Spiegel: Suicide Casts Doubts On German Deportation Policies

The German government has always assured that deported Afghans would be supported by the German Embassy when they made a fresh start back in their home country. But as so often happens, a terror warning was in place on the day of their arrival, and no diplomat made it to the airport. Instead, employees of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and a German police officer were there to receive the returnees. [...]

Seehofer has irritated friends and foes alike with his refugee policy spectacle in recent weeks -- one that came close to bringing down Merkel's government and ending his own political career. His appearance last Tuesday served only to strengthen opponents who have been calling for his resignation. "The line between showing toughness and being downright cynical is no longer blurred for Seehofer -- it's simply gone," says Omid Nouripour, a member of parliament with the Green Party. When he talks about migration policy, Seehofer is fond of boasting about deportation and repatriation statistics. The Mahmodi case now makes clear that there's a personal story behind every deportation, even if Mahmodi isn't exactly an innocent victim. [...]

One thing is certain, though: Interior Minister Seehofer, in particular, wanted to set an example by deporting large numbers of Afghans. Following the attack on the German Embassy in Kabul in May 2017, the German government temporarily refrained from deporting people to Afghanistan, but it resumed the practice last fall.

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The New York Review of Books: The Romanovs’ Art of Survival

For many Romanov exiles—hounded, stripped of their wealth, living under the constant fear of further reprisals—art became, in part, a coping mechanism. Later, as the memory of the massacre gave way in its immediacy, new generations of Romanovs took to art for reasons not so different from the rest of us: to meditate, to understand, and to express.

Over the twentieth century, the Romanovs produced a vast artistic trove that few are aware of, since most of their creative output was meant for family consumption. Because the family was scattered around the world by the events of the revolution, that collection is currently dispersed among private archives, family albums, basements, under-the-bed boxes and, in rarer cases, museums and galleries. When studied as a whole—in as much as its fragmented nature affords—two persistent themes emerge. One is the Romanovs’ intense, penetrating view of nature. For centuries, nature exploration has been a favorite Romanov family pastime. In those inimitable Russian forests, mountains, and steppe, they found aesthetic pleasure, refuge, and, at times, salvation.

The second is the idiosyncratic playfulness with which the Romanovs used art as family entertainment. The colorful vignettes and illustrations that decorate their letters, the doodles and cartoons, the hand-drawn holiday cards and booklets, the tchotchkes and painted pebbles they gifted each other at birthdays and anniversaries amount to a secret language developed and reinvented from generation to generation in ways that even the scattered state of the family in the twentieth century could not undo. Imaginative, often humorous, and at times fantastical, these artifacts paint a different, more authentic portrait of a family whose life and legacy continue to pique our interest, one hundred years after the Romanovs were swept off the world’s political stage. For what is art if not a window into another’s mind?

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The Atlantic: The End of All Illusions

Even Fox News was appalled at President Donald Trump’s performance at his Helsinki press conference alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin. The network, usually only too happy to cheer on the president, responded somewhat differently this time to Trump’s insistence that “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial” of Russian involvement in election interference. Neil Cavuto, a Fox Business Network host, called the press conference “disgusting.” Appearing on Fox, Mary Kissel of the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board said, “President Putin scored a great propaganda victory by standing up with President Trump on that stage.” Newt Gingrich declared that Trump’s comments were “the most serious mistake of his presidency.” [...]

But he didn’t. In fact, almost every outrageous comment Trump made at the Helsinki press conference was a variation on something he’d said before. That doesn’t mean those comments weren’t outrageous. But it does mean that the furor over his performance has the echo of Captain Renault’s sudden outrage in Rick’s Cafe: “I am shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here!” [...]

The visual of Trump framed by American and Russian flags, standing alongside a smirking Putin and insisting that Russia had no involvement in his election, was a shocking one. It clarified and distilled into a single frame the president’s appalling lack of care about an assault on the democratic life of the American people and his inability to carry out the duties of his office. As with his comments after the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump’s obsequiousness toward Putin ripped away what remained of a very tattered fig leaf. Just as Charlottesville made it no longer quite so taboo to describe the president as sympathetic to white supremacy, perhaps Helsinki will allow mainstream commentators to more comfortably acknowledge the danger of the Trump presidency on the world stage. [...]

Multiple times on the day of the summit, Trump also gestured toward what Representative Liz Cheney—otherwise a strong supporter of the president—decried as a “moral equivalence” between the United States and Russia. Before his meeting with Putin, he suggested that the “Rigged Witch Hunt” was responsible for a decline in U.S. relations with Russia. Asked by a reporter whether he “[held] Russia accountable” for that decline, the president doubled down: “I hold both countries responsible … I think we’re all to blame.” There is more than an echo here of Trump’s comments on Putin to Bill O’Reilly in February 2017: “There are a lot of killers,” he said. “You think our country’s so innocent?”

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The Economist: Putin's Russia and the ghosts of the Romanovs

The Atlantic: One Country, Two Radically Different Narratives

At the same time, many respondents didn’t seem to care about civic issues that have gotten major attention from scholars, journalists, and government officials, pointing to another possible perception gap between elites and everyone else. In both Americas, people care about protecting civic life. They just can’t agree on what its problems are. [...]

But respondents’ opinions were sharply split along partisan lines. Only 42 percent of self-identified Republicans see the outsize influence of money in politics as a big issue, compared with 82 percent of Democrats who said the same. Both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about low voter turnout, but 78 percent of Democrats said it is a major problem, versus 58 percent of Republicans. And while 81 percent of Republicans see media bias toward certain political candidates as a major problem, only 41 percent of Democrats said the same thing. In general, 91 percent of Democrats think America is on the “wrong track,” compared with 70 percent of Republicans who said the country is going in the “right direction.” [...]

Each of these stories may contain truth, but Americans seem to assign them relative importance based on who they are and who they listen to. Age and race, in particular, affected respondents’ views on some of these questions: Older Americans are more likely than their younger peers to think media bias and too few people voting are major issues, for example. Whites are more likely than people of color to see media bias as a major problem; notably, 94 percent of self-identified white evangelical Protestants said media bias is a major or minor problem in America’s current electoral system. By far, party affiliation was the greatest source of division.

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Social Europe: Unhinge Europe From America!

Subsequently, European leaders must now take decisive steps to unhinge the continent from the whims of American politics and constitute a new geopolitical EU identity. This need not be a call to economic or military arms, but a recognition that Trump sees only two options: maintain existing geopolitical status quo or protect the vulnerable people of Pittsburgh from the rest of the world. His choice is by now clear to any political novice. His subsequent actions that dispense with trading mechanisms such as the WTO, undermining the stability of global trade by imposing illegal tariffs on other countries, are in step with his country’s political history.

Strategic steps to unhinge the continent from the whims of American politics must now be a European priority rather than harboring forlorn hope that the political hiccup of Trump in the bell curve of geopolitical history will soon pass and things can get back to normal.When President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, writes that the “US doesn’t have and won’t have a better ally than EU,” he seemingly refuses to accept the sordid reality that Trump does not want to be an ally of the EU which he repeatedly says is “very unfair” to Pittsburgh’s vulnerable people.   [...]

Unhinging Europe today will mean that whatever happens in American politics post-Trump will not have as much impact on the continent and its people. Unhinging Europe from the whims of American politics is a pathway towards a mature and independent Europe. Unhinging Europe presents an opportunity for confidently advancing the EU’s political and economic projects. Unhinging Europe today means charting a focused path towards peace and stability in the continent. Unhinging Europe today means the EU can begin to transform its alleged “weak” identity to one of geopolitical leader.  Unhinging Europe today is not an act of isolating the continent and its people but meets a need to bring balance to the international rules and norms on trade and security.

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Politico: How Theresa May could stumble off the Brexit cliff

One commits the U.K. to leaving the EU’s VAT area after Brexit. Some experts say this all but guarantees a hard border in Ireland, undermining the whole purpose of May’s compromise Chequers plan. Charles Grant, the director of the Center for European Reform, said: “Unless we stay in EU’s VAT area, we cannot avoid a hard border.”

For their part, the EU will not sign any withdrawal agreement that does not guarantee an open border in Ireland. No withdrawal treaty means no deal, which means no Brexit transition period and the U.K. crashing out of the European Union in March 2019. [...]

Brexiteers believe the amendment kills off the prime minister’s plan, which they hate, which in turn means the backstop becomes more important to the EU because it might actually be needed. No. 10 denies this, but that was the Brexiteers’ purpose.  [...]

By siding with Brexiteers instead of Tory Remainers, May avoided a Euroskeptic rebellion, but united the pro-European wing of her party with Labour. One minister was clear about the tight spot the government is now in: “I don’t have any insight, other than it’s a big f***ing problem.”

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Politico: EU should keep Turkey close and Erdoğan even closer

Today, Turkey’s prospects for joining the EU are the lowest they have been since talks began in 2005. Indeed, one of the few things Europeans and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can agree on is that for the moment, EU membership is out of question.

And, yet it would be a mistake for the EU to turn its back on its southeastern neighbor. Not only does Turkey remain an important partner when it comes to energy, security and trade; a rapid deterioration would strengthen — rather than weaken — the country’s increasingly authoritarian president. [...]

The EU is still by far Turkey’s dominant trading partner. The bloc takes in close to half of Turkey’s exports and provides about two-thirds of the foreign direct investment going into the country. And when it comes to matters of international trade — for instance, U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel — Turkey would be far worse off fighting alone, rather than in coordination with the EU, with which it has been bound in a customs union since 1996.

The EU needs Turkey too. Notwithstanding the election results, the European Council agreed on June 29 to release the second tranche of €3 billion in financial assistance for Syrian refugees. Imperfect as it is, the EU-Turkey refugee deal reached in March 2016 to stem the tide of asylum seekers has stuck. With migration remaining a burning political issue in key EU countries like Germany, the partnership with Ankara is set to endure. [...]

If the EU were to pull the plug on membership talks, that would be a gift to the Turkish president. He will whip up nationalism and lay blame for whatever problems the country confronts — be it inflation spiraling out of control or an uptick of violence in the Kurdish-populated south-eastern provinces — at Europe’s feet. Far better to let Erdoğan to take this momentous decision, and deal with its consequences domestically.

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Wisecrack: How Fahrenheit 451 Predicted Fake News – How Did We Get Here?