Tony Cochran: Something very bad is happening here… Isherwood in Poland?

Last night, my other neighbor, the son of the person who owns these flats, said “She’s been arrested by the immigration detention people, I have to take her documents to the police.” Curious, I asked did an incident prompt this arrest? “No, she was randomly picked up in Łódź.” Now, I thought this extremely odd, as Łódź is literally in the center of Poland. Why would border control be screening people there? He responded, “Poland is not the same anymore, Tony.” And he left for the police station with her documents. I still haven’t seen her. Of course she was racially profiled and picked out for inspection and detention. I have seen it before in the US, while traveling from San Diego to Portland on a Greyhound bus. Border agents asked everyone, well almost everyone, for their documents. I went to hand them my drivers’ license, and the agent said “No, no need.” He moved on to an MA student from India; the student had his student ID, but not his specific residency visa. The agent chastised him, “You need to keep your documents with you at all times!” Fortunately, he was not detained. I recall this vividly. [...]

Emerging from prison, I wrote, arriving in Warsaw April 2017, that I felt like Christopher Isherwood in early 1930s Berlin. I included this in a rather cheerful piece about the local LGBTQ scene, which was then translated and published in Vice Poland. Polish readers, in particular the Polish LGBTQ communities, seemed to like the piece. Replika, the only LGBTQ magazine in Poland, shared it, among many others, including Polish drag celebrities included in the article, from Aldona Relax to Charlotte Drag Queer. I later went to Vice Poland, this time under a new editor, and asked to do a piece on transgender people living outside of Warsaw, in small towns, to document their struggle. Finding this too prosaic, or “not really what our readers want,” the editor asked me to do an interview with a far-right gay person. I found someone, and did the interview with a translator. Spewing vile garbage about immigrants, the need for a wall between Poland and Germany, near admiration for Hitler (“Merkel would make Hitler cry!”), and condemning the LGBTQ Pride March in Warsaw for “showcasing all these deviants;” I found what the editor wanted. Or so I thought. The individual didn’t “fit” the profile. He was slightly effeminate, he went to all the gay clubs, he was wealthy — not the football-hooligan type with homosexual desires. I dubbed the article “Clubbing with Eichmann” and submitted it. The editor sent back an email full of passive-aggressive abuse, saying that I allowed this person to voice his opinions! I should have found someone who fit the bill; the editor wanted a football-hooligan, not someone who blended in with the fashionable gay scene in Warsaw whilst holding the views of a neo-Nazi.

I self-published the article in both English and Polish.  The backlash against this individual became so intense that he threatened to sue me, and to have me deported. I asked him what was materially incorrect about the article, and he said “nothing, it’s just hurting my music career, people are talking about it.” He sought an injunction along with a 130,000 zloty fine for “defamation” — for in Poland, even if what you write is true, if it harms the “dignity” of the person, they can sue. I took the article down. Discussing this mess with my translator, I asked her, what is the problem with these people? She said “the whole thing made me ill, and you wrote exactly what he said, I translated it (in person and on Facebook group chat).” Interestingly, the gay male backlash against this person didn’t include any critiques of his racist views. They were all appalled that he’d call the Warsaw Pride March a disgrace, but nary a word was mentioned about his comments regarding the “filthy Africans and Arabs” coming to Europe. Racism permeates the core of Polish society, in particular a fear of the imaginary, non-existent “Islamic caliphate” in Europe, and the equally imaginary “hordes of dirty Africans” supposedly “invading” Europe, and by extension “threatening” Poland. Poland has taken virtually no refugees from the Middle East and Africa, and Poland remains one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in Europe. Roughly 97% of the population is ethnically Polish. Not just white, but ethnically Polish. Other Europeans make up the majority of the minorities (Among minority groups, the largest numbers of respondents claimed Silesian nationality (847,000), followed by Kashubian (233,000), German (148,000), and Ukrainian (51,000). *Note: The statistics on Ukrainians do not include recently arrived migrant workers, which a report by the National Bank of Poland estimated at around 1 million in 2015.) All of these predominant minorities, making up a grand total of around 4-5% of the population (factoring in the newly arrived Ukrainian migrants), are white.

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Haaretz: Why Are We Israelis So Cruel to So Many?

Opinion polls show that most Israeli Jews support deporting African refugees. This means that they happily buy the official justifications, that they are only seeking work and all the reports on the horrors they can expect when they land in Rwanda are lies spread by opponents of the deportation, who have an “agenda” (compared to the bureaucrats who represent scientific objectivism). [...]

The mass and systematic expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and the destruction of their houses exposes preliminary planning and thought, not just the heat of war. History is also the present: Every day our bureaucrats and soldiers carry out some act of expulsion. What is reported in Hebrew in Haaretz passes as if it was never written, and it too is just a thousandth of a percent of the acts that the direct descendants of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab countries are always carrying out. [...]

The truth is that most Jewish Israelis do not care about cruelty against disabled Jews and African refugees, and there is no pressing reason anymore to wrap that truth in quotes from our sources. With the Palestinians we have practiced just the opposite of what those quotes preach. No God or European country has punished us, and so we have gotten used to the very bearable lightness of causing mass suffering.

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Politico: Spain brings up the bodies

El Valle de los Caídos — or the Valley of the Fallen — has stood largely untouched since a massive war monument was completed in 1959. The site is the resting place of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the leader of Falange, the far-right party that supported him. It is also one of Europe’s largest mass graves, housing the remains of 33,700 people killed in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. [...]

Thousands of families in recent years have tried to find and exhume loved ones who were killed during the war, or the ensuing years. The current campaign to exhume relatives from the Valley of the Fallen — led by seven separate families — is unusual for including the families of nationalist, not only republican, fighters. [...]

But in December 2007, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero introduced a “Law of Historical Memory” that sought to formally acknowledge the victims of the civil war and dictatorship, as well as their families, and paved the way for the removal of symbols of the regime.

Dozens of statues of Franco were removed from town squares and the names of streets dedicated to the Caudillo and his generals were changed. Many on the right saw the law as needlessly raking over the past. Yet the initiative failed to satisfy many on the left, who felt it was too timid.

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Salon: She’s straight, he’s gay: A very short history of the “mixed orientation” marriage

In our lengthy conversation, Josh Weed described the past five years as an evolution in his thinking about sexuality and human rights that mirrors so much of what's going on in the larger world, especially for those who, like the Weeds, grew up in conservative faith traditions. Research from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that increasing numbers of young people are leaving religion. One-third of them cite negative teachings on LGBT people as a reason why.

Even those who stay — and Weed says he still considers himself a religious or at least spiritual person — are challenging traditional views. Nearly half of white evangelicals born after 1964 support same-sex marriage, compared to 35 percent of white evangelical Boomers. A similar generation gap is appearing among Mormons, with 47 percent of younger members of the Latter-day Saints supporting same-sex marriage, while only 28 percent of their elders agree.

One reason these issues have influenced many people to leave their churches is "because enough LGBT people have come out that everyone knows an LGBT person," as Kathryn Brightbill, a gay former evangelical, told Salon. "When your pastor is calling people you know and care about predators who are destroying the sanctity of marriage, it's different than when you think of LGBT people as a scary, nameless, faceless other."

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openDemocracy: Mexico: the volcano of resistance

Poverty has reached terrifying levels, corruption is increasingly unashamed, and access to healthcare is difficult for huge sectors of the population.

The gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow. Meanwhile budget cuts to public spending are announced, particularly in education, science and technology, and health and social services, the National Electoral Institute (INE) declared a historic budget of more than 1,050 millions of euros for funding of political parties and the organisation of the ballots in June. [...]

At the same time, new channels of information and communication are opening up among citizens. However, it is important to recognise the limitations of these open possibilities. Internet access is still somewhat limited throughout the country, thus problems regarding misinformation have yet to cease. [...]

Attacks on the territory of indigenous communities can be added to the long list of general aggressions experienced by the population due to the development of mining megaprojects, the installation of Aeolic energy companies, the construction of roads, pipelines, and dams.

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Scientific American: Trump Wants Offshore Drilling, but States Are Choosing Wind Energy

States bordering the outer continental shelf are looking for carbon-free electricity, even as the Trump administration rolls back rules requiring it. Last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced that his state will aim for 3,500 megawatts of installed offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 1 million homes. Massachusetts has a goal to build 1,600 MW of offshore wind power by 2027, and New York has committed to 2,400 MW by 2030.

At the same time, wind technology is quickly advancing, thanks to its popularity in Europe. Ten countries across Europe had deployed 12,600 MW of offshore wind power by the end of 2016. In the United States, the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued 13 wind energy leases off the Atlantic coast. In late 2016, the first offshore wind farm in the United States came online about 4 miles off the coast of Block Island, R.I. [...]

It's possible that the wind and oil industries may compete for the same blocks of ocean seabed. That could create strife. Generally, when BOEM grants renewable energy rights on the outer continental shelf, they are exclusive rights to the seafloor. [...]

"Offshore wind has been in the media long enough that coastal residents have heard about it and thought through what it's going to mean," she said. "Certainly, communities differ in how they view these installations, but overall, people may be more supportive if the choice is wind or oil and gas."

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The Conversation: The benefits of job automation are not likely to be shared equally

Some 40% of all jobs are predicted to disappear with automation in Australia. The jobs most likely to go first will be those that can be easily codified, those that are repetitive, simple, structured or routine: think of jobs in manufacturing or those that involve form processing or driving a vehicle. [...]

Now we are starting to see the effect of automation everywhere and especially in productivity and economic growth statistics. It’s expected that automation will make a A$2.2 trillion boost to productivity in Australia between 2015 and 2030. But whether productivity gains will be redistributed equally, remains highly questionable.

There is a general economic argument that workers’ wages should grow in line with productivity growth and in doing so improve everyone’s living standards. Although there is overwhelming data about rising economic surpluses from automation, recent evidence indicates that the growth of productivity and the growth of workers’ wages are not actually linked. [...]

Businesses also don’t have an incentive to distribute a share of the gains back to the workers. We can see this for example in pharmaceutical services, which are becoming increasingly automated, yet workers are faced with low starting salaries. In such a highly competitive industry, the businesses are instead incentivised to pass on the gains to customers in terms of lower prices of goods and services they offer, rather than wages.

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Politico: Italy can’t get no respect

“The French think of Italy either when they have problems with Germany, or when Italy has an election that could spell trouble,” said Marc Lazar, professor of history and political sociology at Paris’ Sciences-Po university and president of the school of government at LUISS in Rome. [...]

As the crisis rolled into 2012, Monti briefly gained traction and Italy enjoyed a rare moment of EU influence, as the prime minister bounced Angela Merkel into embracing plans for a European banking union, easier access to the eurozone’s bailout fund and the possibility for the rescue fund to aid troubled banks directly. [...]

With a population size close to that of Britain and France, Italy has long punched below its weight in the EU, chiefly because of a chronically unstable political system with frequently changing governments and a weak public administration. The vicious circle of neglect fuels instability and Euroskepticism, which in turn makes it easier to ignore Italy. [...]

Italians have never held so mamy senior positions in European institutions, with four of the 33 seats around the EU summit table: Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni plus Draghi, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. [...]

And Macron has moved to repair ties with Rome. He settled the shipyard dispute with a mutually accepted deal and promised a bilateral treaty to build Franco-Italian cooperation along the lines of the 1963 Elysée treaty that governs the Franco-German partnership.

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Politico: China’s meddling poses greater threat to EU than Kremlin, says study

“While Beijing’s efforts have received much less scrutiny than the efforts of Putin’s Russia, Europe neglects China’s increasing influence at its own peril,” the report warns. “Beijing’s political influencing efforts in Europe are bound to be much more consequential in the medium to long-term future than those of the Kremlin.”

Beijing’s growing influence is dangerous for Europe, the report warns, because “China’s political model is based on an authoritarian regime intent on strengthening a deeply illiberal surveillance state at home while also exporting — or at least trying to popularize — its political and economic development model abroad.” [...]

The authors cite former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s new job at a Chinese state-backed investment fund and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s role as chief adviser to the China-CEE Fund, which invests in Eastern European countries, as recent examples of China’s strategy to influence Britain’s highest political circles. Brown “has also been actively organizing conferences promoting China’s [Belt and Road Initiative, an investment plan] at his alma mater, the University of Edinburgh,” they write.

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