s humiliating defeat in the 2015 election, many of those involved in the student protests went on to support Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the party. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, three-quarters of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds voted Remain, while two-thirds of over-sixty-fives favored Brexit. Then, when a snap election was called in June 2017, Corbyn made abolishing tuition fees a flagship policy of the party’s manifesto, and Labour defied expectations to bring about a hung Parliament. Youth turnout climbed to a twenty-five-year-high; the generation gap was the widest since polling records began.

Myers chronicles the trajectory of this privatization push, which began with Tony Blair’s New Labour government — a period in which fees rose to £3,000 and private-sector activity in higher education grew from 32 percent in 2000 to 64 percent in 2007 (the EU average is 20 percent). The tripling of fees in 2010,” Myers writes, “did not emerge from nowhere.” Now, UK students are saddled with more debt on average — £50,800 — than in any other country in the world, partly thanks to extortionate interest rates that can be raised retrospectively at will. As one of the government’s own advisers on student finance remarked, if a company possessed similar terms they might attract sanctions, perhaps even prosecution. (In the United States, although the cost of tuition varies far more, the average debt burden on students is much lower at $36,000, or £27,900.) [...]

Most significantly, however, the demographic of these protests was different. Like the French student protests in 2005, the 2010 movement brought together a cross-section of poorer city youth — ethnically diverse and more disillusioned — with wealthier, middle-class students. These disparate groups had distinct motivations, but they had a shared feeling of being held in contempt.[...]

Again, this new alliance would endure after the collapse of the 2010 protests, helping fuel Corbyn’s ascendance to the top of the Labour Party. Support for Labour among black and minority voters rose by six points in the 2017 election, while turnout increased to a high of 64 percent. These communities have been disproportionately punished by austerity. Like students, they were asked to bear the burden of an economic crisis not of their making. As early as 2010 the Institute for Public Policy Research found that “mixed ethnic groups had seen the biggest increases in youth unemployment since the recession began, rising from 21 percent to 35 percent in the period.”  

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Political Critique: European Union LGBT activism in the Western Balkans: a regional fight for rights

One of the fundamental conditions for a gay and lesbian movement to emerge in the region was the decriminalization of homosexuality, which first occurred in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Serbia’s autonomous province of Vojvodina, in 1977, as part of wider legal reforms in Yugoslavia. [...]

The first notable LGBT activism in the region was organized in Ljubljana in April 1984, when the students’ cultural center, SKUC Forum, put on the Magnus Festival that included films, exhibitions of gay publishing, and lectures and discussions on gay culture. Later that year, a group called Magnus, which embraced both gay men and lesbian women, was constituted as a section of the SKUC Forum, becoming the first LGBT group in the region. [...]

“When the war started some women backed away for personal reasons, some because of the wartime conditions,” Pamukovic said. “It just wasn’t possible to pursue that kind of political activism.” [...]

EU mechanisms that have been used in the precession phase such as insistence on reformed legislation have also been accused of putting form before substance, as once a country has joined the EU the rights of LGBTI persons are left to the whims of its government.

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Al Jazeera: The myth of Tunisia's exceptionalism

What is central to these narratives is a rather superficial comparison between the relative peacefulness of Tunisia's transition and the state disintegration in Libya, Syria and Yemen. After all, having an example of a "successful revolution" can always provide a glimpse of hope and optimism especially in these dystopian times. But this framing of the democratic transition in Tunisia since 2011 dismisses a dismal reality.    

The construction and consolidation of the idea of "Tunisian exceptionalism" support the fetishisation of Tunisia's democracy as a political commodity. In turn, this process of fetishisation enables neoliberal political campaigns and interventions to be implemented while it denies the possibility of establishing radical democratic frameworks and policies. 

During Ben Ali's era, exceptional improvements in women's rights and the implementation of dogmatic secularism were used to promote the "impressive accomplishments" of the regime and hide its widespread and systematic human rights violations such the persecution of political opponents and abuse of government critics. France and the EU were complicit in promoting the "successes" of Ben Ali's regime and establishing Tunisia as "a pillar of stability and peace" despite a deteriorating social and political reality. [...]

The ongoing protests, for example, erupted after the Tunisian government implemented austerity measures that caused commodity prices to go up dramatically. These policies, pushed onto the government by neoliberal institutions like the International Monetary Fund, fall in line with the ones Ben Ali's regime implemented. It was these very policies that led to the mass impoverishment of the Tunisian population and ultimately a pervasive popular malaise.  [...]

"Tunisian exceptionalism", this logic goes, must be maintained through peace and stability; any demands for radical change are seen as dangerous and disruptive. Hence, when the latest wave of protests erupted, the Tunisian political elite called for unity and peaceful demonstrations and reminded Tunisians how we are being perceived abroad. The angry protestors were portrayed as a threat to the "success story". 

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Haaretz: Forget Judaism – the Military Is Israel’s State Religion

The rabbis thought they had extracted a compromise from Eisenkot last year when he assured them that no conscript would be forced to serve in a unit alongside women. They believed that a stampede of religious conscripts for the small number of units which have been segregated for Haredi soldiers would force the IDF to reverse its policy of opening up more units and roles for women. It didn’t happen. Alumni of national-religious yeshiva high schools don’t seem too bothered by the presence of women when selecting which unit they prefer to serve in.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. For all the talk of a more religious army, the overwhelming majority of religious soldiers, when issued with contradicting orders in the past, chose to obey their commanding officers rather than the rabbis. [...]

In recent years, the army’s high priests, or generals, have clashed with the rabbis repeatedly over the role of women in military life, as well as over control of the IDF’s Education Corps. And the rabbis were forced to give way. They’ve fought as well with the nationalist politicians, preaching against shoot-to-kill policies and the vigilantism that was creeping in during the short-lived “stabbings intifada” that reached its peak when Sgt. Elor Azaria summarily executed a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron. [...]

But in a period when politicians, on all sides, have failed so miserably to project a vision for Israel’s future, and rabbis are so lacking in authority, it’s only natural that an organization like the army is filling the moral vacuum. For better or worse, the IDF is now the most visible and potent form of secular Judaism.

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FiveThirtyEight: There’s Been A Massive Shift To The Right In The Immigration Debate

In other words, it was a compromise, offering a way for those already in the U.S. to obtain legal status while shifting the contours of who would be allowed into the U.S. in the future. While people with higher education or certain skills would have had greater immigration opportunities, visas for extended family of current immigrants and geographically targeted areas would decrease. All the while, enforcement would ramp up. The effort had the support of many Republicans, and the Gang of Eight’s bill passed the Senate by a 2-to-1 margin. But the effort was squashed in the House well before a viable bill was even offered. [...]

The focus on DACA also reflects Democrats’ narrowed goals and limited bargaining power under an administration with restrictionist views on immigration. While the political debate has focused on DACA, Trump has succeeded in executing a far more conservative vision of the U.S. immigration system. [...]

There’s also the ripple effects of Trump’s hardline stance on immigration. The third iteration of the administration’s travel ban recently went into effect and has implications for all kinds of travel from several countries, most of which are Muslim-majority. Attempts to illegally cross the southern border went down after Trump became president, though since April, the numbers have once again been on the rise. Arrests for immigration-related offenses have increased, including for people with no criminal history beyond traffic violations. International student enrollment at universities is down as well. And as some places have declared themselves “sanctuary cities,” passing laws that limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents, federal officials have made a point of conducting raids there.

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Haaretz: In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism

The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories. [...]

Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.

Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish people.

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openDemocracy: Darkest Hour - what does a rash of Winston Churchill portrayals tell us about Brexit Britain?

Churchill may be the most invoked Tory in history, but he represented much more than Toryism in 1940. Anthony Barnett coined the term ‘Churchillism’ to describe the national spirit which emerged in 1940,s distinct from the man. Churchillism was a national compact which brought together Tories, Liberals, Labour and other elites in a project which incorporated organised labour in return for economic and social rights such as the welfare state. But also evident was the passing of global leadership to the USA, the invention of the so-called ‘special relationship’ (a term coined by Churchill) and UK subservience to the national interests of the US.

If it hadn’t been for 1940 and Hitler, history would not have been kind to Churchill. It would have regarded him as a reckless military adventurer (Gallipoli long staining his reputation), and an unreconstructed British imperialist out of touch in the 1930s even with most Tories, one who was intransigent on Gandhi and Indian home rule. [...]

The past as costume drama or fighting the ultimate forces of darkness which the Nazis provide, says something telling about Britain today. It points to a chronic failure of progress and absence of hope that the current state of abyss can be collectively changed. It says that the best days of Britain, days when there was purpose and clarity, are behind it, and that there are no current good stories. This obsession with the past is a diminishing one which damages the body politic now.

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CityLab: The Automotive Liberation of Paris

Wrap your head around this: in terms of mode share, driving within Paris city limits has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a recent paper in the French journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. Meanwhile, the share of cyclists has increased tenfold over the same timeframe. Transit’s mode share has risen by 30 percent.

For comparison’s sake, the share of trips made by car in New York City has shrunk since the 1990s, too. But about twice as many trips still take place inside a car. Check out the graph below, from the New York City Department of Transportation, to see how the cities’ mode share shifts stack up over time. [...]

It’s also worth noting that Paris has also seen a significant decline in traffic fatalities—roughly a 40 percent drop since 2010, according to data provided to CityLab by the Association Prévention Routière. Outside of Paris, the situation is quite different: Like the U.S., France has seen an uptick in traffic fatalities in recent years, thanks to an increase in car travel and distracted driving. The national government recently responded by announcing speed limit reductions on two-way highways.

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