Jacobin Magazine: China’s Uyghur Repression

he emergence in Xinjiang of a new network of political reeducation camps has been a poorly kept secret for some time. But research and reporting is giving us hard evidence of the scale of this new policy. Since the middle of 2017, a major construction boom has thrown up a variety of detention centers and prisons whose inmates number in the hundreds of thousands. These camps combine many of the brute horrors of China’s earlier reeducation-through-labor system with the latest high-tech surveillance and monitoring mechanisms. [...]

More than at any point since its incorporation into the People’s Republic of China, Xinjiang today resembles occupied territory, and the party’s policies reveal an all-encompassing view of the Uyghurs as an internal enemy. The Uyghurs’ very presence in the land is an inconvenient reminder of Xinjiang’s alternative identity as the eastern fringe of the Islamic and Turkic-speaking world — one that Beijing would prefer to erase if it could. The party may not have any intention yet to physically remove the Uyghurs, but its efforts to marginalize the Uyghur language and rewrite the region’s history serve similar goals to a policy of ethnic cleansing. [...]

In the wake of 9/11, China refashioned its hard-line campaign against separatism into a wing of the global “war on terror,” and in doing so reached something of an accommodation with Washington. There have been sporadic acts of terrorist violence in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, some of which, tragically, have cost the lives of ordinary Han Chinese. But Uyghur resistance in Xinjiang is much more disorganized and demilitarized than China would like us to believe. China’s war on terror has claimed as its victims even mildly dissenting party members such as economics professor Ilham Tohti, who was given a lifelong prison sentence four years ago for criticizing the marginalization of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. [...]

There’s no point talking about holding China to international norms when those norms don’t exist. If anything, Islamophobic bigotry has become the norm around the world, and with it a variety of intrusive and punitive de-radicalization programs similar in conception, if not scale, to China’s. Reading Jim Wolfreys’s recent book on France, it’s not hard to see similarities with the measures being implemented in Xinjiang: bans on forms of veiling, citizens encouraged to look out for signs of radicalization as innocuous as someone changing their eating habits. In 2015, Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls went so far as to consult on the constitutionality of creating detention centers for more than ten thousand people on a police watch list of suspected extremists.

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Jacobin Magazine: Remembering Pier Paolo Pasolini

He found the culture that killed the old epoch no improvement: dehumanizing, homogenizing, and corrupting capitalism, a genocide (as he called it) that emptied the borgate of its residents, who had their own language and their own, not-always political, solidarity. Today, the ones who could not become petit bourgeois lost their sense of belonging as the world changed around them.

Unlike a number of other Italian leftist intellectuals, many of whom had a quasi-mythic vision of the working class and the underclass or saw them as monolithic, Pasolini actually knew the people he wrote about. If his views sometimes had a subtle traditionalism, they did not fall into the ignorance of vast sectors of the Left or what he called in an article on Israel–Palestine the “[Communists’] traditional and never admitted hatred against lumpenproletariats and poor populations.” In 1959, he invited the PCI to become “‘the party of the poor people’: the party, we may say, of the lumpenproletarians.” [...]

Despite this collaboration, Pasolini never became a full-fledged organic intellectual. He always looked for different audiences. In the last phase of his life, he wrote for Il Corriere della Sera, then (and now) the main outlet of the Italian bourgeois establishment, which an independent journalist, Piero Ottone, was editing. There, Pasolini wrote the most polemical pieces of his life, perhaps feeling free from any constraints in this neutral, if not unfriendly, venue. [...]

As a nonorganic, heterodox intellectual of the Italian left, Pasolini understood before many others what role the intellectual would play not only in Italy but in the rest of the Western world. In one of the first issues of Officina, a cultural and political magazine that he created in 1959, he wrote that Marxist intellectuals were essentially living a contradiction. They spoke to a bourgeois class that did not want to listen. This situation required intellectuals to become spiritual guides. According to Pasolini this process was complete by 1968: the Left — not to mention the PCI — no longer had cultural hegemony. Instead, it belonged to industry. “The intellectual,” he wrote, “is where the cultural industry places him: why and how the market wants him.”

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Quartz: The complicated politics of traveling while LGBT

Kevin Dallas is the CEO of the Bermuda Tourism Authority—an independent organization which opposed the legislation overturning gay marriage. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone tasked with promoting tourism in Bermuda, he insists that the island is still very much welcoming to LGBT tourists. But in doing so he emphasizes that the wide media coverage of Bermuda’s gay marriage reversal has missed something crucial. The legislation in question, The Domestic Partnership Act 2017, also contains provisions that are beneficial to LGBT rights, including the right to a same-sex partner’s pension, property and inheritance rights, and immigration privileges—rights that other countries in the region don’t necessarily have.

“We have had anecdotal evidence of people saying ‘I’m canceling my trip to Bermuda and going to Antigua instead,’” Dallas said. “But LGBT people in Bermuda enjoy far more rights and protections than they do in Antigua—so how does that make sense? Ellen Degeneres said she was canceling a trip to Bermuda, on the other hand, she sent an entire studio audience to Dubai, where it’s illegal to be gay.” [...]

Tanzella raises an interesting point: It seems unfair to ask LGBT travelers to choose their next holiday destination based primarily on the equality record of the government in question. After all, we don’t ask non-LGBT travelers to do the same on any number of issues, from gender equality to the environment. Indeed, some of the globe’s hottest destinations are riddled with all kinds of political problems which travelers remain blissfully unaware of.

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Like Stories of Old: The Cognitive Revolution – Exploring Consciousness in Film

How have films engaged the problem of other minds? In this video essay, I discuss cinematic explorations into consciousness in the context of the cognitive revolution that has challenged many of the basic assumptions about what was for a long time believed to be a uniquely human trait.

The Economist: Singapore’s Brutalist past could soon be gone

The building, which was once called a “vertical slum” by a Singaporean legislator, is a densely packed mix of residential and commercial units. Along with People’s Park in Chinatown (pictured), which has been praised by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, it is among a handful of Brutalist buildings that were built in a surge of architectural confidence after the country became independent in 1965. They are particularly adored by those who love concrete, as well as bold and wacky colours.

Modernist buffs have started to fret that many of these Brutalist buildings will soon be gone. In February one of them, Pearl Bank, once the highest residential tower in Singapore, was sold for S$728m ($544m) to CapitaLand, one of Asia’s largest real-estate developers. The company plans to demolish the yellow horseshoe structure and build a “high-rise residential development” of 800 flats in its place. Since then several of the other buildings—most of which are privately owned in a co-operative-like system with hundreds of owners all having a stake—have started to prepare for sales, too. [...]

In post-independence Singapore, many people understood that such sacrifices needed to be made for the public good, says Joshua Comaroff, an architect. But attitudes are beginning to change. In 1989 the government’s urban redevelopment authority started conserving buildings, particularly pretty colonial-era shophouses and areas such as Little India. But Jerome Lim, who writes a blog about Singapore’s architecture, says the 50th anniversary of independence in 2015 was a turning point. He says that is when people started to think more about the city’s heritage, and to speak out more about conserving it. Before the managers of People’s Park closed the Brutalist building off entirely, couples would sneak onto the roof to take pictures with the Lego-like yellow and green residential units as a backdrop, to post on social media.

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Social Europe: What Italy’s Crisis Means For Europe

Italy’s economic problems are rooted in low productivity, unfavorable demographics, and weak governance in many parts of the country – all of which pre-date the introduction of the euro in 1999. While Italy’s mainstream political leaders hoped that eurozone membership would create the conditions for far-reaching economic reform, the euro has instead deprived Italy of the means to engage in competitive devaluation.

With the exception of Greece, Italy has fared worse than any other euro member state since the 2008 financial crisis. But there is no use playing the blame game. Responsibility lies partly with the EU and its pro-cyclical policy rules, but mainly with Italy’s past leaders, all of whom failed to address its structural problems. [...]

Beyond this domestic agenda, Italy also needs to pursue reforms vis-à-vis the EU, starting with a relaxation of constraints on public spending for pro-growth investments and new partnerships. More investment will require additional fiscal space. But, more importantly, Italy and the EU both need new ideas, and more trust on each side.

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Deutsche Welle: Italy's popular populists

Political analyst Francesco Galietti, sitting in his elegant Rome office boasting designer furniture, offers a more sober analysis of the situation. He attaches great importance to the role of the financial markets. Galietti used to work as a consultant for Italy's Ministry of Economy and Finance. He says "the markets are waiting for a signal indicating a robust fiscal policy and against leaving the eurozone. Snap elections and the uncertainty they entail would be a very bad signal." He thinks an anti-establishment coalition could calm markets provided it does not decide to drastically increase spending. Investors, argues Galietti, expect the new government to have a proactive strategy for reducing Italy's national debt. 

Unlike some in the European Union, Galietti is not worried Italy will bring the eurozone to its knees. "I don't think [the populists] will create a disaster. Some have this fear that Salvini wants to provoke a crash. But I don't believe that." However, he says, the confrontation is getting out of control. He says it's now "the Palazzo versus the people," by which he means President Mattarella, whose official residence is the Palazzo del Quirinale, and who, at least on paper, should be impartial and not embroiled in a fight with Italy's populists.

Galietti says that if you want to provoke a political confrontation, then you need an enemy, but because Berlusconi has been sidelined politically and the Social Democrats have brought about their own demise, the populists are now turning to Mattarella. "He took the situation nuclear because he has brought a potential referendum on the euro into the realm of possibility," says Galietti. He drew comparisons between the current political climate in Italy and Brexit. But in the case of Italy, the outcome could be even worse, "because Italy is in the eurozone," he says.

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The Guardian: Can Catholic crosses keep the far right at bay in multicultural Bavaria?

But Bavaria is different. Different from the rest of Germany, and from the ex-Communist countries to its east and south-east. It is the only German state to have been ruled by one party – the Christian Social Union (CSU) – since the Federal Republic was founded in 1949. The CSU has an agreement with the Christian Democrats (CDU) not to poach on one another’s turf. This has allowed the CSU to pander to Bavaria’s rural and conservative population in a way that the more inclusive CDU could never dare. At the same time, the business-friendly CSU has transformed Bavaria from an agricultural poorhouse into an industrial powerhouse – think BMW and Audi, Siemens and Bosch, biotech, AI and financial services. “Laptop and lederhosen” is how the Bavarians – who enjoy Germany’s lowest unemployment rate and highest incomes – describe the CSU’s mix of folksy populism and determined modernisation. [...]

He could be wrong. Under Pope Francis, the Vatican is no longer the conservative bastion it was under John Paul II and the Bavarian Benedict XVI. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich, who heads the Conference of German Bishops, has criticised Söder for trying to instrumentalise a religious symbol for political aims. More to the point, Bavaria’s modernisation has meant that the once backward and priest-ridden society is now better educated, and that Catholics, though still the majority, are more independent of the church. Few Catholic voters will be swayed by church leaders who condemn the AfD, still less politicians who hang up crosses in job centres.

Meanwhile, Bavaria is becoming ever more multicultural. Almost a quarter of the population have what Germans call “a migration background”. And for the first time since the war, more people are leaving Bavaria for other parts of Germany than the other way around. The most popular destination for Bavarians is Berlin – the epitome of decadence and religious indifference, not to mention multiculturalism and everything Bavaria is not supposed to be. Trying to bridge the chasm between a globalist, liberal elite and the rising number of the disaffected and disenchanted, Söder is more to be pitied than censured for his crucifix gambit.

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Politico: Republicans gobsmacked by Trump’s tariffs

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) called it “bad news” and predicted imminent retaliation from the key U.S. allies. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said there is "mounting evidence that these tariffs will harm Americans." And Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) warned that similar policies 90 years ago sparked the Great Depression.

“This is dumb. Europe, Canada, and Mexico are not China, and you don’t treat allies the same way you treat opponents,” Sasse said. “‘Make America Great Again’ shouldn’t mean ‘Make America 1929 Again.'"

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker called the move an “abuse of authority only intended for national security purposes.” [...]

Indeed, trade is the area where Republicans have grown most uncomfortable with the president. They generally tolerate his over-the-top Twitter account and have grown accustomed to his coarse rhetoric, in part because he has enacted and supported many of the center-right policies that the GOP has pursued for years, such as confirming conservative judges and cutting taxes.

Republicans worry that Trump’s protectionist trade policies could undermine all that and threaten a healthy economy before the midterm elections. Yet House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have shown no interest in passing legislation to block Trump’s tariffs or require congressional approval, a move that would essentially bring Capitol Hill to a standstill.

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