openDemocracy: The political significance of LSD

New York University, for example, is hosting clinical trials using psilocybin to treat alcohol addiction. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has been at the forefront of research in treating patients suffering from chronic treatment-resistant PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) with MDMA, commonly known as ‘Ecstasy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently designated its MDMA-assisted psychotherapy project as a ‘breakthrough therapy.’ Apart from MDMA, MAPS also advocates the use of Ayahuasca, Ibogaine and medical marijuana for a variety of conditions ranging from bipolar syndrome and drug addiction to autism-related disorders, ADHD and clinical depression.

The therapeutic use of psychedelics isn’t new. Between 1953 and 1973, the US federal government funded over a hundred studies on LSD with more than 1,700 subjects participating. Psychedelics were tested on convicts, substance abusers, people suffering from chronic depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenics and terminal cancer patients. LSD was also tested on artists and scientists to explore its effects on creativity, and on divinity students to examine spirituality from a neuroscientific perspective. The empirical data gathered from these tests was largely positive. [...]

“It is curious to me that what I see as the two greatest threats—environmental crisis and [political] tribalism—these drugs directly address both those mindsets” Pollan told the Guardian in a recent interview. “They undermine our tendency to objectify nature, to think of ourselves as separate from it. They undermine tribalism in that people tend to emerge from these experiences thinking that we are all more alike, all more connected.”  [...]

Therefore, perhaps real change begins with rewiring our perceptual framework. Psychedelic substances have been ingested sacramentally by indigenous cultures to achieve this goal since the dawn of time, and now they’re being validated by the scientific and medical communities. The shifts in consciousness that can be brought about by psychedelics can help in dissolving the man-made boundaries or fear of the other that are implanted in our collective psyche.

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openDemocracy: Israel and Palestine: a story of modern colonialism

The story of Iqrit is similar to that of the other 530 villages that were razed to the ground in a process that came to be known to the world as the establishment of Israel — and to Palestinians as the “Nakba”, the Arabic word for “catastrophe”. [...]

The foundations of Israel are rooted in a colonial project that has modernized its face but continues to subject Palestinians to military occupation, land dispossession and unequal rights. Seventy years later, the wounds of the Nakba are still open, as Israel prohibits over five million refugees the right of return - while guaranteeing citizenship to anyone who can demonstrate Jewish ancestry. [...]

Moreover, being able to visit the village from where one’s own ancestors were expelled is, unfortunately, not possible for most Palestinians. Since Samer’s relatives fled to locations within Israel and were later granted citizenship, he is free to move around. On the other hand, most Palestinian refugees still live in the occupied territories or in other countries in the region, often in camps that were hastily built in the 1950s as temporary accommodations. As such, they cannot cross into Israel without prior permission. [...]

The loss of personal freedom is a recurring theme in Hassan’s story, and it permeates all aspects of the Palestinian human experience. High unemployment rates in the West Bank have pushed many Palestinians to seek jobs in Israel or in the settlements, where they are hired as cheap labour, often illegally. Leaving the territory without a license means risking imprisonment and, according to Hassan, permits get denied all the time. 

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The Atlantic: The French President Has Described America Like a Rogue State

During an appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies gathered in Quebec, Emmanuel Macron didn’t just reflect on the policies that put Trump at odds with many of the other participants, though there are plenty of those. (See: Trump pulling out of the international Paris climate-change pact, withdrawing from the multilateral Iran nuclear agreement, and imposing steep steel and aluminum tariffs on Europe, Canada, and Mexico.) The leader of America’s oldest ally also stated that the U.S. needed to be persuaded to remain in the “community of nations”—to stay not in the narrow confines of the Paris accord or the Iran deal or some free-trade agreement with the European Union, not even in the broader transatlantic alliance, but in the broadest dimension of the civilized world. [...]

And Macron, it turns out, has company. On Friday, European Council President Donald Tusk, who warned days into the Trump administration that the new American president posed a threat to European unity, arrived in Quebec for the G7 summit and reported that the threat, in fact, was actually much bigger than that. The “rules-based international order is being challenged,” he argued—“not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor: the U.S.”

“We cannot force the U.S. to change their minds,” Tusk noted. “At the same time, we will not stop trying to convince our American friends and President Trump that undermining this order makes no sense at all. Because it would only play into the hands of those who seek a new, post-West order, where liberal democracy and fundamental freedoms would cease to exist. This is in the interest of neither the U.S. nor Europe.”

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The New York Review of Books: Italy: The Bright Side of Populism?

Europe has gone through two major crises in the past decade: the refugee crisis and the euro crisis. Both remain essentially unresolved, but have already profoundly changed the political geography of the continent. The refugee crisis proved to be a boon for right-wing populists in the northern countries; the euro crisis resulted in a revolt against austerity measures prescribed to save the EU’s single currency and eventually led to a surge of left-wing populism in the south. [...]

The FSM in Italy and the radical-left Podemos in Spain are often described as mobilizations of angry citizens, especially the young, in the wake of the international financial crisis of 2008–2009 and the austerity measures imposed on southern countries during the euro crisis that followed. Both groups promote themselves as movements, rather than traditional parties (which Beppe Grillo, the founder of the FSM, has declared “evil”). Both benefit from being associated with ideals of direct democracy, in particular, a system of continuous online participation in decision-making as opposed to delegating power to professionals in parties. This story, “from the barricades to the blogs to the ballot box,” is a little deceptive, though. In Spain, the great popular protests against “politics as usual” took place in 2011, yet Podemos (literally, “We can”) was not formed until 2014. Its founders were political scientists who thought the main lesson from the protests in public squares was that the received ideas of the left no longer resonated with citizens. Instead of left-right, they held, the main political divide should be la casta—the caste of professional politicians—versus el pueblo, or simply: arriba versus abajo (above versus below; or, also, a colorful metaphor promoted by the professors: the elites as cats and the people as mice). Podemos’s instigators even concluded, “If you want to get it right, don’t do what the left would do”—though their actual policy ideas about housing and employment, for instance, were often close to what traditional Social Democrats would have offered.   [...]

Here, though, the stories of the new parties of southern Europe start to diverge. Podemos has failed by its own standards: its leaders described themselves as “artisans with words,” but the new political language they crafted has not, in fact, displaced the traditional discourse of left and right. Podemos has also not succeeded in overtaking Spain’s established Socialist Party in elections. On June 1, Podemos helped bring to power a Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, after the government of the conservative Mariano Rajoy fell because of major corruption scandals. Podemos has become an all-too-normal looking parliamentary party. It even has its own scandals: Iglesias and his partner, Irene Montero, who is Podemos’s spokesperson in parliament, were recently revealed to have acquired a fancy villa outside Madrid; facing internal criticism, the couple held a plebiscite on whether they should stay in office (which they won by two-thirds of the vote). As far back as 2016, one of the early leaders of the partido de profesores, Juan Carlos Monedero, broke ranks to express the view that the populist “Podemos hypothesis” had failed to realize its aspirations of fundamentally remaking Spanish politics. The mice are doing better, one might say, but they haven’t outwitted the cats.  [...]

What makes the contradiction here less glaring is that technocracy and populism, rather than being complete opposites, actually resemble each other in one respect: the technocrat proposes that there is a single rational solution to any policy problem; the populist claims to speak on behalf of the one authentic will of the people, which cannot fail to represent the common good. Put the two together and you get something like the paradox of the current Italian government: two university dropouts—Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, leaders of the League and the FSM, respectively, who have lived their entire lives for, in, and off politics—championing the people while putting nominally apolitical, highly-educated experts in charge of important ministries.

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Spiegel: Increasing Headwinds for Angela Merkel

Merkel's leadership is currently being questioned on all sides, with adversaries and potential rivals flooding out of the woodwork. U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to rein in Germany's economic power, French President Emmanuel Macron is backing her into a corner with his vision of a reformed Europe and back home, the SPD is hardly able to focus on governing, as concerned as it is about its own survival. On Wednesday in parliament, when Merkel took questions from German lawmakers, the Social Democrats were more aggressive in their stance toward the chancellor than some members of the opposition. [...]

Merkel's favored strategy of waiting and watching seems to have outlived its usefulness. Her ability to take into account the interests of all and to forge a compromise no longer works because she no longer has the elbow room she once did: In Berlin, she is trapped in the coalition with the SPD; in Brussels, she is hemmed in by incompatible interests; and on refugee policy, she is a prisoner of her own past. [...]

Trump has identified Merkel as one of his primary adversaries on the world stage. He watched as she got the better of one male world leader after the other - and he wants to put an end to it. He is no longer willing to provide the discounted security that he believes Germany continues to enjoy thanks to America's military might. He wants to slow down Germany's export machine and dictate to Berlin from whom it should purchase its natural gas. And Merkel still has not found a way to dissuade Trump from pursuing his crusade. [...]

Merkel's opponents, both in Germany and abroad, are closing ranks. On Wednesday evening, Marcus Söder, the governor of Bavaria and certainly not a fervent Merkel supporter, held an event in the Antiquarium in the Munich Residence, one of the most important examples of the Renaissance in Germany. Kurz, who ended Merkel's open border policy in early 2016 by closing down the Balkan Route against the German chancellor's will, was also there.

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The Atlantic: Melania Trump Derangement Syndrom

But for some detractors of her husband and his party, Melania Trump’s disappearance has provided fuel for all manner of wild conspiracy theories: She was physically abused by the president. She has given up on their marriage and moved back to New York. She is holed up with the Obamas. Though the curiosity may be genuine, the theorizing also reflects Melania’s role as a magnet for the fever dreams of tumult and chaos among her huband’s opponents. [...]

Likewise, when Mrs. Trump wore a wide-brimmed white hat during French President Emmanuel Macron’s first state visit to the White House, to some observers, it was not merely a fashion statement: It was sartorial protest, a sign from the White House wilderness that the first lady was actually a gladiator for good—in the mold of Scandal’s Olivia Pope.  [...]

Gone is talk of anyone inside the administration itself—whether H. R. McMaster or Rex Tillerson or James Mattis or John Kelly—being a mitigating force. The president has already revealed his strategy to discredit the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and, as of Monday morning, pardon himself. And so critics have perhaps wanted Melania Trump to be the surprise ending to this Trump saga, the witness who flipped. Their speculation has gotten increasingly wild as the options for a bailout trend more toward fantasy. What if a white hat is just an unconventional piece of White House head wear, and a pantsuit simply a modern ensemble for a big-ticket event? What if Melania Trump likes the wardrobe budget and just wants to be left alone?

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Jacobin Magazine: The Portuguese Myth

Portugal asked for a bailout in 2011, one year after Greece, and from the beginning, it was treated as “the good student.” “Portugal is not Greece” was repeated over and over again. And it’s true. From the end of 2014 the European Central Bank, through the Bank of Portugal, was allowed to buy Portuguese public debt bonds directly, in a form of quantitative easing. This had two positive outcomes: it lowered the interest rates on the debt, and a part of the interest rates paid by the Portuguese government could thus be paid to the Bank of Portugal, therefore re-injecting money into the Portuguese economy. The European institutions never allowed the Syriza-led government in Greece to resort to such quantitative easing. [...]

The agreement allowed the left-wing parties to vote against some of the government’s measures, since they are not subject to the same discipline as in a real coalition. They insisted that this was not their government and that it wouldn’t solve the country’s fundamental problems, at the same time as they tried to answer the popular hopes of an end to the most damaging austerity measures. [...]

This is no miracle: it is the combination of internal factors (small income growth, a shift of the narrative around austerity and, therefore, in consumption patterns) and most importantly, external political factors. Not only do part of the European institutions support this government, but the country has also benefited from the political crisis in the Middle East, in the sense that it has driven a fall in the price of oil (an important factor for an import-based economy) and pushed tourism away from this region in favor of destinations like Portugal.

If we look closely, we can see other problems with this government. The troika labor laws were left untouched, collective bargaining has almost vanished, and precarity is on the rise. A study by the Observatório das Desigualdades places the real unemployment rate at 17.5 percent — much less than the 28 percent in 2013 but far above the official government numbers (8.5 percent). Almost all the new jobs that have been created are precarious. Public services are crumbling: both health and education are heavily underfunded and on the verge of collapse. The Portuguese banking system is a ticking time bomb, with more banks bailed out with public money but not under public control, leaving it more vulnerable to shifts at the European center than in 2008. The central question of the debt has in fact disappeared from public debate.

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The Local: Here are the main things Italian PM Giuseppe Conte said in his first speech

"One of our objectives is to eliminate the growth gap between Italy and the European Union [...] In Europe, these issues will be strongly put forward with the aim of changing its governance, a change already under reflection and discussion in all EU member states. [...]

"Europe is our home. As a founding member we have every right to demand a stronger, fairer Europe in which the economic and monetary union is geared towards protecting the needs of its citizens, to balance the principles of responsibility and solidarity more effectively." [...]

"We will call strongly for the Dublin Regulation to be overhauled in order to ensure that the principle of fair distribution of responsibilities is respected, and to achieve an automatic system of obligatory resettlement of asylum seekers. [...]

"We defend and will defend immigrants who arrive legally in our country, who work and integrate themselves in our community while respecting the law and making a positive contribution to development. But to guarantee this indispensable integration, we must not only combat the most vile forms of exploitation linked to human trafficking [...] but also reorganize and streamline our reception system, assuring transparency on the use of public funds and wiping out all infiltration by organized crime groups."

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Politico: Scholz: ‘Timing is good’ for EU financial transaction tax

An EU-wide tax on financial transactions should finally become reality as the bloc seeks to fill the hole in its budget left by Britain’s departure, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published on Saturday. [...]

Scholz noted the idea of using a financial transaction tax to bolster the EU budget had been raised by French President Emmanuel Macron. He suggested it could raise between €5 billion and €7 billion.

Scholz also said it was “right and proper” to think about how revenue earned by internet companies in Europe should be taxed, but stopped short of endorsing an EU-wide digital tax — another idea advanced by Macron.

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