The Guardian: Vladimir Putin’s politics of eternity

Inevitability and eternity translate facts into narratives. Those swayed by inevitability see every fact as a blip that does not alter the overall story of progress; those who shift to eternity classify every new event as just one more instance of a timeless threat. Each masquerades as history; each does away with history. Inevitability politicians teach that the specifics of the past are irrelevant, since anything that happens is just grist for the mill of progress. Eternity politicians leap from one moment to another, over decades or centuries, to build a myth of innocence and danger. They imagine cycles of threat in the past, creating an imagined pattern that they realise in the present by producing artificial crises and daily drama. [...]

The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas. Those in its thrall deny that ideas matter, proving only that they are in the grip of a powerful one.The cliche of the politics of inevitability is that “there are no alternatives.” To accept this is to deny individual responsibility for seeing history and making change. Life becomes a sleepwalk to a premarked grave in a prepurchased plot. [...]

The wealthy few around Yeltsin, christened the “oligarchs”, wished to manage democracy in his favour and theirs. The end of Soviet economic planning created a violent rush for profitable industries and resources and inspired arbitrage schemes, quickly creating a new class of wealthy men. Wild privatisation was not at all the same thing as a market economy, at least as conventionally understood. Markets require the rule of law, which was the most demanding aspect of the post-Soviet transformations. Americans, taking the rule of law for granted, could fantasise that markets would create the necessary institutions. This was an error. It mattered whether newly independent states established the rule of law and, above all, whether they managed a legal transition of power through free elections. [...]

In September 2013, a Russian diplomat repeated this argument at a conference on human rights in China. Gay rights were nothing more than the chosen weapon of a global neoliberal conspiracy, meant to prepare virtuous, traditional societies such as Russia and China for exploitation. President Putin took the next step at his personal global summit at Valdai a few days later, comparing same-sex partnerships to Satanism. He associated gay rights with a western model that “opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.” The Russian parliament had by then passed a law “for the purpose of protecting children from information advocating for a denial of traditional family values”

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The Atlantic: Marine Le Pen's Self-Negating 'Rebrand'

This latest effort at rebranding comes at a pivotal moment for the party, which after decades on the fringes of French politics managed to push its way to electoral relevance, only to suffer a crushing second-round defeat to centrist Emmanuel Macron in last year’s presidential election. Now, with an eye to next year’s legislative elections, Le Pen is hoping a new name will ready the party to reclaim the the national spotlight. In this way, Bannon’s presence at the congress was important—his success helping get President Trump’s “America First” policy vision into the White House, paired with his recent European tour, brought the conference vast media attention. But it also exposed numerous contradictions. Though Bannon served in the White House, he was never really a mainstream political figure, and his ouster from both the government and Breitbart News have marginalized him even more. What’s more, his particular brand of populist nationalism makes him more akin to the FN’s founder than to its current leader. This irony was noted by Jean-Marie Le Pen himself, who said that Bannon’s presence was “not exactly the definition of the de-demonization” the FN has been seeking. [...]

Apart from the party’s plan to ditch its support for leaving the eurozone (a policy championed by the FN’s since-departed deputy, Florian Philippot), the overall agenda and ethos of the party remains almost entirely consistent. Le Pen made this clear in her address to party members Sunday when she said the FN’s far-right positions on immigration, globalization, and the European Union would stay intact. She practically had to do this. “Its core base is attracted to the party because of its uncompromising rebuttal to legal immigration, the multicultural society, and globalism,” Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on France’s far right, told me. “It’s been that way since 1972.”

So if the party’s so-called rebranding offers no real change, why does the brand survive? David Lees, a Warwick University researcher focusing on French politics, told me that more than French voters, it’s the attention that gives Le Pen the power she has. “It’s precisely because the media, and indeed the wider population in France and around the world, are interested in how the extreme right is doing—and that gives them a sense of credibility,” he said, adding: “She needs to do something now to keep momentum going to the next presidential election, which is what she’s really always been targeting.” It is also the case that the FN has a substantial if limited base of support—it won about a third of the votes in the 2017 elections, nearly doubling the FN’s next best showing in 2002 elections.

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The Atlantic: A Twist in Our Sexual Encounters With Other Ancient Humans

To this date, we have no idea what a Denisovan looked like. You can still hold every known Denisovan fossil—that pinky, a toe, and two teeth—in your hand. But we know so much else about them. We know every letter of their genome. We know that they diverged from their close relatives, the Neanderthals, around 400,000 years ago, and that both groups diverged from Homo sapiens around 600,000 years ago. We know that when our ancestors left Africa and spread into Asia, they encountered the Denisovans and had sex with them. We know that, as a result, Denisovan DNA lives on in people from Asia and Melanesia. One of these Denisovan genes provides modern Tibetans with a crucial adaptation that allows them to survive at high altitudes. [...]

In the genomes of people from Japan and China, Browning found several segments that closely match the genome of the Denisovan woman whose pinky was found in the Altai Mountains. But to her surprise, she also found segments that were clearly Denisovan in origin, but were much weaker matches to the Altai female. “They’re close enough that we’re sure they’re Denisovan, but they’re not as close,” she says.

This suggests that modern humans inherited DNA from two separate groups of Denisovans. The way Browning sees it, the ancestors of today’s Melanesians encountered Denisovans as they expanded through South Asia and the Malay Peninsula. The two groups intrebred, with the result that 5 percent of modern Melanesian DNA has a Denisovan origin.

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Al Jazeera: May faces down Putin – but he has the upper hand

On March 11, the Sunday Times newspaper published a front-page story on how the Conservative Party had accepted millions from Kremlin-linked political donors - over 3 million British pounds ($4.2m) from suspect Russian figures channelled to the Conservatives since they took office in 2010. Ministers were increasingly concerned about the effect this would have on May's policies. [...]

Buzzfeed published late last year, that 14 British and Russian citizens had been potentially assassinated in Britain since 2006. As of the past 10 days, that figure has nearly risen to 16. All the fourteen cases identified by Buzzfeed have now been re-opened. [...]

Following an investigation I and a colleague published for openDemocracy, the Electoral Commission is now investigating whether a key financier behind UKIP, a shady entrepreneur called Arron Banks, was the "true source" of money given towards the Brexit referendum, or he was only "acting as an agent". [...]

Then you have the left-wing Labour Party - whose chief party strategist has historically argued in favour of Putin's annexation of Crimea. In October 2014, Milne was invited to the Kremlin-sponsored Valdai Discussion Club, including being invited to chair the session where Putin was interviewed. [...]

Secondly, after Cyprus, Britain, combined with the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands (all under ultimate British jurisdiction), provides the second-largest amount of foreign direct investment in Russia, even after sanctions hit in 2014. Without even a portion of this money - impaired by real sanctions, the Putin regime could collapse.

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Associated Press: Inmate death shines light on cellmate pairings at US prisons

Actually, the drunken driver and the triple murderer were only a few points apart on their risk assessment score, a complex number system Idaho and other states use to classify prisoners as minimum-, medium- or maximum-security risks. The system scores inmates in categories such as the crimes they committed, how long they've been behind bars and whether they've broken any prison rules. [...]

Cox was designated a minimum-security offender but was sent to the Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise — a medium-security facility — to wait for a minimum-security bed to open up. Idaho's 10 prisons have been filled to capacity since last year, holding about 8,300 inmates. [...]

Ryan Labrecque, a Portland State University assistant professor and former correctional officer, noted a lot can be learned when inmate housing decisions end in adverse outcomes. His research examines how prison management, personality factors and even the physical condition of prison facilities can impact inmate behavior.

In most states, inmate classification is based on "static" factors such as behavior and criminal history, he said. But emerging practice shows there are also many "dynamic" factors, such as inmates' attitudes, associates and work experience.

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Deutsche Welle: Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel meeting a test for EU financial policy

Judging by what individual representatives of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD have said so far about Macron's reform ideas, the grand coalition partners have indeed taken different positions. Until now, Scholz has held back because he knows that within Germany he is expected to continue the solid (some say, stingy) financial policy of his CDU predecessor Wolfgang Schäuble.

However, other SPD politicians have been extremely enthusiastic about Macron's ideas. Former SPD leader Martin Schulz — who also previously served as European Parliament president — had made a positive German response to Macron's ideas a prerequisite for a new grand coalition. As recently as Wednesday, new top diplomat Maas said in Paris that he had come to "finally take the outstretched hand of Emmanuel Macron with his proposals for the renewal of Europe." [...]

However, according to Caspary, the differences in opinion do not change the common goal of strengthening the European Union. A few days ago, Merkel complained that Europe was "too weak and too slow" in many areas. She wants to change that. She agrees with Macron that without him, without France, this is not possible. "I don't believe for a second that a European project can be successful without, or against Germany," Macron told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "We are completely interdependent."

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Social Europe: What Could A Corbyn Government Inside Europe Mean For The EU’s Future ?

The left-wing Portuguese government has demonstrated how an anti-austerity policy can dramatically improve economic performance. There are proposals to close tax havens for multinational corporations and a proposal for a common consolidated corporate tax, something the UK has strongly opposed in the past. [...]

The same is true for those areas where EU policy has, in the past, been relatively progressive – digital rights, climate change, and ending global conflicts, for example. Thanks to active protests across Europe, EU policy on digital rights, defending online privacy and the ownership of personal data, has been rather progressive – yet without continued active engagement, along the lines of the Labour Party’s Digital Democracy Manifesto, there is a risk that this might be undermined by anti-terror legislation. [...]

Finally, a Corbyn-led government could change the conversation about immigration. Anti-immigration sentiment promoted by unscrupulous politicians, it can be argued, produced the refugee crisis. We live in a world of migration and it is more or less impossible to control. What is more Europe with its aging population needs migrants. Instead of creating a border security complex in which smugglers and border guards are enmeshed in an impossible business that fails to prevent the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, we need a policy of managed migration as was actually proposed by the European Commission but opposed by member states – one that involves a resettlement policy across the continent. A Corbyn-led government could push for replacing  the current exclusive and dangerous securitised approach with one based on humanitarian and development considerations.  

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Politico: May’s toothless tough talk on Russia

What Moscow would find far less desirable would be any kind of threat to the assets of its oligarchic class. But it can feel pretty safe on that front: It is highly unlikely that May’s Brexit government will precipitate a multi-billion cash outflow for the sake of something it lacks anyway: principles.

London is the de-facto capital of the post-Soviet mafia state. It accumulates a lion’s share of oligarchic assets from everywhere in the ex-USSR. It is the hometown of the billionaires and former state officials who played key roles in consolidating kleptocratic regimes in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the rest of the post-Soviet region.

The U.K. is where they build their luxury homes and moor their yachts; it’s where their wives go on shopping sprees, their children attend elite schools, and their football clubs spar in Premier League matches. It’s also where a horde of British bankers, lawyers, security experts, political consultants and other professionals enjoy a luxurious life thanks to money siphoned away from troubled post-communist nations [...]

The truth is that Putin’s Russia is an integral part of the Western political and financial system. What looks like perpetual conflict is actually cozy symbiosis, with each side feeding off the other. The West’s failure to admit — and address — that will only strengthen the Kremlin’s hand.  

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Jakub Marian: People killed in road accidents by region in Europe

The most dangerous roads in 2016 (excluding the non-European Turkish regions shown on the map) were in:  

The Northwestern region in Bulgaria (153 deaths per million)

Alentejo in Portugal (142 deaths per million)

Luxembourg (province) in Belgium (138 deaths per million) 

This is not just a random deviation; these regions have had a fairly high mortality rate (significantly higher than the rest of the respective countries) due to road accidents for several years.

As a general trend, the map shows that fatal traffic accidents tend to be significantly less common in large cities than in the countryside. This is likely due to the differences in speed on different types of roads (traffic in cities tends to be slower).

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