Haaretz: Netanyahu Has a New Scapegoat for His Corruption Scandal

Only Benjamin Netanyahu could have navigated the past three days and landed on his feet, unscathed in any significant way politically and without throwing the coalition into turmoil. He chalked up an impressive success in shaping the media discourse following the calamity of the police’s recommendations after their investigations of him. His party is united in supporting him and many of his friends took part in the vilification of the political rival who turns out to be a witness in Case 1000: MK Yair Lapid, chairman of Yesh Atid. [...]

The death throes are going to be prolonged and ugly. The handwriting of Netanyahu’s end is already written on the wall. The lightning polls conducted a day after the police publicized their findings showed that Likud has not been weakened and in fact has been strengthened, but that its leader’s situation is dire and isn’t likely to improve. The majority of the public doesn’t believe him, prefers the police account and thinks the prime minister is corrupt and needs to resign. The breaking point will come when the attorney general announces his decision to indict the prime minister – if that’s what he decides. However, that is still months down the road. [...]

Throughout all his years in politics, Netanyahu has honed to an art the practice of shifting the campaign to his rival’s field. He defines himself through the agency of his foes, both in the international arena and in domestic party politics. In the run-up to the last election, for example, he portrayed Zionist Union leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni as traitors and collaborators with the Islamic State, who were directing the militants toward Jerusalem on their pickups.

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openDemocracy: Neoliberalism and Iran’s protest movement

Since the moment privatization and the economy of an “eastern” neoliberalism was rolled out in Iran during the administration of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) through its ripening in the Rouhani years, they have, beside their other results, created a class of poor and destitute people who have viewed their own meager prospects as being bound to the very government which in fact saps their lifeblood. Owing to their dependence on government aid, these people have always been the greatest supporters of those in power. Because of economic challenges posed by various administrations' adjustment policies and international sanctions, this burgeoning class has widened to include the classical middle class and is now at the end of its rope, in just the fashion Fyodor Dostoevsky describes in his Notes from the Underground. It should come as no surprise that this class tends to see itself as opposed to all the factions of Iran’s two-party system (conservatives and reformists). In fact, it is the very thing the system in power has not been able to accomplish – unifying the government – that masses of protesters are doing now. This time around, protesters chant against all factions and cliques: reformists, conservatives, middle classes, and the whole governing class have been called into question. [...]

The moment he threw his hat into the ring for the presidency, Rouhani presented himself as heir to the legacy of Hashemi Rafsanjani and christened himself a moderate with neoliberal economic policies. In such a situation of moderation, nothing in fact remains moderate: in order to construct a moderate position, things must be done away with, voices silenced, and terms changed in advance. In an age that proclaims itself moderate, moderation in fact always goes to shambles. A number of Rouhani’s policies are carried out in the name of moderation and adjustment: changes in labor law, bank loan conditions, and housing programs; the employment plan; the introduction of tuition at universities and remaking of curricula. But they are in fact brimming with radicalism, a plot to conserve and entrench class divides. A controlled parliamentary democracy on the neoliberal model is the preferred political mode of the age, and the instrument of its advancement is a weakening of the role of the human sciences and a removal of all intellectuals save for free-market economists from the circle of major decision-making. [...]

If violence should break out during the protests, it is but a part of this totality, an expression of the everyday situation. This is why the imprisonment and arrest of people and their means of communication on the pretext of national security is, despite its populist gloss, in fact a strategy which is against the people and the reality of things - and thus unacceptable. The protests are the outcome of our circumstance and nothing else, e.g., the meddling of a foreign enemy. The efforts of both wings of Iranian politics to justify their ignorance and fear of protestors with charges of “agitation” and working for a foreign power, will disillusion their last hope. “Reform” means being answerable to the current situation – not denying it. 

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The Calvert Journal: Vogue Poland

This was a wonderful clash between the expectations of the public and the aesthetic tastes of the intelligentsia. The middle classes, at whom the magazine is directed, seem to be broadly unaccepting, are even unaware of the fact that we Poles might still be perceived as “post-Soviet” abroad. And, more to the point, that the sensibilities of the world of fashion in the last few years have been wrapped up in the idea of exoticised “post-Soviet” aesthetics, best symbolised by the designs of Gosha Rubchinskiy and Demna Gvasalia of the equally cult and annoying Vetements.

In reality, the “poor but sexy” chic of Vetements doesn’t match the perception that broader Polish society has of itself as aspirational, westernised and still on the make. Most Poles would rather have something along the lines of Vanity Fair: photoshopped, heavy on bling and celebrity, heralding our eventual “arrival”. This is only the third international edition of Vogue in eastern Europe: the first was Russia in 1998, confirming the dominant role of the former Soviet hegemon in the region. The second came, surprisingly, in Ukraine; before Maidan, but under the now much-hated Viktor Yanukovych. For the Polish edition to start so “late” (relatively speaking) may speak volumes about our society — in terms of our consumerist potential, we’ve clearly only just been deemed “ready”. Adding to the symbolism, the publisher of the magazine is Kasia Kulczyk, daughter-in-law of the late Jan Kulczyk, formerly the richest man in Poland, who had a huge influence on the development of Polish capitalism, with its privatisation and asset-stripping.[...]

Poland is a post-communist country with growing inequalities (or, euphemistically, “contrasts”) that may look picturesque in a fashion shoot but also stand as an indictment of the capitalist dream. Hence the negative reactions. This is a world where the middle classes, losing money on credit they’ll never pay back, at least want compensation for their efforts in the form of a beautiful magazine. What they get instead is an aestheticised slap in the face, the let-them-eat-cake Marie Antoinette attitude of the upper class, one percenters who can afford such nonchalance.

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The Economist: How to bring down a dictator

AJ+: Will Robots Make Us Poor? Universal Basic Income And The Robot Tax

Rapid development of self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence and robotics are expected to aggravate inequality, as wealth goes to those who own the robots. Technologists and politicians are proposing solutions like universal basic income and job retraining to keep job displacement from leading to poverty and homelessness. While many see the coming problems, there is little agreement on how to fund them, and few doubt the degree of expected change.

AJ+'s documentary series on automation explores how advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and automated vehicles will affect jobs, cities and inequality. From trucking to radiology, new technology is already changing white collar and blue collar occupations, reshaping cities and concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. Robots are taking over the world as companies like Tesla, Amazon, Uber and Google are using robots to automate. 

Politico: Italian election’s going to be messy, say pollsters

Friday marks the last day in which opinion polls can be published ahead of the March 4 ballot, according to Italian law. All the polls have similar findings — one of the most unpredictable elections in decades likely ending with a hung parliament. That in turn could lead to a larghe intese — a grand coalition — even though all the main parties have ruled out such an arrangement during a heated campaign. [...]

The center-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi has better chances of securing a working majority, pollsters say. The group — Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, plus the Northern League of Matteo Salvini and the right-wing Brothers of Italy — is predicted to get between 35 and 38 percent of the vote, which could be enough for a razor-thin majority.

Under new electoral rules, 63 percent of seats are assigned using a proportional voting system, with the remaining 37 percent of the parliament to be elected locally under a first-past-the-post system. It’s in the latter where the election could be decided, especially seats in the south of the country. [...]

The other main factor that makes the election result highly unpredictable — and any forecast shaky — is the high number of undecided voters, which, according to the latest polls, stands at between 30 and 45 percent of the electorate.

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Independent: In the cases of two separate holocausts, Israel and Poland find it difficult to acknowledge the facts of history

In 2015, Ukraine passed laws that forced its citizens to honour nationalists who briefly collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the mass killing of Jews. No uproar from the West, of course, since we currently support brave little Ukraine against the Russian beast that has gobbled up Crimean Sevastopol. [...]

So here’s the real hypocrisy of this story. The Israeli government, so outraged by Poland’s Jewish Holocaust denialism, refuses to recognise the Armenian Holocaust. Shimon Peres himself said that “we reject attempts to create a similarity between the [Jewish] Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. What the Armenians went through is a tragedy, but not genocide.” [...]

For 13 years ago, the Polish parliament passed a bill which specifically referred to the “Armenian genocide”. The speaker of the Polish parliament, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said at the time that the Armenian genocide did indeed take place, that responsibility fell on the Turks, and that Turkish documents – though not yet those which Akcam has just revealed – “confirm” this.

So there you have it. Poland punishes anyone who speaks of Polish participation in the Jewish Holocaust, but accepts the Armenian Holocaust. Israel insists that all must acknowledge the Jewish Holocaust – and Poland’s peripheral guilt – but will not acknowledge the Armenian Holocaust.

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The New York Times: Who Keeps Britain’s Trains Running? Europe

Those sentiments fueled a sell-off that put nearly every state-owned service or property in Britain on the auction block in the final decade of the 20th century, eventually including the country’s expansive public transportation infrastructure. Enshrined by parliamentary acts under Mrs. Thatcher and implemented by her two immediate successors, John Major, a Conservative, and Tony Blair of New Labour, the gospel of privatization was embraced by leaders around the world, notably including Mrs. Thatcher’s closest overseas ally, President Ronald Reagan. [...]

In short, the privatization devolved into a de facto re-nationalization — but under the direction of foreign states — that somehow went largely unnoticed. It now poses a startling and unprecedented dilemma thanks to Brexit, which will soon divorce Britain from the state bureaucracies beyond the English Channel that literally keep its economy in motion. [...]

No country on earth comes close to Britain’s peculiar status as a modern nation and economy knitted together by transportation networks that are overwhelmingly in the hands of foreign states. Of Britain’s 23 major train operators, 18 are now foreign-run — 16 of them by European Union governments and two by China. A majority of the 1.7 billion passenger rail journeys undertaken in Britain each year are now on foreign-managed trains, in addition to most of its 4.5 billion bus trips. 

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The Guardian view on Northern Ireland talks collapsing: the lost language of power-sharing

The darker truth here is that Sinn Féin has chosen to weaponise the language question for political ends, less to protect a minority than to antagonise unionists. Unionists have duly been antagonised. The Gaelic language is the main tongue of a mere 0.2% of the Northern Ireland population. Around 10% claim to understand it to some degree (perhaps just a few phrases). But Sinn Féin does not do things accidentally. Its proposals have become a weapon of tribalism in communities where identity politics always looms large and divisively. Fears that Irish may be made compulsory in schools, that a language qualification might become a job requirement and that street signs would be made bilingual are not all well grounded. But some are. Bilingual road signs, for instance, would take the issue into every street in Northern Ireland, with pointless provocative effect.

Another glum truth is that the terms of Northern Ireland politics have been unhelpfully reset by two actions for which responsibility lies squarely with the Conservative party in London. The first of these is Brexit, and the seeming willingness of many irresponsible Tories to countenance a hard border in Ireland. The second is the pact between the Tories and the DUP, which undermines the British government’s role as a co-guarantor with Ireland of the power-sharing agreements of 1998. The two communities may indeed be enduringly suspicious of one another, as the language issue once again shows. But the current London government has all but abdicated from its responsibility to bring them together. In fact it has made things worse.

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