Spiegel: 'I Don't Like Being in Exile'

Puigdemont: Unfortunately, it is indeed different in Spain. The Spanish legal system has more weaknesses. If we Catalans want to split from Spain, it's because of the 1978 Constitution. For example, the judge who will decide on my appeals used to be a senator in the conservative People's Party. How can he be trusted? We can turn to the European Court of Justice, but that would leave many people languishing in jail for years before any ruling in their favor on the grounds that Spain has violated their fundamental rights. [...]

Puigdemont: It wasn't only my doing. It was a combination of two factors: The fact that the people mobilized, and the new communication platforms. What would have had to happen in secret just a few decades ago can now be shared all over the world. When I was in Helsinki, just before I was arrested in Germany in March, I said: We want a society in which the smartphone is more powerful than the sword. [...]

Puigdemont: That doesn't surprise me. I always warned that no one would recognize an independent Catalan state. I have criticized the EU for failing to make an official statement on what position it would take on an independent Catalonia. But above all, as a European citizen, I was deeply disappointed by the silence after the police violence on the day of the referendum. [...]

Puigdemont: We never talk in terms of nationalism, but of sovereignty. What is happening in Catalonia is not a traditional, nationalist struggle for independence. If our aim were to create a nation-state, we would have tried to do so earlier. Nationalism is a danger to Europe.

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The Atlantic: The Universe as We Understand It May Be Impossible

But now, Vafa and his colleagues were conjecturing that in the string landscape, universes like ours—or what ours is thought to be like—don’t exist. If the conjecture is correct, Wrase and other string theorists immediately realized, the cosmos must either be profoundly different than previously supposed or string theory must be wrong. [...]

The conjectured formula—posed in the June 25 paper by Vafa, Georges Obied, Hirosi Ooguri, and Lev Spodyneiko, and further explored in a second paper released two days later by Vafa, Obied, Prateek Agrawal, and Paul Steinhardt—says, simply, that as the universe expands, the density of energy in the vacuum of empty space must decrease faster than a certain rate. The rule appears to be true in all simple string-theory-based models of universes. But it violates two widespread beliefs about the actual universe: It deems impossible both the accepted picture of the universe’s present-day expansion and the leading model of its explosive birth. [...]

The conjecture, if true, would mean the density of dark energy in our universe cannot be constant, but must instead take a form called “quintessence”—an energy source that will gradually diminish over tens of billions of years. Several telescope experiments are underway now to more precisely probe whether the universe is expanding with a constant rate of acceleration, which would mean that as new space is created, a proportionate amount of new dark energy arises with it, or whether the cosmic acceleration is gradually changing, as in quintessence models. A discovery of quintessence would revolutionize fundamental physics and cosmology, including rewriting the cosmos’ history and future. Instead of tearing apart in a Big Rip, a quintessent universe would gradually decelerate, and in most models would eventually stop expanding and contract in either a Big Crunch or Big Bounce. [...]

Vafa thinks a concerted search for definitely stable de Sitter universe models is long overdue. His conjecture is, above all, intended to press the issue. In his view, string theorists have not felt sufficiently motivated to figure out whether string theory really is capable of describing our world, instead taking the attitude that because the string landscape is huge, there must be a place in it for us, even if no one knows where. “The bulk of the community in string theory still sides on the side of de Sitter constructions” existing, he says, “because the belief is, ‘Look, we live in a de Sitter universe with positive energy; therefore we better have examples of that type.’”

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The New York Review of Books: Between Hate, Hope, and Help: Haitians in the Dominican Republic

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, the largest in the Caribbean after Cuba, but the peoples on either side of the island rarely mix thanks to decades of political tensions and mutual fears fed by a history of wars, massacres, and other atrocities. Some are hopeful that the Dajabón market is a testament to these neighbors’ capacity to get along. But as politicians have manipulated racialized anxieties and fears that defy economic logic and business interests, the strain between the two countries has only intensified. [...]

Yet the economic imperative for Haitians to attempt the border crossing has never slackened; those who do so are leaving the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. When Haiti’s government sharply increased fuel prices in 2018, in accordance with a deal with the International Monetary Fund, political tensions escalated. A series of protests followed by violence, pillaging, and arson exposed how fragile the country’s political stability is—and how much the country’s elites are letting down their own people. After the 2010 earthquake that killed at least 220,000 Haitians, billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, but rampant corruption, corrosive poverty, misguided governance, and extreme weather events have prevented any significant improvement, and Haitians continue to struggle for better lives. [...]

The historical animosity between Haitians and Dominicans is rooted not only in language, but in attitudes toward race. Santo Domingo, founded in 1496 by Spaniards, was the first European colony in the Americas. The French settled in the western part of the island, where they made a fortune by using slaves to grow sugar cane. Then, in 1791, a slave rebellion drove out the French, making Haiti the world’s first independent black republic in 1804. In 1822, Haiti occupied its Spanish-speaking neighbor, an episode in that country’s history that has left the image of Haitians as machete-wielding killers in the collective imagination of many Dominicans. And although Haitians later helped Dominicans to expel the Spanish colonizers, in 1863–1865, the Dominican Republic still chooses to celebrate its independence from Haiti in 1844. [...]

In 1937, that history of enmity and bigotry resulted in the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Haitians along the border by Dominican soldiers armed with machetes. What became known as the Parsley Massacre—so called, according to legend, because soldiers challenged people to pronounce the word “parsley” in Spanish to identify whether they were Dominican or Haitian, killing them if they could not—was ordered by Trujillo. The Dominican strongman pursued harsh anti-Haitian policies despite the fact that one of his grandparents was from Haiti.

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Aeon: It wasn’t just hate. Fascism offered robust social welfare

The origins of fascism lay in a promise to protect people. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a rush of globalisation destroyed communities, professions and cultural norms while generating a wave of immigration. Right-wing nationalist movements promising to protect people from the pernicious influence of foreigners and markets arose, and frightened, disoriented and displaced people responded. These early fascist movements disrupted political life in some countries, but they percolated along at a relatively low simmer until the Second World War. [...]

These appeals enabled the fascists to garner support from almost all socioeconomic groups. Italy was a young country (formed in the 1860s), plagued by deep regional and social divisions. By claiming to serve the best interests of the entire national community, it was in fact the fascists who became Italy’s first true ‘people’s party’.

After coming to power, the Italian fascists created recreational circles, student and youth groups, sports and excursion activities. These organisations all furthered the fascists’ goals of fostering a truly national community. The desire to strengthen (a fascist) national identity also compelled the regime to extraordinary cultural measures. They promoted striking public architecture, art exhibitions, and film and radio productions. The regime intervened extensively in the economy. As one fascist put it: ‘There cannot be any single economic interests which are above the general economic interests of the state, no individual, economic initiatives which do not fall under the supervision and regulation of the state, no relationships of the various classes of the nation which are not the concern of the state.’ Such policies kept fascism popular until the late 1930s, when Mussolini threw his lot in with Hitler. It was only the country’s involvement in the Second World War, and the Italian regime’s turn to a more overtly ‘racialist’ understanding of fascism, that began to make Italian fascism unpopular. [...]

Nazi Germany remained capitalist. But it had also undertaken state intervention in the economy unprecedented in capitalist societies. The Nazis also supported an extensive welfare state (of course, for ‘ethnically pure’ Germans). It included free higher education, family and child support, pensions, health insurance and an array of publically supported entertainment and vacation options. All spheres of life, economy included, had to be subordinated to the ‘national interest’ (Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz), and the fascist commitment to foster social equality and mobility. Radical meritocratic reforms are not usually thought of as signature Nazi measures, but, as Hitler once noted, the Third Reich has ‘opened the way for every qualified individual – whatever his origins – to reach the top if he is qualified, dynamic, industrious and resolute’.

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The Washington Post: Why the Vatican continues to struggle with sex abuse scandals

The church has had more than three decades — since notable abuse cases first became public — to safeguard victims, and itself, against such system failures. And, in the past five years, many Catholics have looked to Francis as a figure who could modernize the church and help it regain its credibility.

But Francis’s track record in handling abuse is mixed, something some outsiders attribute to his learning curve or shortcomings and others chalk up to resistance from a notoriously change-averse institution. [...]

Whereas transparency is typically advised, the church remains quiet about its investigations and disciplinary procedures. It does not release any data on the inquiries it has carried out. A proposed tribunal for judging bishops accused of negligence or coverup was quashed by the Vatican department that was supposed to help implement it. And, rather than being fired and publicly admonished, offending church leaders are typically allowed to resign without explanation. [...]

“I think we have reached a point where bishops alone investigating bishops is not the answer,” said Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany. “We bishops want to rise to this challenge, which may well be our last opportunity considering all that has happened.”

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openDemocracy: Iraq’s protest movement reveals the failure of the post-2003 regime

On July 8th, a group of young unemployed men gathered around the offices of foreign oil companies in the north of Basra to obtain their right to be employed. The Iraqi security forces violently repressed the demonstration killing Saad Al-Mansuri, a 26 year old father of 3. This mobilized the local population to take to the streets again and the demonstrations soon spread to other major cities in the south. In the first two weeks of protests according the Iraqi Observatory of Human Rights more than a dozen protesters have been killed at the hands of the security forces and various armed groups, more than 600 wounded and 600 have been arrested, many released after being brutalized and threatened. [...]

Prime minister Haider al-Abadi promised to judge the perpetrators while the Interior Ministry described the protests as “serial sabotage”. Through their media channels and statements, the Iraqi political elite is depicting the protesters as “saboteurs” led by “foreign agents” or Baath affiliates without any proof for these accusations.

The Iraqi regime is structured by militarization and is a producer of political and social violence. The various armed groups and militias are deeply connected to the sectarian and corrupt political elite that came to power in 2003. Some of them have been institutionalized after their involvement in the war against the Islamist State in Mosul. Groups such as Hadi al-Ameri’s Iran-backed al-Badr brigades, Qais al-Khazali’s Rightous League, Ammar al-Hakim’s Ashura Brigades, Kataeb Hezbollah or Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, were further normalised through their participation in the general parliamentary elections in May. Leaders of paramilitary forces and militias are now members of the parliament despite being responsible for the threatening, kidnapping and killing of civil society activists and many human rights violations in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq. Some of these groups have also fought alongside the regime in Syria taking part in the ongoing war in the neighboring country. [...]

What distinguished this wave of protest from the one in 2015 is that it is led by ordinary citizens and not by any organized civil society or political group. This lack of a centralized organization made its repression easier for the security forces. In 2015 the protest movement composed of organized civil society groups, part of the Iraqi left and Moqtada al-Sadr’s supporters broke into Baghdad’s Green Zone – the cordoned off and fortified zone of the capital where state institutions are located - and entered the office of the head of the government and the Iraqi parliament , the authorities did not use force against them.

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openDemocracy: Can the Corbynite left make peace with Zionism?

The moral and legal case for the rights of refugees, and the people that remained to suffer slow erasure and systematic subjugation, is watertight. Palestinians were victims of historic injustice as surely as were the Native Americans and Aborigines of Australia. No just solution to the conflict could exclude their claims for liberation and restitution. But their supporters may have to think a little harder about what rigid opposition to Zionism means to Jewish people, and whether efforts to keep fighting the war of 1948 are politically useful for Palestinians. [...]

Pro-Palestinian activists are often frustrated by the refusal of liberal Zionists to support their campaigns and positions when they should in theory be natural allies in a fight for universal human rights. Instead, particularly at times of war and crisis, liberals often align more closely with right-wing Zionists whose hawkish and often openly racist attitudes to Palestinians should not be possible to square with their own values. One major contributor to this state of affairs is that anti-Zionism is a red line that few Zionists, and by extension few Jews, are willing to cross no matter what horrors are perpetrated by the Israeli state, and what chauvinism takes hold among its supporters. To take an unyielding position against Zionism is to make an opponent of all Jews who cannot countenance the dissolution of a Jewish homeland, and drives progressive Jews into the orbit of the ultra-nationalist right. [...]

On a pragmatic note, the precarity of the Palestinian position supports the case for a new approach. If Palestinians are to avoid the fate of Native Americans and Aborigines, herded into isolated enclaves with only a residual, diminished identity, urgent action is required to forestall that ongoing process. Since much of the Palestinian liberation strategy is invested in efforts to build international solidarity, inspired by the example of South Africa, the imperative to expand and mobilise an effective global movement is clear. Dropping the requirement for anti-Zionism would lift a major barrier to participation in the movement for progressive Jews as well as people who sympathise with both sides, while exposing the intransigence of hardline nationalists who refuse to recognise the validity of Palestinian claims. The fantasy of reversing Zionism is not one that Palestinians have time to indulge, the better strategy is to shape its course.

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Politico: Angela Merkel: No Balkan border changes

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić last month floated the idea of partitioning Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008. The most commonly discussed scenario would involve the north of Kosovo being recognized as part of Serbia. Another often-discussed possibility is that a mainly ethnic Albanian part of southern Serbia could join Kosovo. [...]

For years, international officials have strenuously rejected further border changes in the Western Balkans, which was torn apart by war in 1990s as Yugoslavia collapsed into smaller states. Any change to Kosovo’s borders would prompt secession demands from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb Republic and likely spark calls for other boundary changes in the region. [...]

The United States has so far stayed out of the renewed debate, prompting speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump could be open to brokering a partition deal.

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