The Atlantic: Watching Britain’s Influence Shrink in Real Time

Some within Britain’s diplomatic corps, however, have warned that the U.K.’s global role is already not what it used to be, and stands to deteriorate even further after it leaves the EU on March 29, 2019. “We’re not the same country we were in 1945,” Harriet O’Brien, a British diplomat based in New York, says in the BBC series. “In some ways, we don’t have as much influence in the world. So we do, I think, punch above our weight.” [...]

And when it comes to present and future world crises, British leaders have publicly grappled with not being able to command the same foreign-policy authority it once had. “We have to be careful not to overestimate our influence,” Hunt told the House of Commons last week when asked about Britain’s draft resolution calling for a cease-fire in the ongoing war in Yemen.

The last time Britain seemed so unsure of its place in the world, it had lost its empire after World War II. Then the American statesman Dean Acheson warned London against overestimating its power alone. “Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role … apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being the head of a Commonwealth which has no political structure or unity or strength and enjoys a fragile and precarious economic relationship,” Acheson said in 1962. “This role is about played out.”

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The Atlantic: Graduate School Can Have Terrible Effects on People's Mental Health

One major stressor, he says, was the requirement that all first-year Ph.D. economics students take the same three courses. But other major stressors are likely to resonate with graduate students in all kinds of disciplines. The doctoral-degree experience often consists of intense labor expectations for little pay and a resulting lack of sleep and social life. In addition, there is the notorious hierarchy of academia, which often promotes power struggles and tribalism.

To make matters worse, the payoff for all that stress may be wanting: A 2014 report found that nearly 40 percent of the doctoral students surveyed hadn’t secured a job at the time of graduation. What’s more, roughly 13 percent of Ph.D. recipients graduate with more than $70,000 in education-related debt, though in the humanities the percentage is about twice that. And for those who do secure an academic post, census data suggest that close to a third of part-time university faculty—many of whom are graduate students—live near or below the poverty line.

A new study by a team of Harvard-affiliated researchers highlights one of the consequences of these realities: Graduate students are disproportionately likely to struggle with mental-health issues. The researchers surveyed roughly 500 economics Ph.D. candidates at eight elite universities, and found that 18 percent of them experienced moderate or severe symptoms of depression and anxiety. That’s more than three times the national average, according to the study. Roughly one in 10 students in the Harvard survey also reported having suicidal thoughts on at least several days within the prior two weeks. (Other recent studies have had similar findings, including one published earlier this year that described graduate-student mental health as a “crisis.”) [...]

Compounding the pressures is the sense, at least according to the economics Ph.D. candidates surveyed by the Harvard researchers, that their work isn’t useful or beneficial to society. Only a quarter of the study’s respondents reported feeling as if their work was useful always or most of the time, compared with 63 percent of the entire working-age population. Only a fifth of the respondents thought that they had opportunities to make a positive impact on their community.

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The New York Times: Taiwan Asked Voters 10 Questions. It Got Some Unexpected Answers

“Saturday’s referendum furthers a long-held D.P.P. goal to get referendums institutionalized,” said Michael Fahey, a legal consultant based in Taipei. “Major sections of the D.P.P. always wanted to have some kind of referendum law in case there ever needs to be a referendum on self-determination, there will be a mechanism in place for doing that.”

One referendum question that did approach the issue of identity concerned what Taiwan should be called at the Olympic Games and other international sporting events. In a 1981 deal with the International Olympic Committee, Taiwan agreed to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei.” But in recent years the people of Taiwan have increasingly sought to assert their identity, and a referendum question asked if the island should compete as “Taiwan” instead.

That proposal failed after a campaign warning that doing so might lead to Taiwan’s being banned from Olympic competition under Chinese pressure. The referendum result could allow Beijing to argue that the people of Taiwan are quite happy to be identified as Chinese. [...]

The referendum questions on gay rights were the subject of a well-funded and highly organized campaign led by conservative Christians and other groups. The campaign was characterized by misinformation, the bulk of which was spread online, including messages warning of an AIDS epidemic and low birthrates, or that educating students about different sexual orientations would influence their sexual choices. [...]

The government has three months to present bills reflecting the referendum outcomes. While the vote against same-sex marriage does not affect the court ruling, it could make lawmakers more inclined to offer same-sex couples a separate civil union status rather than the same legal status that heterosexual married couples have.

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CGP Grey: What is Federal Land?

The Guardian: The seismic shock of Brexit will change the UK’s politics for ever

One Labour veteran, witness to many a parliamentary rebellion, describes loyalties in the Commons today as the most fluid since the repeal of the corn laws 172 years ago. That tussle over tariffs brought down a prime minister, split the Conservative party and created a new Liberal one.

Today’s Tories look more divided than Labour, but that is because a governing party has to do Brexit, while the opposition only has to talk about it. May has made unpopular choices that Jeremy Corbyn pretends do not need making. Labour’s policy is to engineer a general election, win it, then cook up an alchemist Brexit that keeps the benefits of the single market without the obligations of EU membership. The unavailability of that combination has been proven many times.

If Tory MPs cared only about party unity, they would rally behind May’s deal. Their goal would be to get over the finish line without sweating over the small print, mint the commemorative coins and change the subject – enjoying the respite of a transition period before too many people realised they had been diddled. But neither hardcore leavers nor remainers are prepared to play along. Tory Brexit ultras demand a new deal, knowing there is no time to get one. They are just flapping their arms in anticipation of a run at the no-deal cliff edge. But if that is the way things are heading, many pro-European Tories would take their chances on a referendum with a view to aborting Brexit altogether.[...]

Corbyn has reasons to avoid getting involved in the People’s Vote campaign. It would put him in public alliance with liberal Tories and Blairites, the kind of people with whom he does not share platforms (including the actual Tony Blair). The opposition leader’s team also suspects the People’s Vote movement of incubating a new party and sees no value in political insurgencies outside Labour’s control.

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Politico: Foreign Dark Money Is Threatening American Democracy

The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. If even a small fraction of that ends up in our political campaigns, it constitutes an unacceptable national security risk.

While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money. [...]

The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk. In 2004, for example, Lithuania’s president was impeached after the media disclosed that a Russian oligarch who contributed to his campaign later received Lithuanian citizenship. Just this past January, in Montenegro, a local politician was charged with laundering Russian funds to support a pro-Russian political party. In Australia, an intelligence report leaked in 2017 exposed pervasive Chinese financial influence in the country’s domestic politics. Similar allegations recently surfaced in New Zealand.

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Independent: Islamophobia is a form of racism – like antisemitism it’s time it got its own definition

But the absence of a clear understanding of Islamophobia has allowed it to become normalised within our society and even socially acceptable, able to pass what Baroness Warsi described as the “dinner table test”. The consequences have been horrific.

The killing of grandfather Makram Ali outside Finsbury Park mosque in 2017, the murder of another elderly Muslim male, Muhsin Ahmed in Rotherham in 2015 and the brutal stabbing of Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham in 2013, serve as grave reminders of the perils of what can happen when Islamophobia goes unchecked. [...]

Islamophobic hate crime is a growing problem. Recent statistics highlight how attacks on Muslims have seen the highest increase. Nevertheless hate crime is the just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the underlying causes which remain hidden from sight. While we can tackle the overt manifestations of Islamophobia in the form of hate crimes, we are less conscious and less clued up about tackling that which lies beneath the waterline. [...]

This isn’t about protecting a religion from criticism, but about protecting people from discrimination. The APPG on British Muslims received countless submissions detailing the racialised manner in which the Muslimness of an individual was used to attack Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims. The racialisation of Muslims proceeds on the basis of their racial and religious identity, or perceived identity, from white converts receiving racialised sobriquets such as “p*ki”, Muslim women attacked due to their perceived dress, bearded men attacked for the personification of a Muslim identity or even turban wearing Sikhs attacked due to the perception of Muslimness. 

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The Huffington Post: Church Holds Continuous Worship Service To Prevent Family's Deportation

Bethel, a church and community center in The Hague, has taken dramatic steps to protect the Tamrazyans, an Armenian family of five asylum-seekers who have lived in the Netherlands for nine years. The government has reportedly denied the family’s asylum request and approved them for deportation ― even though there’s a law in place that allows children who have lived in the country for over five years to be eligible for a residence permit, if they also fulfill other requirements. The Tamrazyans applied for a permit under that law and were denied, according to Bethel.

Knowing that Dutch law prevents police officers from entering houses of worship during religious services, church members decided to hold a nonstop worship service at Bethel that would allow the Tamrazyans to take shelter in the church.

The continuous worship service started on Oct. 26 at 1:30 p.m. ― and it hasn’t stopped since.

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Quartz: The Auschwitz Museum hits back at Lindsey Graham’s Holocaust mansplaining

Ocasio-Cortez argued that the point of the museum was to keep the era’s lessons alive—including impact of authoritarianism and the forces that drive families to seek asylum elsewhere. Her position was soon reiterated by an organization uniquely positioned to understand the Holocaust’s horrors: the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which maintains the historical site in Poland where Nazis killed an estimated 1.1 million people between 1940 and 1945 through execution and mistreatment.

“When we look at Auschwitz we see the end of the process,” the museum replied on Twitter to Graham. “It’s important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanisation & escalating violence.”

This is not the first time that historians of World War II’s ugliest crimes have spoken out against the Trump administration and its supporters. Japanese-Americans who survived US internment camps vehemently criticized the administration’s policy of family separation at the border earlier this year. In October, a Holocaust historian who specializes in the origins of genocides published an essay in the New York Review of Books noting “troubling similarities” between 1930s Germany and the US today, including a growing policy of isolationism and the failure of lawmakers on the right to curtail or criticize their side’s worst impulses.

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