openDemocracy: How Russian state pressure on regional languages is sparking civic activism in the North Caucasus

The draft law is the result of a statement made by President Putin last year, in which he claimed that “forcing someone to learn a non-native language is just as unacceptable as lowering the level of Russian education.” During the meeting of the Council for Cross-National Relations that took place in Yoshkar-Ola in July 2017, Putin urged the heads of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to pay “special attention” to this issue. [...]

This statement led to a series of inspections by prosecutors in republics across the Russian Federation. North Ossetia, where Ossetian has been taught as a state language, was one of them. However, at that time, Putin’s statements drew little attention in the North Caucasus. It seemed as if the region was indifferent to the fate of its languages. Tatarstan was the only region that stood up against the Kremlin in the fight for the fundamental rights of Russia’s federal organisation. [...]

Following the example of North Ossetian activists, intellectuals and civic activists in Kabardino-Balkaria addressed the heads of the executive and legislative powers in an open letter at the end of April. The letter was published on the Kabardino-Balkarian Human Rights Centre website: “The bill proposed by the State Duma flagrantly violates the constitutional rights of the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria (KBR), as well as those of other national republics: all of them are legal state entities that have a right of self-determination within the legal framework of Russian Federation, including the right to choose a model for preservation and development of their native languages. On that basis we categorically object to the adoption of the bill, and we demand that it be removed from the (legislative) agenda immediately because, apart from its destructive power that aims to completely obliterate national languages, it can also seriously destabilise the socio-political climate of the multinational state.” [...]

According to Khatazhukov, over the last decade the time dedicated to learning the native languages of Kabardino-Balkaria has been reduced by 50%, elementary classes that were taught in Kabardin and Balkarian languages have been closed, and native language learning in pre-school education has been gradually phased out. Khatazhukov believes that these are the causes of public outrage and criticism towards this new draft legislation on the voluntary learning of native languages.   [...]

The Russian government needs to rethink its linguistic policies at least for the sake of preserving stability. It is quite clear that villages, where regional languages still dominate, should use different educational approaches and even different textbooks in contrast to urban centres where knowledge of regional languages is often weak. As far as the educational system is concerned, these features must be taken into account. National activists also believe it is important to emphasise the presence of languages in the regional media.

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BBC4 In Our Time: The Emancipation of the Serfs

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1861 declaration by Tsar Alexander II that serfs were now legally free of their landlords. Until then, over a third of Russians were tied to the land on which they lived and worked and in practice there was little to distinguish their condition from slavery. Russia had lost the Crimean War in 1855 and there had been hundreds of uprisings, prompting the Tsar to tell the nobles, "The existing condition of owning souls cannot remain unchanged. It is better to begin to destroy serfdom from above than to wait until that time when it begins to destroy itself from below." Reform was constrained by the Tsar's wish to keep the nobles on side and, for the serfs, tied by debt and law to the little land they were then allotted, the benefits were hard to see.

With

Sarah Hudspith Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds

Simon Dixon The Sir Bernard Pares Professor of Russian History at UCL

Shane O'Rourke Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York  

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The Atlantic: Porn’s Uncanny Valley

For the new pornographers like Adam Sutra, technology can erase the material world. In virtual reality, there are no limits, not even when it comes to sex. “If you can meet in your virtual-reality space, anything’s possible,” Adam observed coolly as the man bore down upon the woman, her prerecorded moans filling the air. [...]

Whether or not people get turned on by VR pornography, the technology is changing the places where adult content has traditionally been created. Porn Valley is being displaced by porn’s uncanny valley—an X-rated version of the theory holding that a robotic or simulated entity that appears to be human, but not quite fully human, revolts us. Losing a connection to the material world—the skin and sweat of reality—may also lose what makes porn alluring. [...]

When I moved back to Los Angeles last year, I rented an apartment in the Valley. I wanted to know what had become of the adult-movie business. As it turned out, Porn Valley had changed. Technology had transformed it. A perfect storm had slammed the industry. The Great Recession had hit it hard, a handful of federal obscenity prosecutions during the Bush administration had caused a chilling effect, and widespread digital-content pirating had oversaturated the market and devalued the product, decimating the competition and slashing profits by the double digits. Once upon a time, porn had led technology, adopting VHS over Betamax in the video-format wars of the late ’70s and ’80s. In the new millennium, technology was porn’s undoing. [...]

Adam and his team had spent a year building a virtual porn world “the size of Grand Theft Auto,” but the technology wasn’t perfect yet. No matter. Their population was growing. They were scanning more porn stars and shooting adult performers in motion-capture suits bouncing lustily on top of each other in an array of sexual positions. The results were impressive. Casey’s skin was eerily lifelike, porous and pliant. Their genitals were, well, sufficiently realistic. (“It’s easier to do a hard penis than a vagina,” Adam confided.) There was something disconcerting about the simulacrum of Casey, though, especially in her face, which was weirdly human and disturbingly not, more uncanny valley than Porn Valley.

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SciShow: Do Placebos Work For Animals? Yes, Weirdly Enough

openDemocracy: Cuba and Europe getting closer

First of all, the concretion of an 18 million euros cooperation project on renewable energy, the very first to give actual content to the new bilateral relations framework, on an issue of special relevance for Cuba, which aims to include a significant component of non-polluting energies to its energy matrix, coinciding in general terms with the policy proposals of the EU in this area. [...]

The expressed will to promote exchanges for the European Year of Cultural Heritage and to support the celebrations of the 500-year anniversary of the founding of the city of Havana in 2019 - a request that historian Eusebio Leal made publicly to Federica Mogherini during her visit to Cuba last January, and which she gladly accepted – were among the finer topics on which decisions were also made.  [...]

The Cuban government, for its part, has expressed its wish for "a more active participation of the European Union in the economic development" of the island. The chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, considers that the conditions are favourable for expanding ties further.

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Quartz: Last time Mexico put tariffs on the US, American farmers lost $1 billion

What won’t score points with Trump voters? The painful tariffs that Canada and Mexico will use to hurt Trump-leaning states like Wisconsin and Iowa. While Canada and Mexico had been able to largely ignore the president’s protectionist impulses when they were just rants, they are now being dragged down to Trump’s level.  [...]

The list of products they are taxing has been carefully calibrated for maximum political impact, experts say. The idea is to squeeze states and sectors that can exert pressure on the White House, and/or hit Trump’s base. The tariffs are designed to get a quick reaction from those sectors, says Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. Their effects “will be immediate and fairly devastating.”

For example, in addition to steel, Mexico is targeting a variety of agricultural goods, from apples to hams. The plan, Mexican Economics minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Mexican radio on Thursday, was to identify products from congressional districts and states represented by elected officials who could influence Trump. Guajardo didn’t specify who, but one of those officials is likely house speaker Paul Ryan. His state of Wisconsin produces the bulk of American cranberries, which are on Mexico’s retaliatory list. On Thursday, Ryan said he was against the tariffs. [...]

So, Mexico tracked down the Congress members who had backed the ban and punished products in their states, says Guajardo, who was part of the administration that rolled out those measures. Over those two years, the Mexican government rotated those tariffs to ensure the pain was spread around, adds Council of the America’s Farnsworth.

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The Atlantic: Saudi Arabia’s Dark Nationalism

For a time, traitor was the go-to accusation across much of the Arab world. During the heyday of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s, government officials in Egypt or Syria would often brand dissidents as traitors. The term is still used to this day, but with the rise of Islamist fervor in the 1980s and 1990s, when Saudi Arabia set the religious tone for much of the region, it was overtaken by the deadly charge of kafir—“apostate” or “heretic.” It was brought against anyone who strayed from religious norms, secularists, intellectuals or inconvenient critics. Now, as the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tries to reduce religion’s role in his country, Saudi Arabia seems ready bring back the label of traitor. [...]

Yet, the arrests served a different function for Mohammed bin Salman. He appears bent on instilling a new sense of purpose in his people, a national cohesion no longer driven by religious ideology but by nationalism. The Saudi-led war in Yemen and the diplomatic standoff with Qatar have helped feed that swelling patriotic pride. (Opening new movie theaters and allowing concerts certainly won’t do it.) Such nationalism thrives when there’s an external enemy—real or perceived. [...]

Inside and outside the kingdom, Saudis speculated that the smear campaign received the government’s official blessings—an ominous sign for the detainees. Their loyalty to the country is now in question, and the word traitor is a hard stain to lose. Neither the rich Saudis rounded up in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel last year, nor the hardline clerics arrested during the same period, received such branding.

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The Atlantic: Trudeau Reaches His Breaking Point With Trump

Trudeau’s politics and worldview might not align with Trump’s, but he was among the first world leaders to congratulate the U.S. president on his election victory, noting Canada has “no closer friend, ally, and partner than the United States.” It’s a message he carried to Washington where he endured an awkward handshake with Trump, and had what was generally billed as a positive meeting with the American president. When it ended, the two men spoke warmly of each other, and Trump even said he was prepared to tweak NAFTA instead of withdrawing from it. [...]

“In closing, I want to be very clear about one thing: Americans remain our partners, friends, and allies. This is not about the American people. We have to believe that at some point their common sense will prevail,” he said in the type of language that successive U.S. administrations have used to describe recalcitrant regimes such as Iran. “But we see no sign of that in this action today by the U.S. administration.” [...]

NAFTA is being renegotiated by the three countries, but the pact looks set to go the way of the Paris climate accord, the Iran deal, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The advisers who advocated for Trump to remain in those multilateral pacts have long left the administration and those who remain say they support Trump’s worldview. Indeed, Wilbur Ross, the Commerce secretary, said Thursday the tariffs on Canada were being imposed because of insufficient progress on talks to renegotiate NAFTA.* Just days earlier, investors were optimistic that the three countries were close to an agreement. No longer.

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Politico: Merkel endorses Macron’s EU military plan

Merkel’s French counterpart Emmanuel Macron has been pushing for the creation of a combined EU military force that could be deployed to trouble spots around the world. The idea had so far received a frosty reception in Berlin, with defense minister Ursula von der Leyen saying the idea was “not an imminent project for tomorrow.” So Merkel’s intervention represents a significant change of tone.[...]

Merkel said the initiative “needs to fit into the structure of defense cooperation,” which she said should bring down the number of different EU weapon systems from 180 to “about 30.” [...]

The German leader also supported Macron’s idea of inviting Britain — which has the second-largest army in the EU — to join that force even after it leaves the bloc. “We can additionally open that initiative to a country like Great Britain,” Merkel said.   [...]

Asked about Macron’s proposals for closer eurozone cooperation, Merkel said she could envisage a future European Monetary Fund paying out short-term credit lines, on top of the long-term credits already provided by the European Stability Mechanism.  [...]

The German chancellor also defended the Spitzenkandidat (or lead candidate) principle for selecting the Commission president, but said the system would need to change with time. “In the long run this will only work if the lead candidate is on top of a transnational list, meaning he can be elected in all countries. Only then will he be independent from a decision of his home country’s government to nominate him.” Currently lead candidates are selected by EU-wide party groups but citizens cannot vote for them directly.

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