The White Power Movement in the US: Laurie Taylor talks to Kathleen Belew, Assistant Professor of US History at the University of Chicago, and author of a new book which traces the origins and development of the racist far right. They're joined by Liz Fekete, Director of the Institute of Race Relations, who discusses her study of similar (and different) forces in Europe.
14 December 2018
99 Percent Invisible: Gander International Airport
By 1938, the Gander airport was fully operational but mostly unused. There just weren’t enough planes in operation that could actually survive the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. In the two decades before World War II, only 100 planes had crossed the Atlantic — 50 others had tried and failed and 40 people had died in various attempts. [...]
Celebrities and heads of state often spent long layovers in Gander, so the Canadian government decided to build a lounge that would impress them. When the international lounge of the Gander airport opened in 1959, the Queen of England herself came for the opening. [...]
Even the bathrooms are their own amazing time capsule — the women’s restroom especially. There’s a row of swivel chairs in front of a counter and wall-sized mirror. [...]
Bob Hope, Prince Philip, Marilyn Monroe and others all stopped by, and locals love to tell the story about Frank Sinatra trying to cut in line at the airport bar, and getting told to go to the back.
By the late 1960s, most commercial jets could make it across the Atlantic without needing to refuel, so stops in Gander declined. But the airport remained important, especially to communist countries that couldn’t fly to the U.S. or use its airspace. Gander was the major stopping point between Moscow and Havana. It was also a place that attracted defectors, including a fair number from Cuba.
CNN: The foundation of Trump's coalition is cracking
Democrats, the analysis found, ran particularly well this year among white working-class women who are not evangelicals, a group that also displayed substantial disenchantment in the exit poll with Trump's performance. Those women could be a key constituency for Democrats in 2020 in pivotal Rust Belt states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where relatively fewer blue-collar whites are also evangelical Christians. [...]
Many of the party's potential 2020 contenders appear better suited to energizing its new base than recapturing working-class whites: Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Texas Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke might all fit into that category. By contrast, former Vice President Joe Biden, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and centrists such as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and outgoing Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper might be better positioned to reassure working-class white voters than to mobilize the base. [...]
To start, this analysis underscores how many white working-class voters are also evangelical Christians. Nationwide, the exit poll found that evangelical Christians this year comprised fully 45% of all white voters without a college degree, a substantial portion of the total electorate. By contrast, evangelicals represented only one-fourth of college-educated white voters. (In 2016, the exit polls found that evangelicals constituted slightly larger shares of each group.) [...]
PRRI surveys also show that among non-evangelical whites, those without degrees are consistently more conservative than those with degrees on polarizing cultural and racial issues. Results from PRRI's 2018 American Values Survey, for instance, found that among whites who are not evangelicals almost exactly twice as many of those without college degrees as those with advanced education said that discrimination against whites is as great a problem as discrimination against minorities. That placed those blue-collar whites much closer to the position of white evangelicals than to that of their fellow non-evangelicals who have college degrees.
Aeon: Philosophy Feuds: Sartre vs Camus
In the wake of Second World War, the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were close friends. They drank and argued together, often spending long nights out on the town. All around them, Paris was being rebuilt. Through their writing, Sartre and Camus hoped to guide this new France toward a more equitable future. They became celebrities, their every movement reported in the newspapers. But it was not to last. In 1952 they fell out bitterly. The disagreement between Camus and Sartre became the philosophical feud of the century. Why did it happen? And how could two such close friends become such unforgiving enemies?
Camus versus Sartre is the first instalment of ‘Philosophy Feuds’, Aeon’s original series of short animations, each of which tells the story of a famous – or not so famous – spat, break-up, falling-out or fracas. More than just revealing the hilarious and all-too-human pettiness of the world’s greatest thinkers, ‘Philosophy Feuds’ is about the fascinating ideas behind each of these rifts – and how these ideas continue to matter today.
Foreign Affairs: The Crisis of Peacekeeping
Part of the reason for this failure is a lack of resources. It is hard to fault the UN for that, since it relies on contributions from its members. The larger problem, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes for a sustained peace. The UN’s strategy favors top-down deals struck with elites and fixates on elections. But that neglects what should be the other main component of their approach: embracing bottom-up strategies that draw on local knowledge and letting the people themselves determine how best to promote peace. [...]
The possibility of a veto meant that intervention was limited to places not caught up in the East-West rivalry, and as a result, peacekeeping missions were rare during the Cold War. Only 13 were set up between 1948 and 1978, and none at all between 1979 and 1987. The missions that did exist were fairly unintrusive. A small number of unarmed observers would monitor cease-fire lines and troop withdrawals, as in Kashmir in 1949, or lightly armed soldiers would try to insert themselves between national armies, as in Lebanon in 1978. Sometimes, the presence of UN soldiers helped prevent further conflict, while at other times, it did not. The 1973 Yom Kippur War embodied this mixed track record: UN peacekeepers succeeded in enforcing the cease-fire along the Egyptian-Israeli border in the Sinai, but they failed to do the same at the Israeli-Syrian border in the Golan Heights. Even though the UN peacekeeping forces were awarded the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize, their global impact remained limited. [...]
Despite all these supposed improvements, today, just like 20 years ago, peacekeepers often fail to meet the high expectations set for them. Experts all use different definitions of success and thus arrive at different conclusions, so whether or not a UN mission can be considered a failure is a matter of interpretation. Some scholars have arrived at positive assessments. Michael Gilligan and Ernest Sergenti, for instance, have calculated that 85 percent of UN operations have resulted in prolonged periods of peace or shortened periods of war. Page Fortna has determined that, all else being equal, the presence of peacekeepers decreases the risk of another war breaking out by 55–62 percent. Lisa Hultman, Jacob Kathman, and Megan Shannon have shown that the deployment of UN troops reduces both battlefield deaths and civilian killings. Other scholars have come to more dispiriting conclusions. Jeremy Weinstein discovered that 75 percent of the civil wars in which the UN intervened resumed within ten years of stopping. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis studied 138 peace processes and found that roughly half of those that had peacekeepers failed to decrease the violence or further democracy. Roland Paris analyzed 11 UN missions in depth and found that only two were able to build a sustainable peace.
openDemocracy: Yellow fever in France
Most of the Gilets Jaunes revolt less against the tax than against its unjust distribution. The fuel taxes were the last straw that broke the camel's back. The movement is particularly strong in areas where the withdrawal of public services is most obvious, where people are condemned to using their cars to find, beyond the moribund sub-prefectures where they live, access both to public services and jobs. They are defending what holds a society together: schools, hospitals, police stations, transport, free of charge education, and so forth. [...]
Second remark. When Gilets Jaunes come to a demonstration, particularly in Paris, it is striking to see how they do not have the traditional codes and skills of demonstrations. They do not go to the east of Paris, traditional location of all popular manifestations, but congregate in the Champs-Elysée, because it is the most famous place. The majority of the protesters have never been to any demonstration before and are coming "from the provinces" (as the Parisians say). Such people constitute the great majority of those arrested and convicted "for violence" after the demonstrations of December 1 and 8. [...]
The trade-unions initially maintained their distance, noting the anti-unionism of many Gilets. Only Solidaires (minority and radical union) supported the movement, the CGT (the main union) remaining more cautious, although some of its activists participate in the actions, and the CFDT (the second most powerful, moderate union) proposed its "mediation services" with the government (which was initially refused).
IFLScience: Trump Administration Suspends Research Looking At A Potential Cure For HIV
In 2016, 39,782 people were diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the US alone – and a further 15,807 people already identified as HIV positive died. So, you might assume that any research into finding a cure for this potentially fatal disease would be celebrated, or at the very least condoned. [...]
Now, NIH spokespeople have told Science that staff scientists have been asked "to pause procurements of fetal tissue" until the review has been settled. This, apparently, does not apply to scientists working at universities who have received government grants, but only those who work directly for the Montana-based NIH. [...]
Even if the suspension is lifted, it could take a year to get back to the point where they are ready to start the experiment, Greene told Science.
Vox: Trump doesn’t want the wall. He wants a fight about the wall.
As my colleague Tara Golshan writes, the difference between the $1.3 billion in wall funding Trump has and the $5 billion in wall funding Trump wants is $3.7 billion — peanuts in the context of the $4 trillion federal budget. There’s plenty Trump could offer House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in return. Trump is, after all, the great dealmaker. [...]
This comes even clearer when you consider the wall’s true costs. The $5 billion in funding Trump is demanding isn’t actually enough to build the wall. Estimates of the total cost range from about $20 billion to $70 billion. Securing funding at either level would require a much bigger deal, with much more significant concessions from Trump. [...]
Trump has a tendency to view his presidency as a reality television show where what’s important are storylines, confrontations, and plot twists. What he made yesterday was good television. But good television is about the fight, not the deal. The deal happens behind closed doors, it requires giving things up and seeing the other side’s perspective. [...]
If Trump can get the wall by winning a public showdown, he’d love that. But it’s the winning, not the wall, that drives him. It’s showing his supporters he’s fighting for them that powers his presidency, not actually getting anything done. Tuesday’s Oval Office meeting was meant to give Trump what he at least thinks he wants — not the wall, but a fight over the wall.
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