The New Yorker: A Scandal in Austria and the Far Right’s Fortunes in Europe

In France, for example, President Emmanuel Macron called the potential victory of his main opponent, Marine Le Pen, and her National Rally (formerly National Front), an “existential threat” to the E.U. Le Pen, in return, predicted that her victory and those of her kindred parties—in Italy, Poland, the U.K., and Hungary, among other places—would be a “historic feat.” Such either-or narratives, as might have been anticipated, proved cheap. Le Pen came in first on Sunday, and she picked up half a million more votes than she received in the 2014 European election. But she earned a slightly smaller proportion of the over-all vote, and her party will actually lose two seats in the Parliament. In his young party’s second-ever election, Macron, facing exceptionally low approval ratings at home and besieged by a popular uprising that has changed the course of his Presidency, came in behind Le Pen by less than a point. His La République En Marche! party will now enter the European Parliament for the first time, with a mandate to further his “European Renaissance” agenda. Because the Party will be centrally positioned, and therefore able to make alliances with the left and the right, it may end up having more power than anyone anticipated.

The Brexit Party won in the United Kingdom, but it did so in an election that wasn’t supposed to happen, and for a governmental body that the country was no longer supposed to be a part of. Right-wing parties also won in Poland and Hungary, but these were hardly insurgent campaigns—nationalists are a part of the political establishment in both countries. But the continued erosion of the stronghold of traditional parties was evident on the left as well. In France, the Green Party doubled its number of seats, thanks, in part, to young voters. In Germany, the Green Party, which entered the national Parliament for the first time in the nineteen-eighties, came in second and doubled its results from five years ago; one in three first-time voters in Germany chose the Greens. Over all, the nationalist block in the European Parliament fell short of winning a third of the seats, as many leaders (and Steve Bannon) claimed it might. Instead, it will hold about fifty-eight seats out of seven hundred and fifty-one. Across Europe, liberals and greens gained more seats than the right-wing populists and nationalists did; pro-European parties won two-thirds of them. [...]

For the past two years in Austria, Kurz, youthful and brash, was held up by conservatives as someone to emulate. “Up until last week, many people on the center right in Europe saw Kurz as a kind of hero,” Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton, told me. This idea extended beyond Europe: Trump’s Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, made clear, after arriving in Berlin last spring, that he was more interested in meeting the “rock star” leader of the small country next door than the vastly more powerful Chancellor of the country in which he was being paid to behave diplomatically. Kurz brought the F.P.O., a party founded in 1956, and whose first chairmen were former S.S. officers, into his government promising to tame them. “If you ask people today, what does the center right stand for, I think most people could not really give you an answer,” Müller told me. “And this vacuum of ideas has made it easier for the center right, in a very opportunistic way, to mainstream the far right as a kind of desperate measure.”

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Aeon: Who really owns the past?

What is most striking about this campaign is its seeming indifference to the lives of the people who call the city home. UNESCO’s promotional video pans through the old city; block after block after block lies completely devastated … only for the camera to abandon them for the one monument that will actually be rebuilt. What kind of reconstruction is this, and who benefits from it? Certainly not the residents. Many Iraqis suspect that the Shiite-led national government is exacting revenge on the Sunni-majority population of the city. Instead, it appears that the main beneficiaries are the governments gaining prestige by launching and funding this campaign.

Cases such as Mosul’s highlight a key fact about cultural heritage: it is not primarily about the past – as counterintuitive as that might be. It is about the present. Heritage harnesses the power of the past to justify present social relations, especially relations of power. Governments trample over the lives and needs of individuals and communities, the wealthy convert their dubiously acquired wealth into cultural capital, all in the name of that heritage. And in our conviction that we must protect the remains of the past, the rest of us are often swept up in the enthusiasm. We don’t even question the relatively new idea of cultural heritage – that the remains of history are to be unquestionably treasured as our inheritance from the past and must be preserved in their original state. Or that what typically counts as cultural heritage are major historic buildings and monuments, perfectly suited to be exploited as symbols of the powerful. [...]

The situation truly changed only in the aftermath of the Second World War. The British and other imperial powers began to shed their colonies in earnest, and international agreements such as the 1954 Hague Convention, and the 1970 and 1972 UNESCO conventions codified respect for these new nations and their heritage. These agreements are rooted in the concepts of national sovereignty. They have enshrined the principle that cultural heritage belongs to the nation in whose territory it is found, and call for recognition and enforcement of national laws of cultural property. These conventions represent the final step in the transformation of attitudes toward antiquities laws of developing countries from dismissal to respect. But they have also enshrined and encouraged the use of cultural property for nationalist purposes. [...]

Universalist language serves a double purpose. It justifies the urges of the developed world to acquire, often in effect to loot, heritage from developing nations. And it does so while presenting those same developing nations as less enlightened. But this characterisation of developing nations runs counter to the actual history. In 1989, John Henry Merryman, professor emeritus of law and art at Stanford University, questioned ‘[t]he deference still routinely given to state claims to their “national cultural patrimony” in international affairs’. At the time, European and American powers had just begun taking the antiquities laws of developing nations seriously. Western scholars love to critique and mock the image of Hussein as Nebuchadnezzar, but it is not qualitatively different from Napoleon’s depiction as a Greek god or hero, defeating the Mamluk rulers of Egypt and bringing civilisation back to the country. In Europe and America, nationalist use of heritage is depicted as an aberration. It’s what others do. The West rarely holds itself up to the same mirror.

UnHerd: The far-Right’s appeal to resentful Germans

This was once the beating heart of East German industry, and it is here that the far-Right has enjoyed particular success in recent times. Support for the AfD in East Germany is on average more than double that in the West. In this week’s elections to the European Parliament, the AfD was the biggest force in Saxony, winning a quarter (25.3%) of the vote. The party also finished first in Brandenburg.

As with populist successes elsewhere, the reasons for the AfD’s rise are multifaceted. There is the decline of industry and resultant male resentment. There is the gap between the attitudes of younger city-dwellers and older voters toward multiculturalism and immigration. And there is a tired political establishment – in this case Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany – that has been in power for nearly a decade and a half. [...]

The difference in attitudes to immigration between East and West is significant. According to a recent survey, 66% of respondents in the former East German states are not satisfied that their immigration concerns are being addressed, compared to 46% in the former West German states. There are fewer foreign-born citizens in the East than in the West, yet anger about immigration runs deeper. According to data collected by victim counselling centres, five people in the east fall victim to far-right violence every day. In Saxony, 317 attacks were recorded in 2018, up from 229 in 2017. [...]

There are other factors at play in the party’s growth. The economy, for example. But often these are connected with immigration as low-skilled workers compete with immigrants for jobs. Though the AfD did well in areas with strong economic growth, support across Germany was typically stronger in areas with low household income. Those living in the former GDR are statistically several percentage points more likely to be living in poverty than those living in the west of Germany.

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Financial Times: How Brexit has broken the UK's two-party political system

FT political editor George Parker says the European elections have exposed how both Britain's ruling Conservative and opposition Labour parties are 'cracking up' under the pressure of Brexit.

Financial Times: Donald Trump and the US-UK special relationship

FT's chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman and US national editor Edward Luce give their views on the president's first state visit to Britain. The special relationship is under pressure from Brexit, the China trade war and unilateralism.

Deutsche Welle: Poland: Where Keynes meets Jesus

Brian Porter-Szucs, author of the book "When Nationalism Began to Hate," believes that Kaczynski hasn't suddenly turned "a communist," and adds: "But many wanted a state that would preserve the communist party's commitment to social cohesion, cultural homogeneity and nationalism, just imbue it with a Catholic rather than a leftist conceptual vocabulary."

Kaczynski himself rarely speaks with anything but a Catholic conceptual vocabulary. That is why some in PiS see the current administration as part of a long-term plan to remold Polish state and society, with a socially conservative, church-infused rhetoric combined with a Keynesian-lite attempt to rebalance a capitalism that some believe has gone far enough in the post-communist country.[...]

The spending plans could also bring Poland close to the EU's budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP in 2020, from under 0.5% in 2018. Some economists even fear Poland could breach the limit. They also think that there will be hardly any money left in the budget for urgently needed increases to public sector pay. [...]

"The schemes were criticized as being too expensive, but Poland's public deficit has fallen, not risen. Rather, these policies have stimulated economic growth while dramatically reducing child poverty and increasing school enrolment." he argues, and adds: "A new European political order seems to be emerging — one that is likely to leave traditional parties of both the left and the right behind."

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Politico: Mueller remarks put Barr back into harsh spotlight

Moments after Robert Mueller gave brief concluding remarks about his Russia probe on Wednesday, the former Republican New Jersey governor and sometime Trump adviser Chris Christie declared that the special counsel’s statement “definitely contradicts what the attorney general said when he summarized Mueller’s report.” [...]

Wittingly or not, Mueller spotlighted differences with Barr on several points. While Barr stated in his April news conference that there was “no evidence of collusion,” Mueller said Wednesday he found “insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.” And while Mueller gave a nod to Congress when he said that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” Barr said he hoped Mueller hadn’t intended to leave the decision to Congress “since we don’t convene grand juries and conduct criminal investigations for that purpose.” [...]

Perhaps the most significant divergence between Barr and Mueller, who are longtime friends, dating back to their service at the Department of Justice during the George H.W. Bush administration, came on the explosive question of a potential indictment of Trump for obstructing justice. In Mueller’s telling, a Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted guided his investigation and informed his decision not to reach a conclusion about whether Trump obstructed justice. Charging the president with a crime was “not an option,” Mueller said, and accusing him of committing one when he could not try the case in court, Mueller added, violated what he considered “principles of fairness.” [...]

Both Barr and Mueller on Wednesday evening sought to tamp down the fury over their perceived split. In a rare joint statement from Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupec and Special Counsel spokesman Peter Carr, the two said, “The Attorney General has previously stated that the Special Counsel repeatedly affirmed that he was not saying that, but for the OLC opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice. The Special Counsel’s report and his statement today made clear that the office concluded it would not reach a determination — one way or the other — about whether the President committed a crime. There is no conflict between these statements.”

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Vox: Ghana is adopting a data-driven approach to fighting poverty

Recognizing this, Ghana wants its new census data to be more accurate, comprehensive, and granular than in the past. In addition to switching to digital tablets, it’s using satellite imagery to make sure households in rural areas don’t go undiscovered and uncounted, and disaggregating the data it collects at the district level.

The government is now seriously committed to a “leave no one behind” ethic, which means counting every single person in the population. That includes people who are sometimes called “the invisible” — those who live in slums, who are homeless, or who are institutionalized. [...]

Sometimes called West Africa’s “golden child,” Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to cut its poverty rate in half, thereby achieving the first of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, a list of eight targets that world leaders pledged to meet by 2015. [...]

That sounds impressive, but when researchers disaggregated the data they found that in some regions, over 70 percent of people were still below the poverty line, Seidu said. In two districts in a particularly poor region, it was as many as nine out of 10 people. [...]

One of the major critiques of the Millennium Development Goals was that some countries saw improved conditions for people who were just below the poverty line, but the extremely poor weren’t better off. So when the UN formulated a new list of targets in 2015, dubbed the Sustainable Development Goals, it emphasized the motto “leave no one behind” as a guiding principle. Those words have become a popular development slogan.

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The Guardian view on German responses to antisemitism: frankness and honesty

The Jews of Germany are alarmed. It is not just the success of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in recent elections that contributes to their feeling of unease. A short-lived campaign to ban circumcision in 2012 was the first alarm bell; large demonstrations against the Gaza war in 2014, in which hostility to Israel often seemed indistinguishable from antisemitism, was another. And they are aware of the rising currents of antisemitism around Europe, even if it takes different forms in different countries. [...]

The chancellor and the newspaper, in their different ways, exhibited a moral seriousness that is one of the distinguishing characteristics of German public life. The determination of official Germany to look the past squarely in the eye and, where possible, to atone for it, has provided a moral example to the rest of Europe. That does not undo the signs that sympathy for the Nazi past remains in some parts of the country. But no senior German politician would say, after far-right protests that had led to a person’s death, that there were “very fine people on both sides”, as Donald Trump did after the Charlottesville white supremacist rally of 2017.

The first big challenge to modern Germany’s liberal order came from the far left, with the urban guerillas of the 1970s. One noted legal thinker then observed that the democratic, liberal state depends on conditions that it cannot itself guarantee. In other words, the written rules are not in themselves enough to hold society together. They must be supplemented by unwritten moral understandings. Finding and strengthening those was the task facing Germany in the 1970s, successfully accomplished then; it must be resumed now. It is also the task that faces a horribly divided Britain today.

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Today in Focus: Is John Bolton trying to drive Trump to war with Iran?

John Bolton, who has been called “the most dangerous man in the world”, was not Donald Trump’s first pick for his national security adviser. But after a series of resignations, he was plucked from a life of Fox News appearances to reprise his career as the foremost military hawk in the US. Now he has his sights set on Iran and has pushed for a buildup of US military assets in the Gulf.

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, tells Anushka Asthana that as tensions rise, so do the chances of an accidental – or deliberate – escalation towards war. The echoes of the drumbeat to war in Iraq in 2003 are all too apparent, and it was Bolton’s role in that crisis that prompted a Guardian columnist to attempt to make a citizen’s arrest of him in the tranquil surroundings of the Hay literary festival in 2008. George Monbiot describes how he came out second best from that encounter.

Also today: the Guardian has updated its style guidance for journalists writing and talking about the environment. Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are now “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”. The editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, explains why precision in language is important in reporting on the climate and why the changes have been made now.

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The New York Times: Trump Undercuts Bolton on North Korea and Iran

President Trump was grousing about John R. Bolton, his national security adviser, at his Florida club not long ago. Guests heard the president complaining about the advice he was getting and wondering if Mr. Bolton was taking him down a path he did not want to go. [...]

The disparity was on stark display during Mr. Trump’s four-day visit to Japan that ended Tuesday after he contradicted Mr. Bolton on high-stakes confrontations with both Iran and North Korea. The president declared that, unlike his national security adviser, he was not seeking regime change in Iran and he asserted that, contrary to what Mr. Bolton had said, recent North Korean missile tests did not violate United Nations resolutions. [...]

The president’s supporters, however, said too much was being made of the differences. Mr. Trump has often surrounded himself with advisers who do not agree and encourages the debate, they said. If the disparate messages keep Iran, North Korea and Venezuela uncertain of how far the United States will go, they added, that can work to Mr. Trump’s benefit. [...]

And in some fundamental ways, the two diverge sharply over their approach to the world. Mr. Trump came to office vowing to pull out of overseas wars and has made diplomacy with North Korea a signature initiative. Mr. Bolton has been an advocate of military action and an opponent of negotiations with North Korea.

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ChickenWire: BREXIT: Remainers vs Brexit Party - Who's Bigger?

Brexit: Remainers vs Brexit Party - Who's Bigger? Who is bigger in the EU elections 2019 in the UK was it the Brexit party, UKIP and other leave parties or was it the combination of the remain parties such as the liberal democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens. Well it depends how you tally up the vote if you add up the nationalist parties or not and if you add up Labour and the Tories. In this video I explore in detail and analyse the full results for the UK in the EU election 2019. It looks like Nigel Farag's Brexit party came out on top but does that mean more people support remain or a second referendum or leaving without a deal or leaving with a deal? I also take a look back at Theresa May's performance and give statistical advice on where I think the parties should go.

VICE News: The Brexit Mistakes That Led to Theresa May's Resignation

After almost three years of waiting for their country to leave the EU, British voters finally saw some action. Prime Minister Theresa May resigned as leader of the Conservative Party last week.

Her resignation has been inevitable since May failed to get Parliament to accept a deal and was forced to delay Brexit. Still, there’s no clear frontrunner to fill the power vacuum that will emerge as she steps down, and whoever takes over will inherit the problems that took May down.

One thing, however, is clear: In the next few months, her successor will clarify whether Theresa May single-handedly and spectacularly failed at her only job or whether delivering Brexit is a suicide mission for any politician.

More than a few conservative hardliners are banking on the first hypothesis — that May’s string of bad decisions were the problem. They’re pushing to see Boris Johnson, the figurehead of the 2016 leave campaign, take over and finish what he started.

Whoever ends up in the unenviable position will first have to handle the fallout from the European Parliament elections. Polls show the Conservative Party finishing in a humiliating fifth place. And with Nigel Farage and his newly-formed Brexit Party raging toward victory, the humiliations are likely to continue well after the results are in. 

Reuters: Danes make welfare a hot election issue as cracks show in Nordic model

The erosion of the welfare state has now become a defining issue in the June 5 general election in a country where people hand over an average 36% of their personal income to the state each month.

Opinion polls indicate Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen of the Liberal Party will lose power to Mette Frederiksen of the center-left Social Democratic Party. [...]

Denmark itself spends a higher proportion of its wealth on public welfare than most European countries, at 28% of GDP, behind only France, Belgium and Finland. [...]

A recent survey showed that more than half of Danes don’t trust the public health service to offer the right treatment. As a consequence the proportion of the 5.7 million Danish population taking out private health insurance has jumped to 33% from 4% in 2003, according to trade organization Insurance & Pension Denmark.

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BBC: Abortion in US: What surprise Supreme Court ruling means

A majority of the justices sided with Indiana, holding that the burial provision didn't place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to an abortion and it advanced a legitimate interest of the state, even if the law wasn't "perfectly tailored" to address foetal remains in all circumstances. [...]

With nearly a dozen states enacting new abortion regulations and outright prohibitions in 2019, this won't be the only opportunity for the Supreme Court to reconsider whether there is a constitutional right to abortion.

Anti-abortion activists, and state legislatures with anti-abortion majorities, may believe that with the addition of Mr Trump's appointments, there is a majority on the court willing to finally put a stake through the heart of Roe.

Tuesday's decisions, however - made with little fanfare and no advanced notice - could be an indication that a majority of the justices on the court are in no hurry to reverse 46 years of precedent.[...]

Also on Tuesday an abortion clinic in St Louis announced that it may be forced to stop performing the procedure on Friday because the state had yet to renew its licence. If that happens, Missouri would become the first state since Roe was decided to have no abortion clinics within its borders. Five other states have only one.

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The Guardian: Qatar attendance at Saudi summit raises prospect of detente

King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia invited Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, to attend the emergency Gulf Cooperation Council summit on Iran’s alleged role in attacking Gulf shipping and oil installations. [...]

Qatar – unlike Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – has so far retained support for the Iran nuclear deal. Although determined to follow an independent foreign policy, it will not be seeking to alienate Donald Trump by spurning Washington’s pressure to curtail Iranian aggression in the region. Qatar has an economic interest in ensuring gas and oil installations are not the subject of attacks by Iranian proxy forces. It also acts as the host to the largest US military base in the Gulf. [...]

Washington has blown hot and cold in its demands on Iran, with Trump saying he was not seeking regime change in Tehran, merely a renegotiation of the nuclear deal. He said the deal was full of loopholes that allowed Tehran to achieve nuclear breakout too rapidly.

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The Guardian: UK and territories are 'greatest enabler' of tax avoidance, study says

The UK and its “corporate tax haven network” is by far the world’s greatest enabler of corporate tax avoidance, research has claimed.

British territories and dependencies made up four of the 10 places that have done the most to “proliferate corporate tax avoidance” on the corporate tax haven index. [...]

McDonnell added: “The only way the UK stands out internationally on tax is in leading a race to the bottom in creating tax loopholes and dismantling the tax systems of countries in the global south. [...]

At the top of the list was the British Virgin Islands, followed by Bermuda and the Cayman Islands – all British overseas territories.

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The Local: The winners and losers: Six things to know about the EU elections in Germany

Meanwhile, voter turnout in Germany was significantly higher than in the previous European election, reaching 61.4% compared to 48.1% during the 2014 ballot, according to preliminary results shared by the German government. [...]

And she's right. Young people voted overwhelmingly for the Greens: about 30 percent of the under 30s voted for the environmental party. [...]

Dr Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin previously told the Local that the Greens' message was optimism and that was one of the reasons that the party has become so desirable to voters in recent months. [...]

Yet in Saxony, the AfD was the biggest force with 25.3 percent of the vote, followed by the CDU (23 percent) and The Left (Die Linke), with 11.7 percent.

In Brandenburg, the AfD was also top with 19.9 percent of the vote, followed by the CDU (18 percent). The AfD also performed well in Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania although the CDU came out on top in these states.

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UnHerd: Is Croatia a nation of Eurosceptics?

The union Croatia finally joined – after this protracted and fraught negotiation process – was not what it had been. The EU was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, meaning the economic advantages Croatians were promised were not forthcoming. For instance the shipbuilding industry, in private hands, has been steadily sinking. The closure of Uljanik seems to be the last nail in the coffin. “Croatia no longer has a shipbuilding industry as of today,” commented the President of the Adriatic Union Boris Cerovac on the news. “If Uljanik is gone, so is shipbuilding.” [...]

Many say they will abstain because they don’t like the idea of casting a vote that would enable corrupt and incompetent elites to enjoy astronomical wages and the high life in Brussels. In the latest Eurobarometer polls (held last month), a mere 17% said they’ll cast a ballot, compared to an EU average of 35%. The poll also suggested that, if a referendum on leaving the EU were to be held tomorrow, only 52% of Croats would vote to remain. 

In other European nations – France, Sweden, Italy – the rise of Euroscepticism has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of far-Right parties; in Croatia, the far-Right has been weak and poorly organised. Its agenda focuses on primitive racism aimed at Serbs and nostalgia for the WWII-era, ultranationalist Ustashe state. Unusually, for a country along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, anti-immigrant sentiment isn’t widespread. [...]

And the UK was – is – a key player in the EU, whereas Croatia is the most recent country to become a member. Located on the fringe of the Union, and hometo few citizens who understand what it is or does, Croatia could easily be submerged by the rising tide of Euroscepticism. And this week’s election will tell us whether this rising tide could usher in a stronger, smarter far-Right.

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UnHerd: Will the EU become an empire?

In any case, one could argue that we’re well on the way to an imperial EU. It’s already a big multinational entity with a single currency (for the most part), a common trade policy, its own legislature and numerous federal institutions. And though the EU cannot be described as a sovereign state, it is the only entity that isn’t one to be permanently represented at the G7, and to be a member of the G20. [...]

On the Eurosceptic side, the tendency has been to present the EU as either an out-of-control bureaucracy or a vehicle for the machinations of rival nation-states (especially France and Germany). Eurosceptics do, of course, refer to the logical implications of “ever closer union,” but almost always in terms of the threat to UK sovereignty, as opposed to the creation of a new and much larger sovereign entity – their focus being what would be lost rather than what could, potentially, be gained.

Mainstream Europhiles have also avoided the issue – presenting the EU not as an empire in the making, but as a bulwark of a rules-based international order. In fact, they’d probably argue that the European project is all about challenging the very basis of imperialism: the idea that might is right. At its heart is an understanding that the powers of the Earth, whether big or small, should jointly abide by rules determined by principles of peace and justice, fairness and efficiency. And the EU has a special role to play in the implementation of this global vision, as the vanguard and exemplar of rules-based internationalism. [...]

That, of course, would require a common foreign policy and a European Army sustained by a greatly expanded EU budget. Whether the EU is capable of such integration is another matter. The current situation in which the Germans profit from the single currency and common trade policy, while not having to pay for fiscal or defence integration is such an absurdly good deal that I don’t see why Berlin would give it up if they don’t have to.

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Channel 4 News: Brexit Party comes out on top in EU elections - ahead of Labour and Conservatives

The results of last week’s EU elections are in: Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party topped the poll with nearly 32%. And the Liberal Democrats came second with 20%, their best ever result in a European Election.

But what does it mean? And how will these results affect Brexit?

TLDR News: What the EU Election Results Mean for Brexit - Brexit Explained

Last week people across the EU went to the polling station to cast the votes for a new bunch of MEPs. The results of these elections could have serious ramifications for Brexit and the EU as a whole. The success of the Brexit Party may push the Conservatives to a more 'hard Brexit' stance. The Liberal Democrats good results might encourage Labour to come up with a more defined, clear position on Brexit.

Phys.org: Ashkenazic Jews' mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA

For a more scientific take on the Jewish origin debate, recent DNA analysis of Ashkenazic Jews – a Jewish ethnic group – revealed that their maternal line is European. It has also been found that their DNA only has 3% ancient ancestry which links them with the Eastern Mediterranean (also known as the Middle East) – namely Israel, Lebanon, parts of Syria, and western Jordan. This is the part of the world Jewish people are said to have originally come from – according to the Old Testament. But 3% is a minuscule amount, and similar to what modern Europeans as a whole share with Neanderthals. So given that the genetic ancestry link is so low, Ashkenazic Jews most recent ancestors must be from elsewhere. [...]

The tolerance of the Persians encouraged the Jews to adopt Persian names, words, traditions, and religious practices, and climb up the social ladder gaining a monopoly on trade. They also converted other people who were living along the Black Sea, to their Jewish faith. This helped to expand their global network. [...]

What happened next was that the Jewish empire began to collapse. By the tenth century, the Jews on the Black Sea migrated to Ukraine and Italy. Yiddish became the lingua franca of these Ashkenazic Jews and absorbed German words while maintaining the Slavic grammar. And as global trade moved to the hands of the Italians, Dutch and English, the Jews were pushed aside.

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Independent: Forget the Brexit Party surge in the UK, the rest of Europe has delivered a far more important message

First, we have seen the rise of traditionally “small” pro-European parties such as the Greens and the Lib Dems. This shows that centrism, exemplified by the coalition that the Socialist Democrats and the European People’s Party’s have formed in passing legislation in the European Parliament over the past decade, is outdated. Social and Christian Democrats’ influence is eroding, with some geographical variations, throughout Europe. [...]

Second, while the populists did well, this is not the surge announced by pollsters. The Brexit Party claimed victory in the UK, yet their MEPs will lose their jobs once the UK leaves the EU. The big gains were in France, with the National Rally racing ahead of Macron’s party, and in Italy, where the Lega Nord won more than 33 per cent of the votes, and in Hungary, where Orban won an overwhelming majority. Yet overall these parties will have difficulty forming a coherent group, especially once the UK leaves the EU. [...]

The victory of the Greens, particularly striking in Germany where they are the main winners of the election, is the most noticeable feature. The Greens have been a strong party at European level, which has transcended national factionalism in the European Parliament for many years. But their victory goes beyond their party. Green issues have been at the top of the priorities list of most progressive parties in Europe. The “green contagion” is certainly also due to a high mobilisation of young voters in several European countries.

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Deutsche Welle: Analysis: Key takeaways from the EU election results

The European parliamentary elections have seen their biggest turnout in 20 years. Participation in the EU elections was up by neary 10 points compared with five years ago. Europe's traditionally large centrist parties have suffered significant losses, as Greens, liberals and nationalists gained ground in Brussels. But voters delivered a complicated message: it’s a patchwork result from a patchwork union.

Reuters: Northern Irish party surges in EU poll, seeks Brexit referendum

The vote also indicated increasing support for candidates not aligned to the traditional Catholic or Protestant voting blocs. It was the best national showing for the Alliance Party, which was founded almost 50 years ago, just as Northern Ireland’s violent period known as “The Troubles” deepened.[...]

The vote also indicated increasing support for candidates not aligned to the traditional Catholic or Protestant voting blocs. It was the best national showing for the Alliance Party, which was founded almost 50 years ago, just as Northern Ireland’s violent period known as “The Troubles” deepened.[...]

Northern Ireland still overwhelmingly votes along traditional lines two decades after a peace deal ended 30 years of sectarian violence, choosing mainly Catholic nationalists who favour a united Ireland or predominantly Protestant unionists who want to remain British.

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statista: European Elections: Where Turnout Was Highest & Lowest

The main centre-right and centre-left parties have lost their 40-year old grip on the European Parliament. As the results of the 2019 European Elections flowed in, it quickly became clear that voters had opted for alteratives such as the greens, liberals and far right. Fears about a populist Eurosceptic tidal wave were unfounded but they will still take more seats in the European Parliament than ever before. Italy, the UK and France all saw populist victories with Marine Le Pen's National Rally narrowly and symbolically beating Emmanuel Macron's En Marche in the latter. One of the most notable aspects of the election was voter turnout which soared to a 20-year high.

At 11:00 CET, provisional voter turnout was 50.95 percent, the highest level seen since 1994 and a reversal on four decades of decline. Turnout had been dropping steadily since 1979, falling from 62 percent that year to 42.6 percent by 2014. Many analysists are attributing the high turnout this year to increasing support for populist parties, desire to show support for the European project and heightened awareness of climate change and enviornmental issues. That saw support climb steeply for the EU's green parties who were particularly successful in Germany, France and Ireland.

According to the European Parliament's website, Belgium had the highest provisional voter turnout at 89 percent, ahead of Luxembourg's 84 percent. In the United Kingdom, which is bitterly divided about Brexit, turnout was far less at 37 percent. Slovakia had the lowest turnout levels of any EU country at just 22.7 percent. Senior EU officials welcomed the news of a considerable increase in voter turnout, hailing it as a boost for the legitimacy of EU lawmaking.

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In These Times: Here’s Exactly Who’s Profiting from the War on Yemen

Under President Barack Obama’s administration and, now, President Donald Trump’s, the United States has put its military might behind the Saudi-led coalition, waging a war without congressional authorization. That war has devastated Yemen’s infrastructure, destroyed or damaged more than half of Yemen’s health facilities, killed more than 8,350 civilians, injured another 9,500 civilians, displaced 3.3 million people, and created a humanitarian disaster that threatens the lives of millions as cholera and famine spread through the country. [...]

The war in Yemen has been particularly lucrative for General Dynamics, Boeing and Raytheon, which have received hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi weapons deals. All three corporations have highlighted business with Saudi Arabia in their reports to shareholders. Since the war began in March 2015, General Dynamics’ stock price has risen from about $135 to $169 per share, Raytheon’s from about $108 to more than $180, and Boeing’s from about $150 to $360. [...]

According to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the United States may not authorize arms exports to governments that consistently engage in “gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” The Arms Export Control Act of 1976 stipulates that exported weapons may only be used for a country’s defense.[...]

Over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has ordered U.S.-made offensive weapons, surveillance equipment, transportation, parts and training valued at $109.3 billion, according to an In These Times analysis of Pentagon announcements, contracts announced on defense industry websites and arms transfers documented by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That arsenal is now being deployed against Yemen.

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The Economist: Why Europe's nationalist parties all sound alike

Nationalist parties in the European Union are gaining momentum. At a time when the EU is increasingly fractured, they are united on many issues. What are they? [...]

And that’s weird because one belief that unites these nationalist populist European leaders is that the European Union should be less united. Since the euro crisis of 2009 and the migrant crisis of 2015 these right-wing populist movements have grown in strength and in number. [...]

Every European country has its own version. Tomio Okamura is a Czech-nationalist politician born in Japan who wants a zero-tolerance policy on immigration. It’s not clear what this means but it plays into European fears of what they call an invasion. In other words… immigration.

They all accuse Brussels of behaving like a dictatorship. Which is ironic given that they’re all running in democratic elections for the EU parliament. They often speak of a supposed plot by mainstream leaders like Angela Merkel to replace Europeans with lower-paid migrants.

SciShow Psych: When Waking up After Decades Turned out to Be Temporary

Around 1917, an unknown illness dubbed "sleeping sickness" caused people to suffer severe sleepiness and delirium. Some even became paralyzed for decades until a temporary cure was discovered in the 1960s. The story of this illness is tragic but offered new insight into how our brains function.

CNN: Polish priest blames 'devil' as he's confronted by alleged victim whose life was ruined

Since its release on YouTube on May 11 the film, which details decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Poland and shows victims confronting their alleged abusers, has been viewed more than 20 million times. [...]

"The current government will find it difficult to distance itself from the Catholic Church," Zaborowski added. Only a week before the film was released, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the conservative ruling Law and Justice Party, said: "Anyone who raises his hand against the church, wants to destroy it, raises his hand against Poland." After seeing the documentary, he clarified his remarks at a rally, saying: "That does not mean that we support or tolerate pathology in the Church."[...]

Sekielski says the response to it has far exceeded their expectations: "This film has been like a shock to Polish society and has managed to create real social awareness of a subject that has been very taboo in Poland. [...]

In February, representatives from "Have No Fear" delivered a report to Pope Francis in Rome, accusing 26 bishops in the Polish Catholic Church of concealing the perpetrators of sexual abuse of minors.

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TLDR Explains: Why Don't We Vote Online in Elections?

Voting can be complicated a time consuming, and having your say in an election can take its toll. That's why many have discussed taking voting online to make engaging in democracy quicker and easier. However, Estonia is the only country to take it super seriously, using online i-voting in every election for the last 14 years. We discuss why Estonia uses it, and why other countries have been so cautious to follow in their footsteps.

Forbes: The Top 11 Books Americans Tried To Ban Last Year

Hundreds of individuals in the U.S. issue challenges to their local schools or libraries every year, attempting to get certain books banned. The typical reasoning is that the book in question highlights or endorses a value that the challenger doesn't hold, and doesn't want their child exposed to.

As a result, the running list of the top most challenged book titles in the U.S. — operated by the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom — offers a unique window into the state of the union: Any hot-button topics that parents are the most up in arms about will be revealed through the books that they found most offensive.

The eleven most popular titles on the list for 2018 include plenty of titles from previous top-ten lists of banned books: George, by Alex Gino, a Lambda Literary Award-winner for elementary-age children that features a transgender child, was the number one most challenged book in 2018, after reaching number five in 2017. 2017's number one, Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher, dropped to number six on the 2018 list.

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The Guardian: Christian rightwing figures warn abortion fight could lead to civil war

Though such dire predictions are not necessarily new on the extreme right wing in the US, the passing of a wave of hardline anti-abortion laws in numerous states this year appears to have amped up the conspiracy-minded predictions that depict abortion squarely as a root cause of a coming conflict.

Republican lawmakers such as Ohio’s Candice Keller have openly speculated that the divide over abortion rights might lead to civil war. Last month, Keller drew explicit comparisons with the antebellum situation over slavery, telling the Guardian: “Whether this ever leads to a tragedy, like it did before with our civil war, I can’t say.”

Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed that the Washington state republican legislator Matt Shea had also speculated about civil war, and the “Balkanization” of America, predicting that Christians would retreat to “zones of freedom” such as the inland Pacific north-west, where Shea is campaigning for a new state to break away from Washington.

Asked on a podcast if the two halves of the country could remain together, Shea said: “I don’t think we can, again, because you have half that want to follow the Lord and righteousness and half that don’t, and I don’t know how that can stand.”

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The Guardian: Jews in Germany warned of risks of wearing kippah cap in public

Germany’s government commissioner on antisemitism has warned Jews about the potential dangers of wearing the traditional kippah cap in the face of rising anti-Jewish attacks.

“I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany,” Felix Klein said in an interview published Saturday by the Funke regional press group.[...]

Klein, whose post was created last year, cited “the lifting of inhibitions and the uncouthness which is on the rise in society” as factors behind a rising incidence of antisemitism. [...]

“Antisemitism has always been here. But I think that recently, it has again become louder, more aggressive and flagrant,” Claudia Vanoni said in an interview, adding the problem was “deeply rooted” in German society.

Antisemitic crimes rose by 20% in Germany last year, according to interior ministry data which blamed nine out of ten cases on the extreme right.

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UnHerd: Do men want sex more than women?

The most famous research on the subject is a 2001 meta-analysis by Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Catanese, and Kathleen Vohs, combining the results of 150 earlier studies. You can’t measure “sex drive” directly, so the study looked at a wide range of proxy measures. They found that men had more frequent sexual “thoughts, fantasies, and spontaneous arousal” – for instance, one study they looked at reported that “nearly all the men (91%) but only half the women (52%) experienced sexual desire several times a week or more”.

And men masturbated more frequently. The authors admit that this could be due to social disapproval of female masturbation. But they also argue that male masturbation is discouraged just as much as female – “it’ll make you go blind”, and so on – and point out that boys were more likely to have “discovered it themselves”, meaning it’s not that boys are being “taught” how to do it and girls aren’t. “Anyone who wants to masturbate can probably figure out how to do it,” they say. [...]

Men are more interested in a wider range of sexual practices. Men sacrificed more for sexual pleasure, whether in financial terms – they spent more on pornography – or in terms of risk – they were more willing to have extramarital sex. In general, men have more “favourable attitudes to sex”, being more permissive regarding casual sex and promiscuous sex. And overall, men are less likely to report low sexual desire and more likely to rate their level of sex drive highly. [...]

It also doesn’t necessarily mean that the difference is innate, although the transgender androgen response (if it’s real) sort of hints that it is. There may well be socialisation or cultural effects as well – there is some evidence, for instance, that certain fetishes are affected by how many siblings you have and how old they are. But many of the differences in sex drive are large effects, and most research these days finds that even major events like schooling and parenting have only a modest impact on other aspects of personality, so I would be surprised if socialisation is the only driver.

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The Guardian: Midnight Cowboy at 50: why the X-rated best picture winner endures

And yet both the X rating and the best picture win tell us something about Midnight Cowboy as a watershed moment in the culture, marking a transitional period where Hollywood was responding to radical social change, but not quite keeping up the pace. It would be tempting, for example, to draw a connection between the film’s release and the Stonewall riots a month later, but it would be revisionist history to think about Midnight Cowboy as the gay rights movement gone mainstream. To the extent that Joe Buck, the film’s faux-cowboy hustler, opens himself up to trade with other men, it’s tied to desperation and shame, not the pursuit of latent desire. If he had wanted to have sex with men, the film might have kept its X.

At the same time, Midnight Cowboy is an extraordinary document of its era, as if it were the bridge to New Hollywood – accessible and sentimental in many respects, but constantly pushing the audience to accept new techniques and look to the margins of American life. Director John Schlesinger, a gay British film-maker, would push further still two years later with Sunday Bloody Sunday, a thornier and more explicit drama about sexual fluidity, but he had a keen sense of how adventurous viewers were willing to get and how far he could extend their sympathies. He made a film that could both win an Oscar and see the future that was coming around the corner. [...]

Midnight Cowboy is a fine character study of a lonely man who can’t escape the echoes of his past and even finer buddy drama about two strangers who huddle together in their unlighted corner of the world. But what really stands out in 2019 is the film’s sympathy for the marginalized, those invisible people who have no presence in the Hollywood of today, much less any political representation. Poverty is usually something to be delivered from, not something that deepens and consumes as it does here. The sad joke of Midnight Cowboy is that Joe loses money at his intended profession, lending cab money to his first trick, dropping $20 to Ratso’s scam, and getting stiffed on a movie theater blowjob before benefiting from the small mercy of a socialite opening up her wallet.

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RSA Minimate: The Tyranny of Merit | Michael Sandel

Work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll go as far as your talents will take you. Right? But so often this isn’t how the system works. In this powerful new RSA Minimate, political philosopher Michael Sandel confronts our age of stalling social mobility and entrenched inequality, and asks: what would it take to give everyone a fair shot at a good life?

The minds behind the award-winning RSA Animate series are back! RSA Minimates are super-short, information-packed animations for busy people. All audio excerpts are taken from live, FREE events at the RSA’s HQ in London, and animated by Cognitive.

SciShow: Paleo Got It Wrong: We've Loved Carbs for Over 100,000 Years

If you’re on the “paleo diet,” you’ve probably been avoiding wheat and potatoes, but a new study published last week indicates that humans have been eating starches for more than 100,000 years!

Financial Times: Brexit: why Theresa May failed to deliver

The FT's UK political commentator Robert Shrimsley analyses the UK prime minister's tactical shortcomings and looks at why a no-deal exit from the EU is now more likely.

Associated Press: U.S. Supreme Court blocks redrawing of Ohio, Michigan electoral maps

The Supreme Court on Friday blocked lower court rulings ordering Republican legislators in Michigan and Ohio to redraw U.S. congressional maps ahead of the 2020 elections, dealing a blow to Democrats who had argued that the electoral districts were intended to unlawfully diminish their political clout. [...]

The lower courts found that the electoral maps in the two states had been drawn to entrench Republicans in power by manipulating boundaries in a way that reduced the voting clout of Democrats - a practice known as partisan gerrymandering - in violation of the U.S. Constitution. [...]

But the action by the justices was not unexpected as they weigh two other gerrymandering cases - one from North Carolina and the other from Maryland - that could decide definitively whether federal judges have the power to intervene to curb partisan gerrymandering. The rulings in those cases, due by the end of June, are likely to dictate whether the legal challenges against the Ohio and Michigan electoral maps can move forward.

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Open Culture: John Waters Appeared on The Simpsons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

As comedy with a message, the episode still holds up. Homer’s cluelessness (when Marge says “He prefers the company of men,” Homer responds, “Who doesn't?”) and his homophobia (referring to the word “queer” he says “I resent you people using that word. That's our word for making fun of you! We need it!”) is both dopey and pointed, but never vicious. Also delightful is John’s visit to the Simpsons’ home, where he has a vintage collector’s swoon over the kitsch of the entire interior decoration, which as viewers we’ve never really considered. There’s plenty of visual gags, like a pink flamingo in John’s shop and the amazing Sha-Boom-Ka-Boom googie-architecture cafe.

According to Matt Baume’s recent video essay, this episode did more for awareness and exposing intolerance than any live action show at the time. John Waters, despite his filthy filmography, is fun, collected, and cool. He is neither a punchline nor a tragic figure. At this time in America, homosexuality was still a crime in many states. A head censor at Fox objected to nearly every line in the show (although not always from the right--there was also concern that gay people might be offended). Time solved the problem, however. By the time it came back from the animators that one censor had lost his job.

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The World Economic Forum: The UN went to one of the world's richest countries to look at poverty – this is what it found

Picture a country where a fifth of the population lives in poverty. People have to choose between eating or heating their homes and children go to school hungry. Homelessness is rising. And basic services are in crisis, leaving many struggling to cope.

This is the damning indictment, delivered by a UN official, not of a developing economy or war-torn nation but of the UK – the world’s fifth biggest economy. [...]

A fundamental overhaul of the benefits system and widespread cutbacks have placed increasing pressure on already stretched and underfunded services including the police and doctors, the report says. The “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” approach taken by government to supporting society’s most in need has driven further inequalities. [...]

In response, the government pointed to the UN’s own data that the UK comes 15th on the list of the happiest places in the world to live. [...]

It ranked 21st overall, falling near the bottom on many of the key indicators including healthy life expectancy and income inequality.

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The Local: How EU elections could lead yet another Italian government to collapse Inbox x

But the fact that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally from France, Geert Wilders’ Party of Freedom from the Netherlands, the Belgian Vlaams Belang, the Danish People’s party and others have all agreed to join suggests that Salvini is now recognised as a successful leader well beyond Italy’s borders. [...]

In April, the League was expected to win 37 percent of the Italian vote, but support for the party has been shrinking in recent weeks. It has now dropped to around 30 percent, according to some polls. Nevertheless, after securing just 6.2 percent in the last European election, that would still be an extremely strong performance by the League. [...]

The forced departure from government of the League’s undersecretary for transport, Armando Siri, as he faces an investigation into alleged corruption, has taken a toll, too. M5S used to let Salvini dominate the agenda, but is now asserting itself as the dominant coalition partner, and very much lobbied the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, to get rid of Siri. [...]

Then there is the question of whether fresh elections could even be held as quickly as Salvini would like. After all, the executive could simply end up being replaced by another, supported by a different governing majority, as, if this government collapses, parliamentary arithmetic means that no single party, or leader, would be in control of what happens next.

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UnHerd: Understanding alt-Right obsessions

Jack London had a fascist strain. The American author was a socialist, sure – but one who, as Orwell noted, was “temperamentally… very different from the majority of Marxists”. He worshipped the natural world, as well as the physical strength of ‘alpha’ males, and he was deeply impressed by the Social Darwinist writers of his day. [...]

Of course, there is always a danger in treating works of fiction – and especially words uttered by fictional characters – as synonymous with the prejudices of their authors. Yet some of the views expressed by Pathurst are of a piece with the Social Darwinist and racialist theories that were popular at the turn of the 20th century – theories which London also subscribed to. In an 1899 letter, London wrote that First Principles – a book by renowned Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer – had “done more for mankind, and through the ages will have done far more for mankind, than a thousand books”.[...]

But such insight was useful. He was the opposite of most contemporary progressive writers: their ‘wokeness’ rests upon their purported moral purity. As a result, fascism is today understood in a theoretical rather than emotional sense. Fascists are treated as if they were born rather than made; they are depicted in popular culture as a motley cast of deplorables who appear on the scene like ghosts, only to vanish again.

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UnHerd: How Farage outflanked everyone

Farage’s new vehicle, the Brexit Party, was only launched six weeks ago but is already a serious force. With more than 100,000 registered supporters, millions in funding and considerable potential in blue and red territory, Farage finally has something that he has never had before: a serious, professional, well-funded and well-organised movement. [...]

Farage’s return is a clear symptom of his opponents’ complete failure to make sense of our post-referendum world. As a result, they are baffled and wrong-footed by his return. Farage has outplayed them all. But rather than meet this moment with imagination, too many in our politics and media have shown that they have no imagination at all. Rather than chart a new course, many have sought shelter in the dusty attic from which they plucked the unsuccessful arguments of 2016.

Instead of meeting Farage-ism head on, his opponents have recycled uninspiring, managerial and incredibly weak arguments about process; about how parties are funded, about Arron Banks, about money. It is telling that this week a former Prime Minister, leader of the Labour Party and political heavyweight, chose to focus his attack against Farage on the issue of PayPal. Ideas have left the building. [...]

Most of them, as we know from several studies, share a cluster of intensely-held concerns; they care deeply about a loss of national sovereignty, the clear lack of control over immigration, a political system that no longer looks or feels responsive to citizens and a wider dismissal of the one thing that they cherish more than anything else: the national community.

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SciShow Psych: Why Do We Still Teach Freud If He Was So Wrong?

Freud is one of the most famous psychologists ever, but a lot of the things he taught are just… well, wrong. So why do we still spend so much time talking about this dude in psychology classes?

Bloomberg: Can a City Shrink and Thrive? It’s Complicated

Dutch researcher Ellis Delken, for example, compared happiness-survey scores in German cities and rural districts that had shrunk, grown or remained stable in population from 1990 through 2005, and found that residents of shrinking areas were on average happier than those in growing ones. In the U.S., Tufts University professor of urban and environmental policy and planning Justin Hollander looked at “neighborhood quality” scores in 38 big U.S. cities in the 1990s and 2000s from the Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, and found that while growing cities scored higher than shrinking ones on average, there was a lot of heterogeneity, with residents of several cities that lost population over the study period (Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, New Orleans) giving high and rising neighborhood ratings.

Such surveys suffer from the limitation that, as Delken put it near the end of her paper, “the people that have left the shrinking cities did not take part in this study,” but they do indicate that life for those that stay behind can be perfectly pleasant (in the German shrinking cities, people reported being especially happy about public transportation and the standard of living). There are also lots of shrinking cities where those who stay behind are quite affluent: A brand-new article by Maxwell Hartt, a lecturer in spatial planning at Cardiff University in Wales, looks at the 886 U.S. cities with 10,000 residents or more as of 2010 where population had peaked before that year, and finds that 27 percent of them had average incomes higher than those of their surrounding regions. [...]

The next stage for Pittsburgh and Buffalo might be an end to population declines, meaning they would no longer be prosperous shrinking cities. The most oft-cited success story in the shrinking-city literature is probably Leipzig in eastern Germany, which started losing population in the 1930s, lost its industrial base after the reunification of Germany in the 1990s, and was lauded by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser in his 2011 book “Triumph of the City” for its “hardheaded policy of accepting decline and reducing the empty housing stock.” Since then, Leipzig has become the nation’s fastest-growing large city, and is even struggling with a housing shortage. As overall population growth slows, sharp turnarounds like that are presumably going to get rarer. From that perspective, where the Pittsburgh and Buffalo metropolitan areas are right now already looks pretty good.

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Politico: Why Pelosi is so good at infuriating Trump

“She’s smarter than him, and she’s tougher than him, and I think that bothers him,” said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a Pelosi ally. “It's hard to get inside that head of his and figure out what drives him, other than an oversized ego and an undersized sense of ethics.”

Trump doesn’t have a condescending nickname for the speaker as he does for other Democrats. He even appears to have a grudging respect for Pelosi, the first woman to serve as House speaker. He treats her as a peer who commands her chamber with a firm hand, and he knows she can deliver on votes, and that she is willing to call any bluff at any time. [...]

It was just the type of explosion that allows Democrats to portray the president as unreliable, tempestuous and impossible to negotiate with. And Trump's refusal to cut any deals with Democrats while they engage in oversight — something every president has to live with — backs up what Democrats have said since the 2016 campaign: Trump is only out for Trump, not the American public. [...]

And for Pelosi, the timing is perfect. As the drumbeat for impeachment grows within her caucus, she can argue that what they’re doing is already working. Trump clearly doesn’t know how to respond to the barrage of Democratic investigations; they’re winning in the courts and he’s throwing fits. So why bother with impeachment, especially when Democrats know that a GOP-run Senate isn’t going to remove him from office?

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Politico: Fear will save the EU

Fear is a strong motivator. Populists have been successful in leveraging voters’ fears — of immigrants, of change, of the other — into votes. Now it’s time for pro-Europeans to leverage a Continent’s anxiety and come up with convincing solutions.

They won’t be starting from scratch. There’s still a strong pro-European base on the Continent: Two-thirds of Europeans have positive feelings toward the EU, according to the poll, organized by the European Council on Foreign Relations and YouGov. [...]

Majorities in 11 of the 14 countries polled — including France (58 percent), Germany (51 percent), Italy (58 percent), the Netherlands (52 percent), Poland (58 percent), Romania (58 percent) and Slovakia (66 percent) — believe that the EU could collapse in the next 20 years. Spain was one of the lowest scoring countries, with some 40 percent of respondents fearing disintegration. [...]

Asked what they would miss the most, people said they worry about being able to trade freely (38 percent), travel freely (37 percent), and live and work freely (35 percent) across Europe. They also expressed concern about a lack of cooperation on security and defense (28 percent) and the loss of the bloc as a counter to superpowers like the United States and China (25 percent). Only 8 percent said they do not believe they would lose much if the EU were to cease to exist

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Associated Press: Analysis: Iran supreme leader comments signal strategy shift

Since first publicly accepting the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, Khamenei issued a warning not to trust the U.S. A letter he sent to Rouhani in October 2015 said the deal had “numerous ambiguities and structural weaknesses that could inflict big damage on the present and the future of the country.” [...]

Their immediate ouster, however, is unlikely. Khamenei had similarly worsening relations with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformist President Mohammad Khatami in their second terms. Zarif himself publicly tendered his resignation in February after not attending a surprise meeting in Tehran between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Khamenei, only later to agree to stay on. [...]

Analysts believe Iran in part may be playing for time, waiting to see if Trump will be re-elected in 2020. Rouhani’s own term runs out in 2021, allowing Khamenei to swap out “discredited negotiators” like Zarif, said Mehdi Khalaji, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is Shiite theologian by training, Khamenei also could send negotiators from the Guard, rather than from the presidency, to allow them to negotiate on Iran’s ballistic missile program, which the paramilitary force controls.

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Today in Focus: India is voting: will Modi win the world's biggest election?

The world’s largest ever election is nearing its conclusion in India, with voters in 20 states casting their ballots in the marathon six-week poll.

The election is being viewed as a referendum on the prime minister, Narendra Modi, a staunch Hindu nationalist who rode a wave of popularity five years ago to become the first leader of a majority government in decades.

The Guardian’s South Asia correspondent, Michael Safi, has been out on the campaign trail and tells Anushka Asthana that following the suicide bomb attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir earlier this year, Modi has focused his campaign fully on his national security credentials.

Also today: the Guardian sketchwriter John Crace on his day at Nigel Farage’s rally in West Yorkshire, where the Brexit party leader’s anti-establishment message was rapturously received.

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The Conversation: Franco’s invisible legacy: books across the hispanic world are still scarred by his censorship

One other hugely important legacy that few people are aware of is the continuing effect on books, both in Spain and throughout the Spanish-speaking world. To this day, translations of many world classics and works of Spanish literature are being reprinted using expurgated texts approved by the dictator’s censors – often without publishers even realising it, let alone readers. It has had a chilling effect on freedom of speech over the years, and must be addressed as a matter of urgency. [...]

With no one under the age of 40 even alive during the dictatorship years, few people are even aware of the problem. Public libraries are encouraging people to read thousands of volumes without realising they are censored. Many of these texts have been imported to Latin America, sometimes even being republished in different countries with their censored parts intact. It means that a fairly large proportion of the world’s population is being routinely denied access to literature as it was intended to appear. [...]

The upshot is that Spain’s literary censorship problem is alive and well today. Indeed, it is arguably getting worse: it is easy to release digital versions of these classics, so Franco’s hand even reaches into Kindles and tablets. We are talking about one of the most long-lasting yet invisible legacies of his regime. The effect on culture in Spain and in other hispanic countries is almost incalculable. Censorship has certainly distorted many people’s perception of the civil war and its consequences. Many readers will also be ignorant of writers’ real points of view regarding important social issues such as gender roles, birth control and homosexuality.

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The New York Times: Will a Documentary Take Down the Polish Government?

The problem of pedophilia is well illustrated by the story of Father Pawel Kania, one of the subjects of the film. He was detained by church authorities in 2005 for attempting to seduce children and possessing child pornography. But instead of punishing him or turning him over to the authorities, the church relocated him to a parish in the city of Bydgoszcz — where he was, amazingly, tasked with working with children.

In 2010, a court found Father Pawel guilty of possessing child pornography. Two years later, the priest was found in a hotel room with a boy and arrested. In 2015, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for rape and child molestation. Earlier this year, the church finally expelled him from the priesthood. [...]

Law and Justice is also implicated in the abuse cover-ups. One of the party’s best-known figures, Stanislaw Piotrowicz, made his name in 2001, when as a prosecutor in the town of Krosno he dismissed a case against a priest accused of raping six girls. Mr. Piotrowicz argued, “The priest confirmed that he took children into his lap, children would run up to him during catechism, they would hug him, he, too, would hug them, caress them, he sometimes kissed them. The children were happy, they were content. There was no sexual subtext.” After the case was transferred to a different jurisdiction, the priest was convicted. [...]

The Law and Justice and Church faithful have every right to be disoriented. In today’s highly polarized Poland, elections are won thanks to large-scale voter mobilization. And that’s what is happening now — people are angry at both institutions. That may prove the deciding factor in whether or not the party retains power. The first poll since the documentary appeared shows that the opposition European Coalition ranks 10 percent above Law and Justice, 43.6 percent to 33 percent, a 6 percentage-point drop in a week for the ruling party.

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The Guardian: 'Staggeringly silly': critics tear apart Jacob Rees-Mogg's new book

But its early readers have not been persuaded that the project was time well spent. The historian AN Wilson, whose book The Victorians was published in 2002, wrote in the Times that Rees-Mogg’s effort was “anathema to anyone with an ounce of historical, or simply common, sense”. Describing the work as “a dozen clumsily written pompous schoolboy compositions”, he said it claimed to be a work of history, but was in fact “yet another bit of self-promotion by a highly motivated modern politician”.

On the chapter about Gen Charles Napier’s conquest of Sindh, Wilson wrote: “At this point in the book you start to think that the author is worse than a twit. By all means let us celebrate what was great about the Victorians, but there is something morally repellent about a book that can gloss over massacres and pillage on the scale perpetrated by Napier.” [...]

She criticised the lack of women in the book. “In mythology, six of the 12 Titans, the children of Uranus and Gaea, were female; not here,” Hughes wrote. “The only female who appears in the book is Queen Victoria herself who, Rees-Mogg assures us, ‘became no less of a woman when she learned to rely upon Albert as a partner and to trust him’.”

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