The blog will resume on the 20th September 2018
25 August 2018
Spiegel: Berlin Softens Tone on Turkey
The looming collapse of the Turkish economy is a genuine dilemma for the German government. It doesn't want the Turkish economy to fall deeper into crisis, no matter what. "If Turkey becomes unstable, we'll have a huge problem in Europe," claim sources close to Merkel. They are worried about potential consequences for the eurozone and the German economy, about the 3 million Turks living in Germany and about the possible unraveling of the deal with Ankara that is preventing more refugees from making their way to Europe. [...]
When Andrea Nahles, the head of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), raised the possibility of German aid for Turkey, it was followed by a prompt denial from the government. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz of the SPD also had little enthusiasm for the idea. [...]
At the same time, the German government set in motion an unprecedented round of phone calls and visits. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz demonstratively invited his Turkish counterpart and Erdogan's son-in-law Berat Albayrak to Berlin. Even before President Erdogan embarks on his visit with full military honors to Berlin in four weeks, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) will travel to Ankara. He will meet with his Turkish counterpart Melvüt Cavusoglu and Parliamentary President Binali Yildirim and possibly even Erdogan himself. Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) is planning a visit to Turkey a few weeks later. [...]
But the German government also wants something back in return for its support. It has communicated to Ankara in various ways that the seven Germans still being held in Turkey for political reasons, partly without charges, must be freed. The lifting of the ban on Turkish-German journalist Mesale Tolu leaving Turkey on Monday is being viewed as an early sign of compromise by the German government, and as an indication that further decisions in this vein can be expected in the near future. If that happens, German government sources say, it is also feasible that Germany would stop blocking negotiations in the EU for a customs union with Turkey.
The Atlantic: The Awkward Alliance Between Democrats and Jeff Sessions
Senate Democrats were aghast when Donald Trump, then the president-elect, named one of his staunchest campaign supporters to lead the Justice Department a few weeks after his surprise election victory. They viewed Sessions as a virulently anti-immigrant legislator with a racist past, and as a Trump loyalist who would do the president’s bidding as attorney general while blocking criminal-justice reform and taking a buzz saw to civil and voting rights. All but one Democrat—Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia—voted against Sessions’s confirmation. And Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fought so strenuously to defeat him that Senate Republicans used an obscure parliamentary rule to silence her.
As attorney general, Sessions has confirmed many of Democrats’ worst fears when it comes to policy, and in the early months of the Trump administration, a number of them called on him to resign over one controversy or another. But after the president’s latest round of attacks on his attorney general, and new comments from Republicans suggesting that he might be fired, Democrats now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of wanting Sessions to stay for one simple reason: He’s one of the only people standing between Trump and an abrupt end to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. [...]
Senate Republicans have generally tried to protect their former colleague , warning Trump that it would be all but impossible to confirm a successor if Sessions was fired. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley even said at one point in 2017 that he would have no time to hold confirmation hearings on a replacement. But in recent days, that wall of support appears to have weakened a bit.[...]
Jeffries acknowledged that the calculus might change if Democrats win at least the House majority in November, giving them more power to protect Mueller on their own and making Sessions expendable. Winning the Senate would mean they could block confirmation of a new attorney general without help from Republicans.
openDemocracy: Flesh of my flesh: democracy and totalitarianism
One problem with this narrative is that it conveniently leaves out a number of totalitarian regimes across the world, which not only cannot be meaningfully grouped with the “great totalitarianisms”, but which flourished with the full support of western democratic states: Pinochet’s Chile, Pahlavi’s Iran, Suharto’s Indonesia, Batista’s Cuba, Mobutu’s Congo/Zaire, all these atrocious regimes fade out of a picture painted in the stark contrast of “Democracy versus Totalitarianism”, peripheral events of little significance in the great conflict, plain accidents of history. [...]
The fact that the 2009 resolution omits individual mentions of a number of twentieth century totalitarian regimes in Europe – such as those in Spain, Portugal and Greece – but finds it pertinent to specifically reference the Ukrainian famine and the Srebrenica massacre, is telling in this respect, as is the fact that the precursors of these resolutions were spearheaded by former Eastern Block countries.[2] Still, the problem with Liberal Democracy as a timeless foe of Totalitarianism is much deeper than the questions raised by the realignment of global alliances in the beginning of the twenty-first century. [...]
The quintessential ancestral moment of the concentration camp is to be found in the quintessentially experimental democracy: the United States step up their “removal policies” of Native Americans after the 1830s, and establish a number of “reservations” in the following decades. It is undoubtedly significant that the oldest liberal democracy is territorially consolidated not just through genocide, but through genocide that is organised along a classification procedure, a spatial plan, a topological management. Concentration camps are refined in a colonialist/imperialist context through their use by the Spanish in Cuba, the US in the Philippines, and especially the British in the Second Boer War. But it is in Europe that the concentration camp will acquire its definitional character as a place of selection, as the locality where the redefinition of inside and outside reaches its terminal point. It is embraced especially by the German Social-Democrats, who use it to intern refugees after World War I, but also communists and socialists after the Spartacist Uprising of 1919.
Aeon: The future was now at the 1939 World’s Fair – and it is still awesome
From the perspective of the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine what a marvel the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair would have been to its visitors. Still living in the heavy shadow of the stock market crash of 1929, the many people who flocked to the big exhibition found not only bounteous luxuries such as free Coca-Cola, but the unveiling of unthinkable new technologies that promised that a better world lay ahead. Using sparkling, rare, colour film footage – itself a brand-new technology at the time – the US director Amanda Murray mines the memories of several people who attended the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
Politico: Pope’s faded star power in Ireland
In our lifetimes, revelations surfaced of decades-long sexual, physical and emotional abuse carried out by the clergy. The outcomes of three government-initiated investigations detailed systemic, institutional abuse that was intentionally covered up by the Irish Catholic hierarchy. The depth of the victims’ suffering is nearly impossible to imagine. Children were beaten, sexually abused, humiliated. Separately, it also emerged that women were thrown into so-called Magdalene Laundries — Dickensian institutions for the unmarried who became pregnant or were seen as promiscuous. All the while, the Irish state — once almost indistinguishable from the church itself — turned a blind eye. The government has yet to set up an independent investigation focused on the laundries.
But the fawning Ireland of 1979 is no more. Pope Francis will have to contend with protests, such as the one organized by abuse survivor and Amnesty Ireland executive Colm O’Gorman. Former President Mary McAleese has called the Catholic event a “right-wing rally,” and Ireland’s paper of record, the Irish Times, is running articles with titles such as “Can’t pope, won’t pope? Seven ways to avoid the papal visit.”
So what does a changed Ireland expect from this visit? At the very least that the pope gives survivors of abuse what they say they need. He would do well to individually apologize to the victims of abuse and to release the so-called secret files relating to cases dating as far back as 1962 — when the Vatican told Catholic bishops all over the world to cover up abuse cases under threat of excommunication.
Politico: Merkel changes target in quest for German EU dominance
“It’s certainly plausible that Germany has an interest because it has not held the Commission president post since Walter Hallstein in 1967,” said Elmar Brok, a veteran center-right MEP who also sits on the executive committee of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU). [...]
Merkel’s preference would be to nominate her economy minister, Peter Altmaier, for the post. A longtime Merkel confidante who served as her chief of staff until last year, Altmaier, 60, worked for the Commission early in his career and speaks several European languages. [...]
Merkel’s rethink was spurred by the likely resistance her preferred ECB candidate, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, would face elsewhere in the eurozone. A monetary hawk deeply skeptical of some of the moves current ECB President Mario Draghi has taken to combat the euro crisis, Weidmann has earned a reputation as a hard-liner. [...]
Another question is whether Merkel would succeed in convincing the rest of the European People’s Party to support her candidate. Doing so could mean shoving aside Manfred Weber, the German leader of the EPP’s parliamentary group.
Quartz: Air pollution is costing Indians 1.5 years of their lives
Air pollution caused by PM of a diameter under 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) reduces the average life expectancy of Indians by 1.53 years, according to a paper published in the journal Environment Science and Technology Letters. The impact of PM2.5 is particularly high in south Asia, where it decreases life expectancy by 1.56 years, far above the global average of 1.03 years, the paper says. [...]
The researchers estimated the cost of air pollution in terms of life years by modeling the data on deaths from diseases for which air pollution is a risk factor, including heart disease, strokes, and lung cancer. They then compared this data to each country’s baseline life expectancy.
To put their findings in context, they compared these figures with the estimated decrease in life expectancy caused by other risk factors, such as tobacco consumption and cancer. In south Asia, tobacco smoking caused a decrease of 1.51 years and cancer 1.26 years, both slightly less than the impact of PM 2.5.
The Atlantic: The one thing that could drive evangelical Christians away from Trump
Yet Republican strategists believe that the president’s base of loyal supporters is standing by him, and they plan to use Trump to campaign heavily ahead of the midterms to maintain control of Congress. That base has included most of America’s evangelical Christians, who back a man who does not appear to share their core beliefs: He is on his third marriage, has bragged about sexually assaulting women, is accused by nearly 20 women of sexual misconduct, and has a history of lying and failing to pay his bills. [...]
Trump’s foreign policy, and particularly the relocation of the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, appeals to a powerful group of fundamentalist Christians who believe the move may trigger the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ. His administration has supported religious beliefs over civil liberties, backed Christians who refuse to serve gay-wedding parties or fund birth control for employees, and pushed policies that would cut off federal funding for clinics that provide abortions.[...]
“Would a revelation like Trump paid for an abortion of his own child and is unrepentant about it, like he is everything else, cause some substantial slippage?” Deace asked. “Yes.”
Trump’s stance on abortion has shifted radically over the years, from “pro-choice to pro-prison,” as the BBC put it. In 1999, he described himself on NBC News’ Meet the Press as “very pro-choice.” On the 2016 campaign trial, he said there should be “some sort of punishment” for women who had had abortions.
The New York Times: I Stood Up in Mass and Confronted My Priest. You Should, Too.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, I naturally turned to the church for solace. But on the following Sunday, to my surprise, none of the church leaders at Mass acknowledged what had just happened. I was deflated and left feeling empty. Soon after, the sexual abuse scandal erupted. [...]
It was the church’s own teachings that made me stand up on Sunday and question the priest. Catholics are taught that it’s imperative to help others. We are told to protect the innocent. The church has profoundly failed to abide by these basic principles by allowing the sins of sexual abuse to continue. [...]
Catholics cannot keep on filling the pews every Sunday. It is wrong to support the church.
At the end of last Sunday’s service, before the recessional, the priest stopped us and kindly told my son that he had a good dad. Then the father looked at me and said the most honest thing I’ve ever heard in a church: “You and I have no influence.”
He was right. And if congregants like me have no influence, and if parents like me no longer feel safe and comfortable bringing our sons and daughters to make Communion, then the Catholic Church is beyond redemption.
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