99 Percent Invisible: Ponte City Tower

“If you lived in a high rise building with five or six hundred flats in it,” explains Smuts, “they weren’t going to go through each and every flat to come look for any illegal persons.” And over the years, many interracial families like the Smuts disappeared into one high rise apartment building in particular—a tower called Ponte City. “I don’t think there’s anybody in Johannesburg that doesn’t know Ponte,” Smuts says. “They might not have been there. But everybody knows Ponte.”

Looking at Johannesburg’s skyline, the 54-story tower is hard to miss—it is the tallest apartment building on the African continent. It is also distinctively shaped, a massive cylinder with an empty central core. The billboard wrapping its top like a crown also helps it stand out. For many, the building symbolizes Johannesburg—because over the past four decades, its fortunes have reflected the changing city around it. [...]

It was still illegal for black, colored, and Indian South Africans to live in these areas, but the scale and density of the inner city made the laws harder to enforce. A new term was coined to describe the increased mixing going out on—”graying“—and for many, gray areas were refuges, impossible for the police to close down and search all at once. Landlords would turn a blind eye to skin color, but, in exchange, illegal residents had to deal with rent increases and poor maintenance.

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The New York Review of Books: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Would-be Dictator

These are the events and images often recalled when we talk about what is called, correctly, Brazil’s “military coup,” or “golpe militar.” Often forgotten, though, is that a huge part of Brazil’s political and economic elite supported the golpe at the time. Even before the First Institutional Act, the Congress declared the presidency “vacant” while Goulart was still in the country, in clear violation of the Constitution. Then, after forty of their colleagues had been expelled by the putschists, 361 of the remaining representatives voted to install Marshall Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco—who had been plotting with generals, the United States, and some politicians to remove a legitimate president—as leader of the country. The US ambassador in Rio was certain that Brazil could become “the China of the 1960s” (in other words, turn communist), and wanted Jango out. All the major Brazilian newspapers except one supported the coup. Hundreds of thousands of mostly well-heeled Brazilians, suffering from an economic recession and believing Goulart was too left-wing, had already made known their preference for his removal in a series of marches “of the Family with God for Liberty.” Many of them believed rumors, intentionally spread by conservatives, that it was actually the president who was planning his own, communist coup d’état.[...]

“The Brazilian dictatorship’s body count is relatively low when compared to Chile or Argentina, but it was abroad that it had the most devastating impact,” wrote Tanya Harmer, a historian at the London School of Economics, in a 2012 journal article. “Both through its example, its interference in other countries, and its support for counter-revolutionary coups.” Most notably, Brazil’s military dictatorship helped devise the infamous Operation Condor, an international network of terror and extermination across South America. Born of a fanatical anti-communism, the regimes under Condor murdered political opponents by the tens of thousands. [...]

Bolsonaro’s ideology is best understood as Operation Condor plus the Internet. Recent international reporting has compared him to Donald Trump or seized on his contempt for identity politics, pointing out his record of sexist, racist, and homophobic statements, but these characterizations are insufficient. What Bolsonaro offers is an explicit return to the values that underpinned Brazil’s brutal dictatorship. Bolsonaro did not need to be “red-pilled” to believe that political correctness had gone too far in today’s Brazil; he has been consistent in his views for a long time. [...]

Support for Bolsonaro is highest among rich white Brazilians (especially rich white Brazilian men) and Evangelical Christians, but it’s impossible to win 49 million votes without backing from lots of regular people, too. On Sunday, carwash operator Julio Cesar Alves, thirty-seven, explained why he voted for Bolsonaro, even though he had happily voted twice for Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Rousseff’s predecessor as leader of the Workers’ Party.

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The Atlantic: The Politics of a Long-Dead Dictator Still Haunt Spain

The many Spaniards who revile Franco tend to stay far away from the Valley of the Fallen, the vast, surreal monument outside Madrid where thousands of those killed in the Spanish Civil War are interred along with its victor. Its 150-meter high cross is visible from miles away, looming starkly over what is often referred to as Spain’s largest mass grave. The remains of more than 33,000 people who fought on both sides in the 1936-1939 conflict are buried here, transported—often without permission—from other sites after the Valley was finished in 1958. Their graves, unlike Franco’s, are unmarked, and the identities of more than a third remain unknown.

To many families of the fallen, the presence of Franco—who was buried here after his death in 1975 on the orders of the then King Juan Carlos I—is a final insult, converting what was conceived as a monument to the war dead into the pharaonic tomb of a fascist dictator. Up to 1 million people died in the three-year conflict, which Franco helped spark by leading a military revolt against Spain’s elected government, then run by the left-wing Republicans. Thousands more died during the purges that followed Franco’s victory and the imposition of a dictatorship that lasted until his death. That period remains burned into the memory of many in Spain, which unlike countries such as Germany or Argentina has never undergone a process of reconciliation. The lack of such a process, some argue, has left the wounds of the era seeping into politics and society four decades on. [...]

Argelia Queralt Jiménez, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Barcelona, said the exhumation of Franco and the historical memory drive would help defuse the perception among Catalan separatists of Spain as “Francoland,” a country that had not fully abandoned dictatorship for democracy. In an interview, she said that perception had little basis in reality, but explained that the failure of the Spanish right to discuss the Civil War and subsequent regime had effectively “normalized” and justified that assault on the democratic order. Meanwhile, the story of one side—of the defeated—had been “silenced” and victims treated with “disdain,” said Queralt.

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Haaretz: 'Murder' of Saudi Dissident: Why Turkey Is in No Hurry to Cut Off Ties With Riyadh

The dilemma isn’t only over the required response but what the target of punitive measures should be. Why, for example, should Saudi Arabia be targeted but not Russia or Bulgaria, or Egypt or Turkey, where journalists, male and female, have been killed or raped or arrested without trial, or have disappeared? [...]

One can only assume that if it had been any other country besides Saudi Arabia that had been involved in the disappearance of the journalist on Turkish soil, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would have immediately severed diplomatic relations with the other country and probably even demanded an immediate emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the incident. But Turkey, which has links to the Russian-Iranian-Qatari axis of power, has still not given up on its dream to exert influence on the Middle East.

It’s difficult for Ankara to forgo the huge achievement that it snagged in 2015 when it became a member of the Saudi coalition in the war against the Islamic State, which then gave Turkey an admission ticket into the Arab club of Middle Eastern countries, many of which still view Erdogan's republic as hostile. In addition, too much Saudi money is invested in Turkey: Last year alone, the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait invested nearly $2 billion, equal to all of the other foreign investments in the Turkish markets. But these interests and investments, it should be noted, didn’t keep the UAE's ambassador in Washington from labeling Turkey as a threat. [...]

On top of this, initial reports about Khashoggi's disappearance in the Arab press, particularly the Egyptian media, actually portrayed Turkey rather than the Saudis as the culprit. Dandrawi al-Harawi, editor of the Egyptian daily Al-Yawm al-Sabaa, has alleged that Turkey was directly involved in abducting Khashoggi, and added that the Turks falsified evidence to sully the Saudis’ reputation, as part of an effort by the Muslim Brotherhood to harm Arab regimes, “since it is well known that Khashoggi was part of the Muslim Brotherhood and was previously even a close associate of [Osama] Bin Laden and radical Muslim movements.”

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Politico: Sebastian Kurz: Keep Viktor Orbán in conservative fold

“I don’t believe it would make sense to create another new party of Eastern Europeans, who are unevenly matched when it comes to morals,” Kurz told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper in an interview published Sunday.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “no longer has a place” in the European People’s Party. The grouping — the largest in the European Parliament — counts Juncker’s Christian Social People’s Party and Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats among its ranks.[...]

Last month, the European Parliament declared that Hungary is at risk of breaching the EU’s core values, citing concerns about judicial independence, corruption, freedom of expression, academic freedom, the rights of minorities and migrants, and other issues in the country.

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Al Jazeera: On the reform path: Uzbekistan opens up after years of isolation

Since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev took power in December 2016, following the death of Islam Karimov, who ruled the country since independence in 1991, Uzbekistan has been on the reform path.

The rule of law reform, aimed to enhance the transparency and accessibility of the allegedly corrupt courts, has been just one of the steps to improve Uzbekistan's image.

Faced with a collapsing economy, international isolation, and a growing number of unemployed youth following years of Karimov's misrule, the country had little choice but to open up. [...]

"Fairly quickly, he (Mirziyoyev) set a new tone. And that new tone has been the main factor driving change because the system has had to adapt both to the new president's expectations and to his willingness to make the state more responsive to citizen concerns," said Uzbek VOA journalist Navbahor Imamova, noting that her views shared here were personal and did not represent her employer's. [...]

"The most notable developments on human rights in the little more than two years of Mirziyoyev's presidency has been the release of approximately 30 or more high-profile political prisoners, the easing of some restrictions on the freedom of speech and assembly and in that area we've seen the emergence of a fairly dynamic media environment as compared to what used to exist," Steve Swerdlow, Human Rights Watch Central Asia researcher, told Al Jazeera. [...]

Forced cotton picking, obligatory for all public administration workers, medical and educational staff, students and schoolchildren has been abolished.

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Politico: 'We’ve never seen anything like this': GOP overwhelmed by Democratic cash

Since the end of July, Republican candidates in the 70 most contested races have reserved $60 million in TV ads, compared with $109 million for Democratic hopefuls, according to figures compiled by media trackers and reviewed by POLITICO. The disparity is almost certain to grow, as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg makes good on plans to spend nearly $80 million to help Democrats flip the House.[...]

Desperate for help, Republicans are turning to their go-to benefactor: Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. The 85-year-old ally of President Donald Trump has made another contribution in the range of $20 million to the House GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, according to two Republican officials familiar with the donation. Party leaders are hopeful he'll fork over even more. [...]

Still, Republicans have hit roadblocks. House GOP aides had hoped to receive a late cash transfer from the Republican National Committee, but they now don’t expect that to happen. The RNC, which is running an extensive national field campaign, has already allocated its remaining funds for the rest of the election season, according to two senior Republicans.

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Bloomberg: What If Ireland Scuppers Theresa May's Brexit Deal?

If Arlene Foster's Democratic Unionist Party stymies that agreement, it would mark an unprecedented win for what was once a fringe group on the British political scene. But in the long term it could actually promote the very idea the DUP opposes above all else: a united Ireland. While the party supports Brexit, Northern Ireland voted 56 percent in favor of remaining in the EU, well above the national 48 percent remain vote. [...]

Of course, some checks already exist. But she is threatening to vote down the budget this month if she’s unhappy with what May agrees at an EU summit next week. That might not topple the government – but it would make it very tricky to govern, and potentially impossible if hardline Conservative Brexiters also decide to rebel.[...]

Negotiations over inquests into what are referred to as “legacy” issues have repeatedly bedeviled co-operation. More than 100 “peace walls” still separate Catholic and Protestant communities; the plan to remove them by 2023 looks wildly optimistic right now. Efforts to integrate an education system divided along religious lines have faltered. Public-sector housing estates are also deeply divided.[...]

“Neither Sinn Fein nor the DUP truly believe in a settlement based on multiple identities or pooled sovereignty – the kind facilitated by EU membership,” according to Matt O’Toole, a Northern Irishman who was chief press officer for Europe at 10 Downing Street during the referendum campaign. “Both now want to achieve something from Brexit that is less of a compromise than what existed before.”

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The Guardian: Saudi’s impatient, workaholic prince with a very thin skin

Bin Salman chose instead to stay in Saudi Arabia, close to his father who is now King Salman, studying law at King Saud University, then taking a string of jobs at his father’s side. This allowed him to cement their ties and become the power behind the throne. King Salman is well into his 80s and thought to be in the early stages of dementia, according to Bruce Riedel, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. [...]

But critics say he also struggles to recognise errors, or accept even mild criticism. “People who tried to say no even gently and diplomatically faced consequences,” said one source from Saudi Arabia, who asked not to be named. This thin skin was put on international display when a single tweet from Canada, calling on the kingdom to release jailed activists, prompted the kingdom to sever diplomatic and trade ties. It was particularly surprising given the effort Bin Salman had poured into presenting himself as the young face of change, at home and abroad. Nearly two-thirds of Saudis are under 30, and he claimed to be their champion. [...]

It all provided plenty of material for upbeat media coverage of a “reformer prince” on brief official trips to the US and other western countries. A cascade of Saudi wealth, channelled through PR firms and lobbyists, helped unfurl the red carpet. Earlier this year he made a triumphant two-week progress around the United States, where he was feted by everyone from film stars, including Morgan Freeman, to Silicon Valley tech billionaires, to Donald Trump at the White House. Previous trips have included personal tours of the Facebook headquarters with Mark Zuckerberg.

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