Foreign Policy: Ethiopia’s Great Rift

Bekele’s release was the culmination of a three-day standoff between the government, which had previously announced its intention to release some of its many thousands of political prisoners, and the protesters, who had grown impatient with the slow pace of the promised amnesties. For nearly a month, the wind has seemed to be at the protesters’ backs: More than 6,000 political prisoners have been freed since January, meeting one of the demonstrators’ most central demands. “Within a month, the political environment has completely changed,” says Hallelujah Lulie, a political consultant based in Addis Ababa. [...]

Behind the drama of the last week lies a radical shift in Ethiopia’s political landscape, one that has the potential to lead to genuine reforms. The EPRDF, a coalition of four nominally ethnic parties that has ruled the country single-handedly since taking power in 1991, is in the midst of a vicious internal power struggle. At issue is the question of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which has long been the dominant of the four ethnically based coalition partners, despite representing only a small minority of the country (Tigrayans make up about 6 percent of the population). Yet the influence of the TPLF is waning as two rival factions, the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) and the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) — which represent Ethiopia’s first- and second-most populous regions, respectively — vie with the TPLF for control over the coalition and, with it, the country.  [...]

His administration has made significant steps toward reforming the party and the regional government. Thousands of local officials have been replaced. The revamped regional broadcaster, the Oromia Broadcasting Network, has been transformed from a government mouthpiece into an investigative watchdog, covering, among other things, land grabs, ethnic violence, and the release of Oromo political prisoners. The regional security forces seem to have changed some of the worst of their ways, too: Oromo police, once despised for beating up civilians, are now widely seen as allies in their political struggle, at times even posing for photos with protesters. The party has also launched a left-wing economic program, known as the “Oromo economic revolution,” involving land redistribution and higher taxes on foreign investors.

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Broadly: Man and Wife and Wife: The Dark World of Polygamous Wedding Ceremonies

In recent years, Order weddings have become even more atypical: After David and Daniel, two of the highest ranking elders in the Order, went to prison for incest and rape—they are married to several of their own nieces, half-sisters, and cousins, some of whom were underage at the time of the weddings—the protocol changed. "They started taking the bride and the groom and whomever was going to marry them... into a separate room, after they walked down the aisle, so that no one can witness their wedding," Julianna explains. "Then people can't legally say that they saw the couple get married—and it's usually women that are underage, and it's an older guy, and they're related."

The underage brides, though, are nothing new. When Julianna was 15 years old, she dreamt that she should marry her then 19-year-old nephew, Jacob Kingston, the son of her half-brother, Order figurehead John Daniel Kingston. Because their religion—a fundamentalist interpretation of traditional Mormonism—believes that prophecies from God can come to you in your sleep, as they did to the original Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, members of the Order place special significance on the literal interpretation of dreams. [...]

"The men can dance with whomever they want, but not with a married woman they're not married to," she continues. "And if a girl is married, she's not going to dance with anyone except her husband, or maybe her dad or brother. But the married men can pretty much dance with any of the single women."

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The Guardian: Is the British establishment finally finished?

This started to become clear to me when researching the civil service and business world in the later years of David Cameron’s coalition government. Interviews with former career mandarins revealed just how much Whitehall had changed. The service they had joined in the 1960s and 70s was the preserve of the establishment amateur. The vast majority had come from Oxbridge, having previously studied history, classics or something else that failed to equip them for managing an archaic state bureaucracy. Generalists ruled and specialists occupied the lower rungs.

As Sir Alan Budd, a former economic advisor to the Treasury from 1970 onwards, explained, the department was not run by professional economists. Instead, those in charge deferred to the “Brown Book”, a government tome explaining how to use certain technical levers to respond to shifts in employment, inflation, etc. It was sort of a Dummies’ Guide to managing the British economy. “If you wanted to, say, reduce unemployment by 100,000, there were various ways of doing this,” Budd told me. “It was very like any textbook at university. The chapter on macroeconomics – this explained how you did things.” [...]

Second, the automatic links between exclusive education, tradition, status, power and money, which once typified the establishment, have been broken. A far smaller percentage of those in power have taken the Clarendon-Oxbridge conveyor belt to the top. Exclusive London clubs lie empty or – worse still for elites – now allow women, foreigners and lower-class members to join. The members of the aristocracy, once liberally sprinkled across the boards of public institutions and corporations alike, have vanished from sight. [...]

Remarkably, Bailey even predicted the likely causes of the financial crash and how it might play out, three years before it actually did: spiralling property prices and lending, derivatives, banks too big to fail and a Federal Reserve bailout. He was not the only one: a handful of economists and financiers – such as Nouriel Roubini, Ann Pettifor and Raghuram Rajan – went public with dire warnings of what they thought was to come. There were a lot more insiders who had their suspicions, but who chose to keep quiet. A lot of people – insiders and outsiders – still see more of the same ahead. But venal self-interest means most of them don’t care.

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SciShow Psych: How Ancient Viruses Might Have Changed Our Brains

The Guardian: 'There is no long-term vision': young Italians lose faith in politics

Analysts say the growing apathy with politics is not confined to the young: overall, about 30% of voters plan to abstain or are undecided.

“This is partly due to a loss of faith in politicians,” said Antonio Noto, the head of the polling firm IPR. “A decade ago, the level of faith in political parties was around 10%, now it’s 7%. People think that voting is useless.” [...]

The abstention rate in national elections has risen since the early 1990s, partly because of penalties against non-voters being abolished in 1992. The turnout in the 2013 general elections was 75.19%, the lowest since 1946.  [...]

The outcome of the upcoming elections is likely to be determined by the 10 million voters who, so far, remain undecided. In the 2013 elections, support for M5S rose 5% in the last few days of the campaign.

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Politico: The beginning of Merkel’s end

To calm the waters, Merkel agreed to open the Cabinet doors to a new CDU generation. It was a painful concession for the chancellor because it forced her to push out longtime political allies such as Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and Health Minister Hermann Gröhe. [...]

Spahn, 37, has been vocal and public in opposing Merkel on issues such as migration and dual citizenship. At a party convention in 2014, he elbowed his way into the CDU’s executive board, beating out Merkel’s own candidate for the post.

Earlier in her career, Merkel earned a reputation for dispatching such renegades swiftly and often brutally. That she failed to do so with Spahn is seen as a sign of her weakening grip on the party.

The chancellor’s waning influence was palpable at Monday’s convention. While delegates rewarded her hour-long speech with polite applause, they saved their enthusiasm for another speaker — Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the party’s new general secretary and a figure many would like to see as the CDU’s next leader. [...]

Despite the growing speculation over Merkel’s successor, chances are the chancellor will remain in control for some time. Earlier this month she dismissed suggestions she might step down after another two years as chancellor, insisting she “would like to serve a full term.”  

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Bloomberg: The EU Can Do a Lot More With Its Money

This challenge offers the EU-27 an opportunity to rethink the way the budget is allocated. A document published jointly last week by the finance ministers of Italy and Germany offers one useful blueprint. They argue that the EU should spend more on European "public goods" -- areas of spending identified as in the interests of the whole union.

In their most clear-cut form, these spending items share two characteristics: They are what economists call non-rival and non-excludable. To put it simply, one country's or person's consumption doesn't affect another's. Furthermore, it is impossible to exclude countries that have not paid for them from using them.

Spending to foster European defense and to patrol the EU's external borders are two straightforward examples. More efficient checks in the Mediterranean Sea could help the whole of the EU manage the inflow of refugees. Asking one member state to fund this effort alone is unfair, since the benefits will inevitably trickle down on all European partners. While there is already some EU funding for these tasks already (for example, via the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), it is patently insufficient, leaving countries such as Italy to shoulder a disproportionate share of the total costs. [...]

Recipient countries should also be compliant with other EU objectives, including showing solidarity in managing migration inflows. Some in Germany have gone even further, arguing that "cohesion funds" should be linked to respect of the rule of law and democracy. These ideas have already proven controversial with Eastern European governments, but they make a lot of sense: If you benefit from transfers from other members of a club, it is only fair that you play by the rules.

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The Guardian: Welsh and Scottish governments raise pressure over Brexit plans

Both governments are pressing ministers in London to reverse proposals that they say will allow the UK government after Brexit to take unjustified control over key policies with a UK-wide scope, such as farming, fisheries and environmental protection. [...]

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, told BBC Scotland it was very likely Holyrood would refuse to agree to the UK government’s proposals – spelt out by the Cabinet Office minister, David Lidington, on Monday – unless they were radically changed.  [...]

The continuity bill being put before the Welsh assembly is designed to legally transfer EU powers into Welsh legislation, and would be submitted formally if the talks with UK ministers over post-Brexit powers collapse. [...]

Although Sturgeon and Jones have worked together to force changes to the Brexit bill, a split is emerging between the two governments. The Welsh administration appears more optimistic about the prospects of deal. That may reflect the Welsh vote in favour of leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum, when Scotland voted heavily in favour of remain, but also Labour’s decision to accept the Brexit vote. In contrast, the Scottish National party remains deeply hostile to Brexit.  

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Deutsche Welle: Unemployed in Germany have greatest risk of poverty in the EU

Those who are unemployed in Germany face a much bigger risk of falling into poverty than in any other European Union country, according to figures released by European statistics office Eurostat on Monday.

After analyzing data from 2016, Eurostat found that the risk of poverty for those on unemployment benefit in Germany is at 70.8 percent - significantly higher than the average of 48.7 percent across Europe. [...]

Germans who have lost their jobs can at first claim 60 percent of their salaries as unemployment benefit (or 67 percent if they have children) - provided they have been paying social insurance contributions for at least 12 months.

After a certain period, which depends on how long they were in work, unemployed people must claim a standard benefit known colloquially as "Hartz IV," - currently set at €416 ($512) a month. Housing benefits have to be claimed separately." [...]

"We did have increasing inequality, and increasing poverty risk rates, since the end of the 1990s until around 2005, though since then there hasn't been a particular increase," he added. "There has been an increase because of the relatively high immigration rate - but if you take that out you have only a slight increase in inequality."

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