Politico: ‘Why Germany?’ Trump’s strange fixation vexes experts

n recent months, Trump has complained that he sees too many German cars on American streets. He has falsely charged that crime is spiking in the country. He has reportedly complained about the size of America’s decades-long troop presence in the country. And as German Chancellor Angela Merkel battles a political crisis over immigration, he seems to take pleasure in seeing “the people of Germany … turning against their leadership.” [...]

Theories abound about the reason for Trump’s German fixation — all the more surprising given his own German ancestry — and there may be no single answer. They range from Trump’s seeming belief that Germany has grown wealthy by mooching off the U.S. to the notion that he resents strong women like Merkel, who also happened to be one of President Barack Obama’s closest allies. [...]

The timing of Trump’s outburst — sitting across a table from a surprised-looking NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg — is especially alarming to many observers because Trump is to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday amid concern that he is too close to the autocratic Russian leader. [...]

“Berlin is realizing that we have to think about how Germany gets on with its future without the United States as a strong partner for the remainder of the Trump presidency,” said David-Wilp, who is based in Berlin. “And there’s no guarantee that a post-Trump America will also bounce back to be the partner that Germany once knew.”

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Haaretz: Romania Starts to Confront Holocaust Past, but ‘Cycle of Denial’ Remains

But Antonescu’s regime was more than just any ally: Romania was Germany’s major ally on the Eastern Front after 1941, providing hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the Nazi war machine. As historian Timothy Snyder stresses in his 2015 book “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning,” Romania was the only other state to “generate an autonomous policy of the direct mass murder of Jews.” [...]

His words were heeded. In October 1941, after an explosion at the Romanian military headquarters in Odessa that Antonescu blamed on the Jews, Romanian troops murdered approximately 40,000 of Odessa’s Jews. According to Yad Vashem, 19,000 of Odessa’s Jews were taken to the harbor and burnt alive, while another 20,000 Jews were taken to a an outlying village to be shot or burnt to death. [...]

This “cycle of denial,” in the words of Holocaust historian Paul A. Shapiro, wasn’t broken in Romania until 2003, after then-President Ion Iliescu made several controversial comments about there never having been a Holocaust within Romania’s borders. “The Holocaust was not unique to the Jews,” Iliescu was quoted as telling Haaretz at the time. [...]

The report, as Geissbühler and others note, resulted in some positive steps in Romania. In 2009, a Holocaust memorial was erected in Bucharest, unambiguously stating that “the Romanian state was responsible for the deaths of at least 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews.” There have also been changes to school textbooks and education about the Holocaust, as well as a resurgent interest in scholarship in the field.

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openDemocracy: Muslim women’s rights are also women’s rights

According to a recent report by the Open Society Justice Initiative, nearly one in three EU member states have placed legal restrictions on Muslim women’s dress at either local or national level. In addition, bans on headscarves and other Muslim women’s dress by both businesses and public institutions have been increasingly reported in nearly half of the EU countries. This has resulted in preventing these women from accessing jobs. How can this be seriously reconciled with EU principles of non-discrimination and gender equality?

However, there is hope for an inclusive Europe as in most countries, proposals for legal bans have been rejected either by legislators or by the courts. This means that there are many people fighting back against attempts to stigmatise and discriminate against Muslim women, including strong civil society campaigns.

This is all the more important as analysis shows that many of these bans on religious dress, although framed as though they apply to all religious groups equally, in fact clearly and visibly target Muslim women. Indeed, restrictions are often adopted after heated debates on Muslim women’s dress and the presence of Muslims in Europe. The ‘neutrality’ argument is used frequently only as an attempt to legally discriminate against Muslim women. In addition, many far-right parties are increasingly pushing for these bans, using Islamophobic discourses. [...]

EU member states should assess the specific effects of rules on religious dress in public and private institutions on Muslim women. They should also ensure that practices and policies promote fully inclusive workplaces, places of education and public spaces, including by rejecting any new proposals to ban religious clothing in employment and institutions. Why has it been so hard so far to choose inclusion over exclusion in support of women’s emancipation?

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SciShow: Do Animals Appreciate Music?

Animals might be music lovers, but how can we know? Is the ability to perceive and appreciate music a shared human and animal experience?

Verge Science: Why graphene hasn’t taken over the world...yet

Graphene is a form of carbon that could bring us bulletproof armor and space elevators, improve medicine, and make the internet run faster — some day. For the past 15 years, consumers have been hearing about this wonder material and all the ways it could change everything. Is it really almost here, or is it another promise that is perpetually just one more breakthrough away?

The Calvert Journal: Watch the new film celebrating Ukraine’s Brutalist beauty

Kiev is a city of eclectic beauty, with modernist landmarks that dot the skyline. But as the capital grows and evolves, many of these Soviet-era gems are falling out of favour and into disrepair, with many already cleared away to make room for newer projects.

Among the buildings at risk of demolition are Ukraine’s Institute of Scientific, Technical and Economic Information and the State Scientific and Technical Library — otherwise known as Kiev’s iconic “UFO Building” — already on the verge of being swallowed up by the shopping mall next door.  

Soviet Modernism, Brutalism, Post-Modernism: Buildings and Projects in Ukraine from 1960 – 1990 is a love letter to this endangered architectural heritage. Inspired by a book of the same name — due to be published in October 2018 — the film draws in the audience, using warm tones and a fixed lens to build a sense of intimacy with these unwieldy concrete objects.  

The aim, says director Roman Blazhan, is to build bridges that will help the audience to notice the unseen modernist structures which dominate everyday life.

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Politico: Czech parliament confirms Babiš minority government

The coalition nearly fell apart last month when President Miloš Zeman rejected the Social Democrats’ choice for foreign minister, Miroslav Poche, because of his support of migrant quotas. Social Democratic chairman Jan Hamáček, who is also interior minister, will temporarily fill the post. [...]

On the other hand, said Pehe, it could be difficult to topple the ANO-led government because the opposition is not united. “If the Social Democrats leave the coalition, Zeman has sway over the [right-wing extremist Freedom and Direct Democracy party] and the Communists and could convince them that supporting the government is in their best interest because they could lose their influential parliamentary positions agreed with Babiš,” he said. [...]

Not everyone is happy about the coalition deal. Putting the Communists into a position of influence for the first time since 1989, when the Velvet Revolution put an end to 40 years of Communist Party rule, has sparked public protests in the Czech capital as well as political resentment. [...]

The government is also likely to feel heat from the Catholic Church, because one of the Communists’ demands in exchange for supporting the government was a tax on property confiscated by the Communist regime and restituted after the revolution, including churches.

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Politico: Trump’s whiplash NATO summit

At a press conference later, Trump sidestepped a question about the threat, said he believed he had the authority to withdraw from NATO without congressional approval, and boasted that he had secured agreement for far larger spending commitments by allies. That claim was swiftly refuted by others including Macron, who said leaders did not alter their declaration in any way in response to Trump.[...]

Trump’s disruption of the NATO summit continues a pattern of tumult by the American president at major international gatherings. At the G7 last month, when the summit had reached a successful conclusion, he tweeted his fury from Air Force One and repudiated summit conclusions he had already agreed.

In Brussels, officials initially said Trump was more conciliatory, but he apparently became angry after reading news coverage that did not reflect his anger over allies’ reluctance to spend more on defense. [...]

Shaheen, the other co-chair of the NATO Observer Group, noted that Congress had responded to Trump’s threats towards the allies with a resolution adopted 97-2 supporting NATO and explicitly reaffirming the North Atlantic Treaty’s Article 5 mutual defense commitment.

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The Local: The ambitious plan to turn Berlin’s central canal into a giant swimming pool

Despite its reputation, the Spree isn’t actually all that dirty - at least most of the time. When the river enters the capital its waters are so clean that you can go for a dip without worrying about your health, Edler's organization, Flussbad Berlin, claims.

The problems start inside the city, or more specifically, when it starts to rain in the city. Around 15 times a year, heavy rainfall overloads the city’s 19th century “mixed” drainage system. The sewage and rainwater which normally head towards sewage facilities overflow into the river, spewing faeces, detergents and tampons into the river. [...]

To this end, the city is generously backing the Flussbad Berlin project with €4 million to help it realize its aim. Berlin politicians are taking the project so seriously that it was written into the coalition treaty when a new city government was formed in 2016. [...]

Agreeing on access points to the water has been one major sticking point. At first the plan foresaw a wide set of steps at the Lustgarten park. But this plan was nixed by the city’s Monuments Authority which raised objections including that the swimming area would lead to overcrowding in the historical 19th century park.

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