How influencers are trying - and succeeding - in changing our world views. Peter Pomerantsev investigates.
31 January 2019
The New York Review of Books: Imperial Exceptionalism
It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Since the era of Theodore Roosevelt, politicians, journalists, and even some historians have deployed euphemisms—“expansionism,” “the large policy,” “internationalism,” “global leadership”—to disguise America’s imperial ambitions. According to the exceptionalist creed embraced by both political parties and most of the press, imperialism was a European venture that involved seizing territories, extracting their resources, and dominating their (invariably dark-skinned) populations. Americans, we have been told, do things differently: they bestow self-determination on backward peoples who yearn for it. The refusal to acknowledge that Americans have pursued their own version of empire—with the same self-deceiving hubris as Europeans—makes it hard to see that the US empire might (like the others) have a limited lifespan. All empires eventually end, but maybe an exceptional force for global good could last forever—or so its champions seem to believe. [...]
Most textbooks date the beginning of America’s overseas expansion to 1898, when it acquired sovereignty over Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the conclusion of its war with Spain. Yet as Bulmer-Thomas shows, the US empire went offshore much earlier. During the 1810s and 1820s, Americans carved out the state of Liberia in West Africa, allegedly as a refuge for free American blacks; the country in fact functioned as an American colony and later as a protectorate of the Firestone Rubber Company. The US established an imperial presence in East Asia as early as 1844, when the Treaty of Wanghia gave it the same privileged access to Chinese ports as the British Empire, and went on to acquire dozens of “guano islands” in the Pacific, where abundant bird droppings provided a rich source of fertilizer.[...]
Statehood was never considered during the debate over the Philippines: the only question was whether to establish a naval base at Manila and give the islands back to the Spanish or to annex the entire archipelago. The imperialists won the argument, and after the insurgents were finally suppressed the Philippines became a colony, from which investors in sugar, hemp, tobacco, and coconut oil could gain privileged access to US markets and Filipinos could emigrate to America in search of jobs. By the 1930s, congressional opposition to cheap exports as well as to cheap (and nonwhite) labor created support for Philippine independence, which was finally achieved in 1946. But it came with so many restrictions on trade and so much preferential treatment for American investors—not to mention continued maintenance of US military bases—that “it would be more accurate to describe the Philippines as becoming a US protectorate,” Bulmer-Thomas writes. “Thus, the end of colonialism in the Philippines did not mean the end of US imperial control.”[...]
The Point Four Program, drawn from Harry Truman’s inaugural address in 1949, linked the World Bank to the struggle with the Soviet Union for influence in the developing world, where the bank would make loans, with many political conditions attached, to governments and state-owned enterprises (later privately owned ones as well). The requirement that Congress approve these loans ensured that they would reflect what the US government considered its national interest. The United Nations, too, began as an American-dominated institution, though as its membership grew it became progressively harder for the US to control. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and bilateral treaties worldwide also served American policy under the guise of “collective security” against the Soviet threat. [...]
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided a new enemy, international terrorism, that was even more shadowy and elusive than international communism had been. Widespread panic among Americans and their allies was taken (especially in the US) to justify a permanent state of emergency, with damaging consequences for civil liberties and public debate at home, as well as for the many thousands of civilians who would become “collateral damage” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The New York Review of Books: Rome: Where Migrants Face Eviction as Fascists Find a Home
Across Italy, some 10,000 migrants and refugees are living in squats. In search of shelter, many have joined vulnerable Italians in occupying empty buildings. The housing crisis is not an accident. It is part of a deliberate strategy by the government to make Italy as inhospitable to migrants and refugees as possible.
On December 10, 2018, Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and interior minister belonging to the far-right party the League, stood outside the factory as police entered and cleared it of residents. CasaPound, which had led a public campaign for the eviction, celebrated. But the paradox is that they themselves are squatters. CasaPound took over an empty office building in the center of Rome in 2003 and has housed people there ever since. This incongruence, between the penicillin factory eviction and inaction against CasaPound, is another example of how Italy’s far right is increasingly driving public opinion and policy on immigration. In late November, Salvini’s government passed a new law called the Security and Immigration Decree, but referred to by almost everyone in Italy as the “Salvini Decree.” It radically changed the Italian asylum system; eliminating the category of “humanitarian protection,” a form of protection given to people who are deemed to have “serious reasons” to flee their home country and cannot be deported. Since 2008, some 120,000 asylum-seekers in Italy have received this status. [...]
Before the election, the Five Star Movement said it would never form a coalition with the League because it was too far to the right. (Italy essentially has a proportional representation system, whereby parties need to form a coalition after the election if one party does not have a substantial majority of votes.) However, after an attempt to form a government with the center-left Democratic Party failed, the Five Star Movement proceeded to do exactly that. Although Five Star initially had more public support, with 32 percent of the vote compared to the League’s 17 percent, it has proved inept at governing, and over the past few months has lost many of its left-leaning voters. Meanwhile, the more experienced League has overtaken Five Star in popularity, as its base responds to Salvini’s anti-immigration stunts. By November 2018, support for his party had jumped to 34 percent. [...]
Salvini and his party stoke fears around migration by portraying migrants as criminals. Over the past ten years, overall crime has decreased in Italy by 8.3 percent, and crimes committed by foreigners have also fallen, with convictions at an all-time low. But each time a crime occurs in an immigrant neighborhood or when non-Italian citizens stand accused, Salvini exploits it. Such was the case with the brutal rape and murder of a sixteen-year-old girl, Desirée Mariottini, in a squat in San Lorenzo, an immigrant neighborhood in Rome. Two Senagalese men, one Nigerian man, and one Ghanaian man were arrested in connection with her assault and death. Salvini visited San Lorenzo and laid a rose at her memorial, then said he would come back with a bulldozer.
Political Critique: Democratizing Europe’s Economy
Italy’s right-wing government has earned popular support for deliberately questioning the European Commission’s budget guidelines in the name of addressing poverty. This shows how skeptical many Europeans are about the EU’s commitment to social welfare and democracy, and it is precisely this skepticism the Italian right-wing is using to provoke a conflict and further undermine the commission’s popular legitimacy. Such an approach has support beyond Southern Europe, and if the commission does not reconsider, it will find itself increasingly vulnerable to popular backlash.[...]
This renewed emphasis on the social dimension is supposed to be connected to the European Semester, which is the commission’s attempt to bring order to European economic governance. Thus the commission ranks the member states according to unemployment rates (especially youth unemployment), reduction in poverty, lifelong learning, access to childcare, and other social indicators. Yet it does not measure the meaningfulness of work. It also fails to assess whether workers have a say over the nature of their work, their relationships at work, their work’s relationship to the greater economy, or their working conditions. In an age when more and more people classify their work as “bullshit jobs,” to use the provocative phrase from the anthropologist David Graeber, something important is being missed.1 [...]
The studies of Herbert Kitschelt and Philippe Rehm using the European Social Survey show that in post-industrial economies, people involved in administrative-organizational occupations tend to have more authoritarian views, independent of their income status (although those at the top may be less inclined toward redistribution, and those at the bottom more inclined). Those involved in more interpersonal occupations, which involve communication and agreement on norms and objectives, tend to have more liberal views independent of their income status. [...]
It is no surprise that the European Commission has not managed to fully connect economic, social, and democratic concerns. Doing so would require the commission to challenge the dogma that economic growth is the basic answer to all social problems, to face up to its own role in undermining social cohesion and democracy simultaneously in the many parts of Europe that have been exposed to austerity programs, and to acknowledge that a technocratic approach exacerbates anti-democratic tendencies and sentiments. With the upcoming European summit in May 2019, the European Parliament elections, and the new European Commission, the union needs a much deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the changing dynamics of the global economy and its implications for political preferences. In so doing, it should follow the lead set by some of its most politically active working citizens.
Aeon: Against type
Both these philosophers argue that ideas and values instilled in us through childhood shape our adult lives, often in ways that we are unaware of. They agree that these aspects of our outlook can remain quietly influential on our thought and behaviour, even after we have rejected them. Both consider the tension between our own ideas and values and those inherited from our society to be a source of difficulty and distress.
De Beauvoir identifies this social conditioning as the origin of gender. Society enforces different expectations of boys and girls, presented as reflecting natural differences between them. Boys are encouraged to explore and dominate their environments. Girls are required to be helpful and pleasing. Different values are thereby instilled in boys and girls, along with a shared belief in the supposedly natural differences between the sexes. Even a woman who has rejected these ideas in adult life cannot easily escape their influence on her thought and behaviour.[...]
One kind of implicit-bias research has focused on the associations that make up stereotypes. Experiments show these associations influencing people’s behaviour, even when they explicitly deny that the association is true. When asked to identify objects very quickly, for example, people’s responses can indicate an association between black men and handguns, even when they deny that there is any such association. [...]
A different area of social psychology – one related to but distinct from implicit-bias research – might seem closer to this existential concern. Research into what has become known as ‘stereotype threat’ is concerned with the effect of internalised stereotypes on the behaviour of the people they stereotype. Experiments have concluded that, for example, the stereotype of women as less good than men at mathematics can influence women’s mathematical performance. In one experiment from 1999, two groups of women took the same test, with only one group being told that the test is likely to show a gender difference. That group performed less well than the women who had not been told this.
Foreign Policy: India and the Global Fight for LGBT Rights
The most remarkable part of the Indian court’s decision is that it didn’t just use a universal standard of human rights to decriminalize homosexuality; it also acknowledged the responsibility of the state to help end the stigma attached to being LGBT. The court could have gone even further and emphasized that the Indian government should put in place mechanisms that would allow the reconciliation of shunned LGBT children and their parents. Doing so would help end the practice of parents forcing arranged marriages on those children—something that can lead to trauma and other mental health problems. It would also help end the shocking practice of “corrective rape,” in which families subject their LGBT children to nonconsensual sex.[...]
India also needs to help reconcile LGBT Indians with their various religious communities; following the court’s decision, many conservative Christian, Muslim, and Hindu leaders, who are often at loggerheads, blasted the ruling as shameful and promised to contest it. Such a reconciliation would right a historic wrong. It was not local religious leaders but British colonialists who introduced these barbaric laws to India. Hinduism, which is the dominant religion in India, was quite accepting of LGBT people before the British introduced Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the 1860s, imposing harsh penalties on whoever has “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” That provision was then extended from India out across the British Empire. It is the reason why most former British colonies are still, to this day, not only hostile to same-sex love but also actively opposed to it.
Politico: EU’s Iran fight is not about Iran (or Trump)
Infuriated by Italy's induction into an expanded version of the so-called E3 club — the trio of France, Germany and the United Kingdom that helped negotiate the nuclear deal along with the European External Action Service — Spain has blocked proposed language on Iran intended for approval by EU governments. [...]
The Council conclusions aim to walk a diplomatic tightrope, by not raising any doubts about the EU's commitment to the nuclear deal despite the withdrawal of the U.S., but also holding Iran to account for a continuing pattern of military meddling in the Middle East and at least two recent assassination plots in Denmark and the Netherlands. [...]
The spat stems from an effort by the EU last year to address other concerns about Iran, including its role in wars in Yemen and Syria, without creating the perception that the discussions were taking place in the same format that led to development of the nuclear accord. The nuclear deal was brokered by the E3+3 — the EU, France, Germany and the U.K. plus Russia, China and the United States.
For the new framework, the EU established the E4 — adding Italy. But that move was seen by some EU countries, including Spain, as a bit of home-country favoritism by Mogherini, a former Italian foreign minister. Others saw it as an effort to appease Rome, which was annoyed at being excluded from the E3 while Berlin was included.
29 January 2019
BBC4 Analysis: America's Friends
From a US president who is turning the world upside down – with a relish for dismantling global agreements – the message is clear: it’s America first. But where does that leave old European allies? Few expect the transatlantic relationship to go back to where it was before Trump. Europe, says Angela Merkel, now has to shape its own destiny. James Naughtie explores the uncertain future for America's friends.
BBC4 Analysis: The Trumped Republicans
Republican insider Ron Christie discovers how Donald Trump's presidency is changing his party. Trump arrived in the White House offering a populist revolt in America, promising to drain what he calls "the swamp that is Washington D.C". So what does his own Republican Party - traditionally a bastion of the nation’s establishment - really make of him? Where is he taking them and what will he leave behind? Christie, a long-time Republican who has served in the West Wing under George W Bush, takes us on a journey behind the scenes to meet Trump’s inner circle - including figures like Mercedes Schlapp, White House director of strategic communications, and to influential conservative broadcaster Sean Hannity. He talks to the supporters and the sceptics alike who watch in amazement as one of the most controversial presidents of all time takes his country and his party by storm.
The Guardian: ‘We the people’: the battle to define populism
But as breathless op-eds and thinktank reports about the populist menace keep piling up, they have provoked a sceptical backlash from critics who wonder aloud if populism even exists. It is now relatively common to encounter the idea that, just as there were no real witches in Salem, there are no real populists in politics – just people, attitudes and movements that the political centre misunderstands and fears, and wants you, reader, to fear too, although without the burden of having to explain exactly why. Populism, in this framing, is a bogeyman: a nonentity invoked for the purpose of stirring up fear. This argument has even made its way to the centrist mainstream. “Let’s do away with the word ‘populist,’” wrote the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen in July. “It’s become sloppy to the point of meaninglessness, an overused epithet for multiple manifestations of political anger. Worse, it’s freighted with contempt, applied to all voters who have decided that mainstream political parties have done nothing for their static incomes or disappearing jobs or sense of national decline these past two decades.” [...]
It may be telling that very little of the public discussion of the alleged populist threat to democracy has been devoted to the workings of democracy itself. Perhaps we assume, without much thought, that democracy is such a self-explanatory idea that we already know all there is to know about the subject. Or perhaps we have come to regard democracy in its existing western form – basically liberal democracy – as the only possible endpoint for the evolution of politics. Populism, though it comes in many forms, always reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth. [...]
A populist movement, then, is one that consistently promises to channel the unified will of the people, and by doing so undercut the self-serving schemes of the elite establishment. As the National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen put it in 2007: “I will give voice to the people. Because in democracy only the people can be right, and none can be right against them.” (Note how, in this formulation, there is no disagreement among “the people”.) Or, in the more recent words of Donald Trump, speaking at his inauguration: “We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people … The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.” (Note how members of “the establishment” are implicitly excluded from “the citizens”.) [...]
In this view, any existing socio-political order (or “hegemony” in Mouffe and Laclau’s preferred formation, borrowed from the Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci) is subject to challenge. Every status quo – however sturdy – is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new. Political change, in other words, is the result of demands against the existing order, which must be fused together in a movement to change it – a movement that may look a lot like populism. [...]
No one who studies populism seriously – and not even the most opportunistic participants in the cottage industry of anti-populist alarmism – denies that populist movements can raise valid critiques of the status quo, and of the very real anti-democratic power of elites. Many take a viewpoint similar to that of the Mexican political theorist Benjamin Arditi, who described populism as a drunken guest at democracy’s dinner party, one who disrespects the rules of sociability and, along the way, brings up the failure and hypocrisies that everyone else in the room has agreed to ignore. In Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Mudde and his frequent co-author, the Chilean political scientist Cristóbal Kaltwasser, describe contemporary populism as an “illiberal democratic response to an undemocratic liberalism” – one that “asks the right questions but provides the wrong answers”.
In this view, any existing socio-political order (or “hegemony” in Mouffe and Laclau’s preferred formation, borrowed from the Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci) is subject to challenge. Every status quo – however sturdy – is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new. Political change, in other words, is the result of demands against the existing order, which must be fused together in a movement to change it – a movement that may look a lot like populism. [...]
No one who studies populism seriously – and not even the most opportunistic participants in the cottage industry of anti-populist alarmism – denies that populist movements can raise valid critiques of the status quo, and of the very real anti-democratic power of elites. Many take a viewpoint similar to that of the Mexican political theorist Benjamin Arditi, who described populism as a drunken guest at democracy’s dinner party, one who disrespects the rules of sociability and, along the way, brings up the failure and hypocrisies that everyone else in the room has agreed to ignore. In Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Mudde and his frequent co-author, the Chilean political scientist Cristóbal Kaltwasser, describe contemporary populism as an “illiberal democratic response to an undemocratic liberalism” – one that “asks the right questions but provides the wrong answers”.
The New York Times: Too Ugly to Be Saved? Singapore Weighs Fate of Its Brutalist Buildings
Landmarks of so-called Brutalist architecture, like Golden Mile Tower, are emerging havens for the sort of gritty, artsy subcultures that are mostly absent in Singapore, a banking center known for its tidy streets and often-overbearing governance.
Others see them as important markers of national identity because they were designed by a generation of up-and-coming local architects just after the city-state’s founding in 1965, when the area’s growth was fueled by large-scale urban renewal projects. [...]
Brutalist buildings represent Singapore’s early “hopes and aspirations,” said Darren Soh, an architectural photographer. He said destroying them would add to a sense among many residents of this former British colony that buildings of all kinds are being demolished and replaced too quickly.[...]
The city-state is also known for its meticulously restored shophouses and other examples of British Colonial architecture, as well as contemporary green buildings that were designed to look stunning but also save energy in a tropical climate.
28 January 2019
The Atlantic: Democrats Are Newly Emboldened on Gun Control
In July 2001, at a meeting in Indianapolis, national Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe told party brethren that gun control was an issue they were wise to avoid. Nobody in the ballroom challenged him. The consensus at the time was that Democrats had lost the House seven years earlier, when Newt Gingrich’s GOP picked up 54 seats, because President Bill Clinton had signed a ban on the sale of assault weapons. And in 2001, many Democrats believed that Al Gore had lost the recent presidential race because southern white males had tagged him as a gun controller.[...]
Largely overlooked during the government stasis in Washington is the news that House Democrats celebrated their return to power by touting legislation to expand background checks that would cover most firearm purchases—even those made at gun shows and online. The chief sponsor, Representative Mike Thompson of California, was once a recipient of NRA money and a B+ rating from the NRA. But now he’s hailing the gun-reform bill as “a decisive step to help save lives,” with strong support “from public polling to the ballot box.” [...]
The political winds have decisively shifted. According to the exit polls released last November, 59 percent of the voters in the congressional elections favored “stricter gun-control measures,” with only 37 percent in opposition. Of those who supported more gun control, 76 percent voted for House Democratic candidates. The NRA nevertheless insisted in a postelection statement that “gun control was not a decisive factor on election day,” but it appears that the ever-mounting national casualties—from Sandy Hook to Parkland to the Pittsburgh synagogue, with 116,000 shooting victims annually, 35,000 deaths annually, and historically high gun violence in schools—have undercut the NRA’s power and its purist defense of the Second Amendment. [...]
Granted, new House Democratic calls for an assault-weapons ban, stronger background checks, and a lifting of the 23-year ban on federal firearms research will likely die in the Republican Senate. But Democrats—buoyed by their historic gains in suburban House districts, particularly among independents and Republican-leaning women—believe that gun-reform policy is good politics, with the goal of rebuilding the party’s brand for 2020.
Aeon: The lottocracy
In the modern world, we often find ourselves in the following situation. I know that whether I do X rather than Y won’t make a difference by itself. I also know that everyone else knows this about me and about themselves. I also know that if all of us do X, rather than Y, it will make a difference. And everyone else knows this, too. So it’s striking and surprising that a celebrity such as Brand would come out and say, to millions, ‘Don’t vote,’ rather than ‘Vote for X.’ That was the revolutionary part of the interview. A thousand lefty celebrities have gone on TV and advocated for causes. Very few have gone on TV and said ‘Don’t vote.’ Very few have gone on TV and said, essentially, X and Y can both go fuck themselves. [...]
There are hard questions about how exactly to structure a political system with lottery-selection at its heart. Here’s one approach, which I am in the process of developing, that I call lottocracy. The basic components are straightforward. First, rather than having a single, generalist legislature such as the United States Congress, the legislative function would be fulfilled by many different single-issue legislatures (each one focusing on, for example, just agriculture or health care). There might be 20 or 25 of these single-issue legislatures, perhaps borrowing existing divisions in legislative committees or administrative agencies: agriculture, commerce and consumer protection, education, energy, health and human services, housing and urban development, immigration, labour, transportation, etc. [...]
No pure lottocratic system has ever existed, and so it’s important to note that much could go wrong. Randomly chosen representatives could prove to be incompetent or easily bewildered. Maybe a few people would dominate the discussions. Maybe the experts brought in to inform the policymaking would all be bought off and would convince us to buy the same corporate-sponsored policy we’re currently getting. There are hard design questions about how such a legislative system would interact with other branches of government, and questions about the coherence of policymaking, budgeting, taxation, and enforcement of policy. That said, it’s worth remembering the level of dysfunction that exists in the current system. We should be thinking about comparative improvement, not perfection, and a lottocratic system would have a number of advantages over the current model.
Jacobin Magazine: Ukraine on the Brink
Neither the NGOs nor the parties could articulate any progressive, egalitarian agenda. It was pretty clear from the outset that even progressive liberals were in the minority, never mind socialists. They were only loosely organized, and had no substantial influence, either on the development of the protests or on their ideological framing. They were probably more important in terms of framing the protests for parts of the Western audience which, in a kind of wishful thinking, focused on the most progressive elements of the movement but not the much stronger reactionary ones. From the outset it was clear that if the Maidan protests succeeded, they would bring right-wing opposition parties to power.[...]
What we’ve seen in the five years since then is that Ukraine has become poorer. The IMF recently updated their global statistics on GDP per capita, and Ukraine’s is now the lowest in Europe. The only countries even lower down the scale are located in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Ukraine is the northernmost of the Global South — and not just in terms of economic statistics. Its economic structure is also more typical of the Third World: it is export-oriented and primarily focused on raw materials. And unlike Southeast Asia, Ukraine is not industrializing but deindustrializing — particularly because the most advanced parts of Ukrainian industry, which were inherited from the Soviet Union and primarily served the markets of the former Soviet republics, have been harmed by the introduction of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the European Union; they are not usually competitive on global markets. A significant part of those industries is located in Donbass, where the war is going on. [...]
Many argue that this lack of parliamentary representation means that all the talk about Ukrainian fascists and the far right is simply Russian propaganda. But this is wrong — at the extra-parliamentary level, the radical nationalists have become much stronger. No party or coalition of liberal NGOs can mobilize so many people on the streets as the Ukrainian nationalists do every year on their key dates. These include the day of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which is now a national holiday in Ukraine (it wasn’t before Maidan), and the birthday of Stepan Bandera (the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists during World War II, and of a movement which conducted ethnic cleansing of the Polish population in western Ukraine, as well as collaborating with the Nazis in the Holocaust). The nationalists gather tens of thousands of people for these rallies, and it’s incomparable to anything that the liberals can mobilize.[...]
First, it’s important to understand that radical nationalists don’t actually have so much popular support. It may seem surprising, but they have more legitimacy within civil society than among Ukrainian society at large — many so-called “Ukrainian liberals” are basically just moderate nationalists. The far-right parties’ electoral support, even if they were to unite, would at best be 5–10 percent. That’s support for the parties — support for some nationalist ideas would be higher. The reason for this low support is that the politics is dominated by much better-resourced oligarchic parties that control the media and have money they can put into electoral campaigns. [...]
Another problem with Tymoshenko is that she is unpredictable, not only at the level of her views on the EU and NATO. The same concerns her social populist rhetoric. This is an easy way to criticize Poroshenko: nobody wants to pay more for utilities and so on, and obviously most people don’t want austerity — they are poor and do not see many prospects in this country. But that doesn’t mean a Tymoshenko administration will really be more redistributive — definitely not consistently.
The Guardian Today in Focus: The Catholic church faces its past
Last year investigations around the world showed that historical sexual abuse within the Catholic church had been covered up for decades. India Rakusen talks to two survivors and hears from the Guardian’s religion correspondent Harriet Sherwood on how the church plans to move forward. Plus: the Guardian’s Tom Phillips on Juan Guaidó’s attempted take over in Venezuela
Social Europe: Politics in Poland: eternal duopoly or refreshing breeze?
Most analyst are of the opinion that the parliamentary elections will be a battle for the centre. This is particularly evident in the strategy of the PiS government, which after two turbulent years exchanged the revolutionary cabinet of Beata Szydło with a more moderate team around Mateusz Morawiecki, a technocrat acquainted with the western and domestic establishment. It’s already become routine in approaching elections for the PiS to hide away its most radical and controversial figures to attract more centrist voters, who do not necessarily believe the 2010 Smolensk air crash to have been a plot by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, or don’t feel the need to enthrone Jesus as the king of Poland. [...]
What’s more, the nationalist faction of the coalition quickly emancipated itself, also sometimes teaming up with the governing PiS, as in the case of the centennial Independence March in November 2018 in Warsaw, when the president’s celebrations practically merged with the biggest far-right demonstration in Europe. Also, the recent nomination of a nationalist activist and MP, Adam Andruszkiewicz, as secretary of state at the Ministry of Digitalisation is a clear sign of the PiS flirting with the nationalist right. Perhaps it is learning from the Hungarian experience: it wants to disable the nationalist movement before it becomes a serious political opponent, as Jobbik became to Fidesz. For sure, the nationalist circles will call in the big guns in May as well as in October 2019. [...]
In 2019 the stakes are high in Poland. For the PiS it is a matter of maintaining its monopoly and keeping the more radical right under control. For the liberals, it is about revenge and regaining power, lost after eight years in 2015. The new, emerging actors have nothing to lose—they can only win by mobilising voters tired of the PO-PiS duopoly. The biggest challenge, however, is that facing the left: the European and especially the parliamentary elections will be a fight for its survival on the Polish political scene.
The Guardian: Britons don’t grasp the EU’s essential motivation – a quest for the quiet life
Advertisement Europe’s quest for the quiet life goes much further. The EU and most of its states were born or reborn from the rubble of war and the traumas of totalitarianism. Britons forget how deeply that affects their instincts. History is dense, present, complicated and inescapable on the mainland in a way that it is not in Britain. The pavements of German cities are studded with brass plaques bearing the names and dates of those deported to the death camps, planted outside the addresses where they once lived. Memories of flight, destruction and oppression – the 3am rap at the door, the rumble of military trucks on cobbles, the squelch of carts laden with possessions on muddy tracks – live on in continental families in a way that they do in comparatively few British ones.[...]
The EU’s unofficial mission is to protect this comfortable, once-traumatised European garden from outside threats. When Helmut Kohl confronted sceptics in his Christian Democrat Union with the case for the euro, notes Alexander Clarkson of King’s College London, he did so primarily not with talk of peace but talk of preserving the European way of life. Today the EU is most effective when it shields its citizens from over-mighty technology firms, negotiates trade deals in a world where its population is proportionately smaller every year, and ventures tentative steps towards common defence forces independent from those of Donald Trump’s America. It lures its neighbours not with soaring rhetoric but with the promise of the quiet life for their citizens. Macedonia’s recent decision to change its name, ending a dispute with Greece and launching itself on the track to EU membership, was ultimately motivated by the desire to join the sheltered European garden.[...]
A tour of European capitals illustrates this truth. The Dutch may sympathise with the Brits but their prime minister also uses Britain as a cautionary tale of a country whose citizens have lost their appetite for “a good life for themselves and those around them”. Poles may want to bend the rules of the Irish backstop to preserve the quiet life for their immigrant compatriots in Britain but only so far, for Warsaw knows the pain of European fragmentation better than most. Athens and Brussels dislike each other but remain committed to Greek membership of the EU because both fear a destabilising rupture. Macron may rail against Brexit but his real target is Marine Le Pen. Germans may be torn between seeking to stop Brexit by backing a second referendum and managing a messy British exit to get it over with but, like their fellow Europeans, their utmost concern is stability.
openDemocracy: The battle over the memory of Egypt’s revolution
In fact, when activists managed to reach out to citizens on the ground, they succeeded to undermine the counter-revolutionary narrative and the regime’s collective memory field. A prominent example is the activists’ 2012 campaign: Askar Kazeebon (Lying Military) whose modus operandi was to broadcast videos and documentaries to pedestrians that falsify the military’s accounts of various events and expose the soldiers’ crimes and human rights violations that official and regime-friendly media ignored. [...]
Under the disguise of renovation, the walls of revolutionary graffiti were repainted, CCTV cameras were installed in central spaces, and governmental offices were relocated away from the heart of Cairo. Some, like Schindehutte, view al-Sisi government’s new administrative capital as a project with which government buildings ‘will be spatially removed from the memory of resistance.’ [...]
One of the prominent monuments in revolutionary Cairo was the building of the former ruling party: The National Democratic Party (NDP). A historical building on the Nile Corniche adjacent to Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Museum. On January 28, 2011, during the protests, the building was set ablaze. The arsonists remain unknown, yet, the burned building became a symbol of the revolution’s triumph over the regime. To destroy this monument’s ability to stimulate people to remember this victory, the regime demolished it. And so did the regime with the first memorial to the January 25 martyrs that was constructed by the protesters, in Tahrir Square, immediately after Mubarak stepped down .
Vox: Why the NRA is struggling
A particularly low point came during the 2018 midterm elections, when the NRA was outspent by gun control groups for the first time in recent history, even while allegedly coordinating with GOP candidates in two states.
The NRA has also been enveloped in a Department of Justice investigation into Russian efforts to influence US politics that featured Russian nationals using the organization as a conduit to the Republican Party. It’s been decried for paying millions of dollars to contractors and close associates of the organization while laying off dozens of employees. And that doesn’t even mention that between January 2017 and November 2018, two of the NRA’s biggest legislative initiatives resulted in failure — derailed by high-profile mass shootings.[...]
For the NRA, the Obama administration provided what any organization needs: a motivating threat. But now that threat, however existent or nonexistent it may have been, is gone, replaced by an unreliable ally in Trump. Furthermore, the organization has been so successful in changing not only America’s gun laws but the gun conversation more broadly (and what potential restrictions on guns are even floated as possibilities) that the NRA isn’t thinking big anymore — because it doesn’t have to. [...]
This is perhaps unsurprising from a president who grew up in New York City and once advocated heavily for gun control before he aligned himself with the Republican Party. In Trump’s 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump decried members of the GOP who “walk the NRA line” and resisted restrictions on guns. [...]
And the NRA is certainly on Trump’s side, which might be part of the problem. While real threats to gun rights and the Second Amendment still exist, as we saw in the Philando Castile case — one the NRA decided to opt out of — the NRA’s turn toward Trumpian right-wing culture warring has possibly turned off those who might be supportive of the groups’s actual messaging on guns. Coupled with the group’s stance on bump stocks — which has turned off many gun owners — one source told me that the NRA’s turn toward culture-warring has given rise to more direct criticism of the NRA even from within the gun rights community.
Quartz: Three things we’ve learned about Trump from Nancy Pelosi’s first month as speaker
But on Friday, Pelosi managed to pull off what some are calling the first undeniable legislative blow to the Trump presidency. She secured an end to the government shutdown without giving Trump the one thing he wanted in exchange—funding for the wall at the US-Mexico border—and did so just days after informing Trump that he would not be permitted to deliver the State of the Union address in the House chamber until the government was open again. [...]
Pelosi has proved what many didn’t believe about Trump: that he is subject to the normal laws of political gravity, and that for all his bluster, he is no more capable of sustaining an unsustainable position than any other politician.
While this isn’t an entirely new insight, Pelosi’s coup of ending the shutdown has shown that the loyalty of Trump’s base has its limits. While pundits have hypothesized the president may hope to use the wall as a cudgel and rallying cry in the 2020 election, the president’s ardent supporters are signaling that they want a wall, and they want it this term.
25 January 2019
Nautilus Magazine: Why Poverty Is Like a Disease
Now, new evidence is emerging suggesting the changes can go even deeper—to how our bodies assemble themselves, shifting the types of cells that they are made from, and maybe even how our genetic code is expressed, playing with it like a Rubik’s cube thrown into a running washing machine. If this science holds up, it means that poverty is more than just a socioeconomic condition. It is a collection of related symptoms that are preventable, treatable—and even inheritable. In other words, the effects of poverty begin to look very much like the symptoms of a disease.
That word—disease—carries a stigma with it. By using it here, I don’t mean that the poor are (that I am) inferior or compromised. I mean that the poor are afflicted, and told by the rest of the world that their condition is a necessary, temporary, and even positive part of modern capitalism. We tell the poor that they have the chance to escape if they just work hard enough; that we are all equally invested in a system that doles out rewards and punishments in equal measure. We point at the rare rags-to-riches stories like my own, which seem to play into the standard meritocracy template.[...]
n human children, epigenetic changes in stress receptor gene expression that lead to heightened stress responses and mood disorders have been measured in response to childhood abuse.4 And last year, researchers at Duke University found that “lower socioeconomic status during adolescence is associated with an increase in methylation of the proximal promoter of the serotonin transporter gene,” which primes the amygdala—the brain’s center for emotion and fear—for “threat-related amygdala reactivity.”5 While there may be some advantages to being primed to experience high levels of stress (learning under stress, for example, may be accelerated6), the basic message of these studies is consistent: Chronic stress and uncertainty during childhood makes stress more difficult to deal with as an adult. [...]
The science of the biological effects of the stresses of poverty is in its early stages. Still, it has presented us with multiple mechanisms through which such effects could happen, and many of these admit an inheritable component. If a pregnant woman, for example, is exposed to the stresses of poverty, her fetus and that fetus’ gametes can both be affected, extending the effects of poverty to at least her grandchildren. And it could go further.[...]
The standard American myth of meritocracy misinterprets personal narratives like mine. The accumulated social capital of American institutions—stable transfer of power, rule of law, and entrepreneurship—certainly create economic miracles every day. But these institutions are far more suited to exponentially growing capital where it already exists, rather than creating new capital where society needs it. Stories such as mine are treated as the archetype, and we falsely believe they are the path to escape velocity for an entire segment of the population. In doing so, they leave that population behind. I am the face of the self-made rags-to-riches success story, and I’m here to say that story is a myth. The term “meritocracy” was coined in 1958 as a mockery of the very idea of evaluation by merit alone. We’ve forgotten to laugh, and the joke is on us.
openDemocracy: The ruling class that drove Brexit
After Trump’s election, millions of words were typed about how ‘blue collar’ areas had turned out to vote Republican. Yet Clinton led by 11% among voters who earn less than $50,000. Trump secured his victory by winning among those who earn $50-200,000. Much the same can be said for the far right in Italy, whose core support is in the wealthier – though now de-industrialising – north, rather than in the more impoverished south; or about Brazil, where 97% of the richest areas voted for the fascist Bolsonaro, whilst 98% of the poorest neighbourhoods voted for the Workers’ Party candidate, Haddad.
We see a similar distortion in debate about Brexit. After the vote, journalists went on endless tours of deprived areas to report on how working-class people voted Leave (which many did). However, they somehow forgot to mention that wealthy counties like Wiltshire backed Brexit, while some of the poorest areas of the UK – the western parts of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as Liverpool and Leicester – voted Remain. Academics who studied the class breakdown of the Brexit vote found ‘the Leave vote to be associated with middle class identification and the more neutral “no class” identification. But we find no evidence of a link with working class identification.’ [...]
To put it another way: the decade since the financial crisis has accelerated the emergence of a new global oligarch class. With growing wealth has come growing power and a growing ability to shape political debate through the dominant communications technology of the era: TV and the internet. As has long happened with right-wing movements, they have done so in close collaboration with military and security networks. Because the era is neoliberalism, those networks are largely privatised, made up of mercenary firms with names like Palantir, Arcanum, SCL, AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica. [...]
Cook himself lives in a semi-detached house in suburban Glasgow, which is probably worth less than the value of the donation his group gave the DUP, and appears unlikely to be the source of the cash. He denies any wrongdoing. The UK electoral regulator is supposed to know where the DUP cash comes from, and claims that it does, even if it isn’t allowed to tell us. But recent court documents have cast doubt on its confidence: its investigations seem to have amounted to asking Richard Cook where he got the money, and then believing his answers. A country doesn’t become the world centre for money laundering by employing inquisitive officials.[...]
A few years after Thiel founded Palantir, he wrote a now-notorious essay in which he argued that the extension of the franchise to women has ‘rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron’ and therefore that his fellow libertarians must focus on developing the technology that will ensure that it is capitalism, rather than democracy, which wins the struggle: ‘The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.’
Political Critique: Paweł Adamowicz: A Very Political Death in a Country Torn by Culture Wars
Contrary to some reports, Adamowicz wasn’t a figure of the left. He had, until 2015, been a member of the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), currently the biggest opposition party. With that said, he was known for taking positions that were highly controversial in Poland – including among the anti-PiS opposition. He welcomed refugees while the PiS-controlled national broadcaster ran almost daily stories about the ‘Muslim threat’ descending upon Europe. He supported the growing feminist movement as the powerful Polish Catholic Church declared war on the so-called ideology of gender. He carried a rainbow flag during local Pride parades when even fellow PO-backed mayors were distancing themselves or outright trying to ban them. No wonder he was a hate figure of the radical right.[...]
Equally significant is the event during which the assassination took place. The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity is an annual gala which raises millions for hospital equipment. In recent years, the event has been the target of a smear campaign by the right-wing press. The popularity of the charity and of its charismatic founder, Jerzy Owsiak, is seen as a threat to PiS’ agenda. Vocally pro-choice, supportive of LGBT rights and religious minorities and critical of the influence of the church, he represents the very cosmopolitan values that PiS defines itself against. Owsiak’s catch phrase “róbta co chceta” (do what you want) has been interpreted as an endorsement of promiscuity and moral relativism and the charity itself as a secular alternative seeking to undermine catholic charities. Why hospitals need to rely on charity at all is rarely discussed in a country without a major left force.[...]
The success of PiS – which still regularly exceeds 40% support in opinion polls – lies in bringing together a broad coalition of support: from radical right ideologues to a large number of working class families, rooted in a patriotic-catholic tradition but more concerned about putting food on the table. A few headline redistributive policies, such as the famous “500+” child benefit programme, have undeniably lifted people out of poverty – but they come in a package, with a narrative about protecting the traditional family and the great Polish nation from what threatens it – Muslims, atheists, queer people.
UnHerd: How the gilets jaunes could save Macron’s skin
President Emmanuel Macron, stunned at first by the vehement hatred of the gilets jaunes, is fighting back. He is rising in the opinion polls for the first time in nine months (although his popularity remains at historically low levels). His performances at a series of marathon debates with small town mayors have been impressive. A man who glided serenely to the highest position in the nation before the age of 40 might yet survive, even learn from, his first great ordeal by public loathing. [...]
What is evident, driving around France in recent days, is that the movement has wilted in its rural and outer-suburban heartlands. In mid-November, 40% of the cars in my part of Normandy displayed yellow high-vis vests on their dashboards. My own unscientific poll of the yellow splodges in car windscreens in rural Calvados now averages 14 per cent. [...]
They insist that they are peaceful but they refuse to condemn the violence at the weekend protests in Paris and other cities. Like the more militant yellow vests, they see the movement not as a protest but as an uprising that will end when they have overturned existing democratic institutions. [...]
There is an undoubted influence from the far-Right: several prominent gilets jaunes “spokespeople” have connections or sympathies. Absurd anti-semitic and alt-right conspiracy theories proliferate on gilets jaunes social media. France has been “sold” to the United Nations. Alsace and Lorraine have been ceded to Germany. The Russian economy boomed after Vladimir Putin threw out the Rothschild banks.
There is also an attempted hijacking by the ultra-Left. Some gilets jaunes leaders speak of the movement as a “class war”. The most violent of the “weekends only” protesters are bourgeois, metropolitan youths who belong to antifascist, anticapitalist militias. [...]
The latest polls show his party jumping ahead by five points to recapture the lead in the European elections in May from Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. If part of the gilets movement does run candidates of its own, they will take votes away from the far Right and the far Left. The great beneficiary would, paradoxically, be Emmanuel Macron. In other words, the French part of the EU-wide poll in May will be the most interesting European elections in European history.
New Scientist: We may finally know what causes Alzheimer’s – and how to stop it
However evidence has been growing that the function of amyloid proteins may be as a defence against bacteria, leading to a spate of recent studies looking at bacteria in Alzheimer’s, particularly those that cause gum disease, which is known to be a major risk factor for the condition.
Bacteria involved in gum disease and other illnesses have been found after death in the brains of people who had Alzheimer’s, but until now, it hasn’t been clear whether these bacteria caused the disease or simply got in via brain damage caused by the condition. [...]
In the new study, Cortexyme have found the toxic enzymes that P. gingivalis uses to feed on human tissue – called gingivains – in 96 per cent of the 54 Alzheimer’s brain samples they studied. They also found the bacteria themselves in all three Alzheimer’s brains whose DNA they examined.[...]
Some brain samples from people without Alzheimer’s also had P. gingivalis and protein accumulations, but at lower levels. We already know that amyloid and tau can accumulate in the brain for 10 to 20 years before Alzheimer’s symptoms begin. This, says Lynch, shows P. gingivalis is a cause of Alzheimer’s, not a result.
Social Europe: Can Italy survive its self-inflicted wounds?
Italy’s stand-off with Brussels over its 2019 budget deficit ended a few days before Christmas, after two months of intense negotiations, forcing the Italian Parliament hastily to approve the budget law on December 30th 2018. Many commentators spoke of a law ‘decided by the European Commission’ and the main opposition party—the Partito Democratico (PD)—filed a claim to the Constitutional Court against the government for rushing it through the Senate without allowing due time for debate. While the court eventually dismissed the claim, it warned that similar ‘law-making procedures should be abandoned as they may not survive future constitutional claims’. [...]
The Italian crisis with Brussels was completely self-induced, created and pushed by the populist forces solidly at the helm of the government: the Five Stars Movement and the League. The commission’s preoccupations did not stem from the size of the Italian public debt (131.2 per cent of GDP, according to the Italian statistics institute, ISTAT) nor the extent of any target deficit (whether 0.8, 2.04 or 2.4 per cent of GDP)—think about Japan, which has a public debt of over 235 per cent of GDP, or France, which is running a deficit of 2.7 per cent of GDP (OECD data). Rather, Italy has been on the brink of losing the confidence of domestic and foreign investors, and the European Commission, because of the budget choices the government made in the budget law. [...]
According to the latest figures published by ISTAT on November 30th, economic indicators are worrisome: the country’s output shrank by 0.1 per cent in the third trimester of 2018—the only EU country where this happened. Unemployment has grown to 10.6 per cent and youth unemployment to 32.5 per cent. In October, Moody’s downgraded Italy’s credit rating to one notch above junk, while Standards and Poors revised its outlook from stable to negative. A recent Goldman Sachs report forecast the economy to ‘flirt with recession’. The Bank of Italy has cut its growth forecasts to 0.6 per cent for 2019 and 0.9 per cent for 2020, from prior estimates of 1 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively. And the International Monetary Fund has revised down its own forecasts to match those of the Bank of Italy, since ‘concerns about sovereign and financial risks have weighed on domestic demand’. [...]
For example, the League has created the perception that Italy today has a problem with immigration, when the numbers say otherwise. It connected its proposal to curb immigrant arrivals with values of fairness and a sense of identity, supposedly under threat by immigrants taking Italians’ jobs. Similarly, the Five Stars Movement campaigned for the introduction of universal basic income as a measure of equity, easily connecting with the public need for economic justice, but insufficient to create the conditions for more and better jobs, the real problem suffered by Italians. Those policies were powerful drivers of a populist narrative which won handily at the March 2018 general elections.
openDemocracy: Nicolás Maduro, the usurper
Between 2009 and 2012 we carried out a research on political leaders in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela. We interviewed 285 leaders, including former Presidents, former Vice Presidents, acting Vice Presidents, mayors, deputies, senators, political party presidents, political journalists and trade union officials.[...]
The second type of leader is ambivalently democratic. He respects the rights of citizens, works cooperatively, but seeks to accumulate personal power. He is the type of leader who believes that in order to strengthen his position he needs to negotiate and make concessions.[...]
Unlike the democratic leader, the ambivalent one respects but does not strengthen democratic institutions. In fact, he can end up weakening democracy in his bid to increase personal power.
The weak usurper of power wavers between challenging and accepting the rule of law and State institutions. The historical context is crucial here, for it can allow, or block, the leader's capacity to increase his autonomy.[...]
His recurrent lies, the shortage of goods, administrative corruption, the profound deterioration of the economy, the rampant devaluation of the Bolivarian currency, political control, the empowerment of military sects, all come together in the usurpation of power and the establishment of a regime showing clearly totalitarian, militaristic and undemocratic tendencies.
euronews: Far-right lawmakers in Germany walk out on Holocaust survivor's speech
"A party is represented here today that disparages those (democratic) values and downplays the crimes of the National Socialists," Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and President of the Jewish Community in Munich, told the regional assembly. [...]
"The so-called AfD bases it politics on hate and exclusion and doesn't abide by our democratic constitution," Knobloch said in her speech, given in remembrance of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. [...]
"It is scandalous that the president of the Jewish community in Munich abused a memorial service for the victims of Nazism to defame the whole AfD and its legitimate and democratically elected faction using evil blanket insinuations," she said.[...]
Two years ago, Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD's leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, triggered anger after he told supporters that Berlin's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was a "memorial of shame" and that history books should be rewritten to focus more on German victims.
Haaretz: Right-wing Extremists Murdered 50 Americans in 2018, Report Finds - and One-third of Them Were Jews
At least 50 Americans were killed by extremists in 2018, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League. The report noted that in each and every one of the 17 incidents involved, the killers were affiliated with right-wing groups, in most cases white supremacy movements. [...]
The number of Americans murdered by extremists was 35 percent higher in 2018 than in the previous year, but lower than in 2015 and 2016, according to the report. However, 2018 saw the largest number of fatalities attributed to right-wing extremists since 1995, the year that Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building.[...]
Responding to the findings, ADL Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Greenblatt said: “The white supremacist attack in Pittsburgh should serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric. It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognize the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism.”
24 January 2019
The Art of Manliness: What’s Causing the Sex Recession?
Studies show that people, especially young people, are having less sex than past generations did. While many may celebrate this decline as a good thing, the reasons behind the drop in sex may not all be so positive. A decline in physical intimacy may potentially speak to a decline in emotional intimacy, and a struggle modern folks are having with connecting with each other.
My guest explores the decline in sexual frequency as a way into these larger cultural and relational questions in her longform cover story for this month’s The Atlantic magazine. Her name is Kate Julian, and today we discuss her piece, entitled “The Sex Recession,” on why people are counterintuitively having less sex in a time when sex is less taboo and more accessible than ever before. We begin our conversation highlighting the statistics that indicate young Americans are having less sex and whether this decline holds true for other countries and affects married people as well as singles. Kate then delves into the idea that the reasons for why young people are having less sex may suggest deeper issues in how people are relating, or not relating, to each other. These reasons include the way dating apps are shaping in-person interactions, the prevalence of porn, and an increase in anxiety and depression. We end our conversation by raising the question of why people continue to perpetuate relational patterns that don’t seem to be making them happy.
This is a fascinating discussion. I know some of you listen to the podcast with your kids. Due to the mature nature of this show, I’d have them skip this one.
Today in Focus: How Ukip embraced the far right
With Brexit talks stalled and some of its supporters pushing a betrayal narrative, the Guardian’s Peter Walker charts how Ukip has begun rising in the polls again. But how did the party come to fully embrace the far right in Britain? And do its supporters know how extreme it has become? Plus: Helen Pidd on what young voters in Bolsover make of the Brexit deal paralysis.
When the UK Independence party was first formed in 1993, its aim was to mobilise a relatively small group of voters whose main focus was getting Britain out of the European Union. In 2016, the party achieved what its leaders had always dreamed of: a referendum victory for leaving the EU. Since then, however, Ukip has gone through a succession of hapless leaders after the post-referendum departure of Nigel Farage. Now led by Gerard Batten, the party has begun explicitly appealing to far-right figures, such as Tommy Robinson, for advice and support.
UnHerd: This demographic catastrophe will hit us all
Birth rates of well below replacement level are now commonplace in the developed world. For instance, Italy’s is about 1.4. If such a rate is maintained over three generations then that means the second generation will be 70% of the size of the first, and the third generation half the size of the first. That’s quite the demographic slide, but consider what happens if the birth rate drops even lower to approximately 1. If that is maintained over three generations, then the second generation will be half the size of the first, and the third a mere quarter. In other words a fall in the fertility rate from 1.4 to 1, which South Korea shows is possible, doubles the rate at which new generations halve in size. [...]
These factors may explain why South Korea has an especially low birth rate, but it’s worth remembering that birth rates are also falling in the most progressive, sexually egalitarian parts of the world – such as the Nordic countries. Even Finland, with its ‘baby box’ package of support for new parents and its impressive schools, has seen its birth rate hit record lows. [...]
We talk about the ‘greying’ of populations due to increasing longevity, but the biggest story is not one of improved retention, but a collapse in recruitment. The fact that birth rates are lowest in the east Asian economies that have low levels of compensatory immigration, but which are also relied upon as the drivers of global economic growth, has implications for everyone.
Vox: The real reason streetcars are making a comeback (Aug 9, 2017)
Starting in the late 20th century, modern streetcar proposals started rippling across municipalities in the United States. They’re touted as infrastructure carrying benefits ranging from the social to economic and the environmental. But these projects often make appearances in the news as costly, blunder-filled experiments in public policy.
Cities are willing to bet big on this technology for its potential to develop the local economy. But there is some disagreement as to whether the streetcar is driving this progress, or if it is simply the result of planning *around* the streetcar.
The Guardian: For the EU to prosper, Britain must leave
The rationale is simple, Brexit is – either now or in the not-so-distant future – inevitable. That is because Britain continues to demand impossible conditions for its membership of the community-based, compromise-led, multinational organisation the modern EU represents. Even in trying to exit, Britain is still arguing about “red lines” of its own making. This approach would only amplify if it somehow ended up remaining a member. Britain already enjoys a privileged position in the EU, much to the chagrin of many other member states. Opt-outs from the euro, the Schengen agreement on passport-free travel, the charter of fundamental rights and on any European legislation related to freedom, justice and security have all been negotiated by successive British prime ministers.
European diplomats are exasperated at how this situation is still portrayed in Britain as the creep of an EU super-state. The Luxembourg prime minister, Xavier Bettel, put it best when he said the British “were in with a lot of opt-outs, now they are out and want a lot of opt-ins”. This situation is untenable for the future cohesiveness of the EU; it slows decision making, makes the setting of meaningful objectives difficult to achieve and acts as a brake on meaningful reform.[...]
But here lies the crux of the problem for Britain. The sovereignty-sharing, legalistic model of integration embodied by the EU only succeeds because member states see the bigger, sometimes almost incalculable, benefits of membership. Raging arguments over migration, Russia and populism may be a feature of European council summits in Brussels. The European commission might take Hungary or Poland to task over reforms which threaten democracy. But none of these debates question the wider integrity of the EU project.
The Atlantic: In 1995, the U.S. Declared a State of Emergency. It Never Ended.
Clinton’s declaration is a case study in presidential powers, which, once activated, chief executives are often reluctant to roll back. The United States has roughly 30 ongoing national emergencies—one of them has been in place for four decades, having been issued by President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.
That most Americans could live in a “national emergency” for 40 years without noticing says something about the broad—some would say insidious—expansion of emergency powers. The United States has ongoing emergencies for everything from unrest in Burundi to the movement of vessels near Cuba. It’s not that Cuban maritime malfeasance will end in U.S. martial law, or even that Clinton was invoking the same kind of emergency Trump has flirted with to fund his border wall. But the basic legal concept—an emergency allows the president to exercise powers not otherwise granted to him by Congress—is common to all these scenarios. [...]
“States of emergency that last decades are not only a linguistic oxymoron,” Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who serves as a special rapporteur on countering terrorism to the United Nations Human Rights Council, told me. “They function to degrade the rule of law, often consolidate executive powers imperceptibly but distinctly, and more broadly loosen the boundaries between the normal and the exceptional.”
Quartz: Europe’s richest country has no airport or trains and an official 90-minute lunch break
Now, Liechtenstein, which today (Jan. 23) celebrates the 300th anniversary of the principality’s creation, is thriving. The country is the world’s richest country per capita, driven by a 12.5% corporate tax rate—among the lowest in the continent—and freewheeling incorporation rules resulting in many holding companies establishing offices in the country’s capital, Vaduz. [...]
The country used its low taxes as a selling point. In 1955 Liechtenstein, described itself (paywall) as a country “where citizens dwell virtually tax-free, and where similar freedom awaits foreign corporations.” (The top tax rate at that time was 1.4%.) Foreign corporations with headquarters in Liechtenstein could enjoy “only minimal taxation”—as well as dreamy mountain views. Change did not come as swiftly as the country’s rulers might have liked: At an especially dire point in the 1960s, its ruling family was forced to sell off its Old Master paintings to the highest bidder—among them Leonardo da Vinci’s counterpart to the Mona Lisa (paywall) and four Breughels formerly displayed in prince Franz Josef II’s Austrian hunting lodge. [...]
Its politics remain stuck in the past too: until 1984, it denied women the vote. The country has two ruling princes—the head of state, Hans Adam II, and his son, Alois, who now performs day-to-day duties—who were previously a banker and an accountant before assuming their roles. Since 2003, they have had the right to veto parliamentary decisions, appoint judges, and sack the government. The country’s princes may be high up in their castle on the hill, but they are watching closely nonetheless.
Politico: Europe in pieces: Where voters disagree
The European Parliament election in May is expected to produce a major turnover in political power in the EU’s institutions, with populist parties making new gains and voters across the bloc split on what issues to prioritize in the ballot. [...]
The EPP, the EU’s biggest political group, is leading the polls in only two of the bloc’s 10 most populous countries. An EPP-affiliated party leads a national government in only one of its 13 most populous countries. Here are its projected results in the EU-wide election: [...]
If the votes of people who abstained in the 2014 European Parliament election counted toward a new party, that party would be the biggest political force in 24 out of 27 EU countries. The graphic below shows the percentage of people who abstained from voting in the last European election.
Politico: Yellow Jackets protesters announce candidates for European election
The list so far has 10 names and is led by Ingrid Levavasseur, a 31-year-old auxiliary nurse and one of the main figures of the street movement, which began in response to an increase in fuel taxes but has since morphed into a bigger — largely anti-Emmanuel Macron — cause.
The candidates have formed their own group called "Citizens' Initiative Rally" — a reference to one of the main demands of the movement: allowing for a so-called "citizens' initiative referendum," which would let citizens trigger a referendum by collecting 700,000 signatures, or 1.5 percent of registered voters. [...]
A poll last month showed 13 percent of French respondents would vote for a hypothetical Yellow Jackets list in the European election.
23 January 2019
Haaretz: In Tunisia, the Revolution Succeeded - but Where Is the Dignity?
However, the deep unemployment, standing at over 15 percent (and much higher among young people), the lack of jobs for college graduates and the meager salaries stoke frustration and rage, and people are already talking about the need for another revolution.[...]
Video clips posted on YouTube by the Tunisian website “Without a Mask” show that public rage is not restricted to young educated Tunisians who can express their protest on social networks. Older citizens, owners of small businesses, government workers and students are all united in feeling that the revolution did not attain its minimal demands. The price of meat is spiking, vegetables and fruit are becoming luxury items, the standard of education is low, clinics are poorly equipped – these are the issues that are on the minds of Tunisians. [...]
The civil insurrection in 2011 did bring about a coup, but this did not turn into a revolution that changed the standard of living, or gave people a life of dignity. However, it created an active and kicking public opinion that obliges the government to take it into account. Critical video clips could not be published during the era of the deposed president, who was perceived by the West as an ally. Internet users in cafés were under strict surveillance, at risk of being arrested.
CityLab: The Great Divide in How Americans Commute to Work
Drive alone to work: More than three-quarters (76.4 percent) of commuters drive to work alone. But in the New York metro area, the share is just about half. It’s 57 percent in San Francisco; about two-thirds in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Seattle; and about 70 percent in Chicago and Portland. And, as might be expected, a smaller-than-average share of workers drives to work alone in more compact college towns such as Boulder, Colorado; Corvallis and Eugene, Oregon; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Ames and Iowa City, Iowa.[...]
Bike to work: Just half of a percent of Americans nationwide bike to work. But nearly 7 percent do in Corvallis, Oregon, and more than 4 percent in Boulder; Ames; and Santa Cruz, California. Two or three percent of commuters get to work by bike in other college towns: Gainesville, Florida; State College; Ann Arbor; and Madison, Wisconsin. Among large metros (with more than 1 million people), almost 2 percent of commuters get to work by bike in San Jose and San Francisco. [...]
Education is another piece in the picture of how Americans get to work. People are less likely to drive to work alone and to use alternate modes in metros where more adults are college graduates. The share of adults with college degrees is negatively and significantly (-0.41) associated with driving to work alone, and positively and significantly associated with using transit (0.56), biking (0.62), walking (0.56), and working from home (0.50), although it is not statistically associated with carpooling. [...]
The way we get to work is also related to our political cleavages. On the one hand, commuters in more progressive metros—those where Hillary Clinton got a bigger share of votes in the 2016 election—are more likely to walk (0.44), bike (0.44), or use transit (0.59), and less likely to drive to work alone (-0.36). Commuters in more conservative metros, where a larger share voted for Trump, are more likely to drive to work alone (0.44). This reflects the fact, though, that more liberal metros tend also to be denser, more affluent, and more educated.
Foreign Policy: Defenders of Human Rights Are Making a Comeback
Yet there was also considerable pushback against authoritarianism. Malaysian voters ousted their corrupt prime minister, Najib Razak, the latest representative of a ruling coalition that had been in power for almost six decades, in favor of a coalition running on an agenda of human rights reform. In the Maldives, voters rejected their autocratic president, Abdulla Yameen. In Armenia, whose government was mired in corruption, Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan had to step down amid massive protests. Ethiopia, under popular pressure, replaced a long-abusive government with a new one led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who has embarked on an impressive reform agenda. And, of course, U.S. voters in the midterm elections for the House of Representatives seemed to rebuke Trump’s divisive policies.
In many cases, particularly in Central Europe, the public led the resistance in the streets. protested Orban’s moves to shut Central European University, an academic bastion of liberal inquiry and thought, and to impose a “slave law” to compensate for workers fleeing Large crowds in Budapest Orban’s “illiberal democracy” by authorizing extended overtime with pay delayed up to three years. Tens of thousands of Poles repeatedly took to the streets to defend their courts from the ruling party’s attempts to undermine their independence. Czech and Romanian leaders also faced large anti-corruption protests. [...]
The Human Rights Council made some major advances. For example, the possibility of a Chinese, Russian, or even American veto at the U.N. Security Council appeared to doom any effort to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court for its army’s crimes against humanity that sent 700,000 Rohingya fleeing for their lives to Bangladesh. In response, the Human Rights Council, where there is no veto, stepped in to create an investigative mechanism to preserve evidence, identify those responsible, and build cases for prosecution once a tribunal becomes available. That effort won overwhelmingly, with 35 countries in favor and only three against (seven abstained), sending the signal that these atrocities cannot be committed with impunity.[...]
For the first time, the Human Rights Council condemned the severe repression in Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro. A resolution led by a group of Latin American nations won by a vote of 23 to seven with 17 abstentions. The U.S. government’s departure from the council made it easier for resolution sponsors to show they were addressing Venezuela as a matter of principle rather than as a tool of Washington’s ideology. A group of Latin American governments led by Argentina also organized in the context of the Human Rights Council the first joint statement, signed by 47 countries, on the worsening repression in Nicaragua, as President Daniel Ortega responded with violence to growing protests against his repressive rule.
Politico: Mercron’s sound and fury
Echoing that sentiment, Marine Le Pen warned Monday that the deal opens the door to forcing people in the border regions to speak German at school. It is only a matter of time before France would have to share its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council with Germany, the leader of France’s National Rally predicted.[...]
While the agreement aspires to promote greater cooperation, interaction and exchange along the border, it’s ludicrous to suggest it’s a back door to recreating the German Reich. The declarations in the treaty are formulated in such broad terms that they’re essentially meaningless.[...]
The Treaty of Aachen's greatest contribution might be to put in black and white just how little Macron has won from Berlin on Europe. Following his upstart campaign for president and his fiery Sorbonne speech on Europe in 2017, many hoped Europe’s moment had finally arrived. [...]
Though both Macron and Merkel have been criticized for the lack of ambition in the Treaty of Aachen, most of the blame lies with Berlin. On all the monumental questions of European integration in recent years, whether the eurozone or the military, the German answer has been the same: Nein.
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