The Atlantic: Syria’s New Assad Statues Send a Sinister Message: ‘We Are Back’

Hafez’s statue was also returned, in October 2018, to the center of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor after being removed by the regime in 2011, for fear it would be smashed by protesters. In August 2018, Hafez’s statue in Homs was feted by regime loyalists after it underwent a major refurbishment that included installing new lights and water fountains around it. The city, once called “the capital of the revolution,” reverted to the Assads in 2014 following a crippling siege and military campaign that left much of central Homs in ruins and emptied of its original residents. On April 15, a new bust of Bassel al-Assad, Bashar’s older brother and Hafez’s handpicked successor who was killed in a car crash in 1994, was unveiled in Deir Ezzor; this one was smaller than the one of him riding a horse that was toppled by protesters in April 2011. There are no statues yet of Bashar, who inherited power from Hafez in 2000, but billboards of his face along with defiant slogans are plastered everywhere in Syria. [...]

Using statues as expressions of power, control, and hegemony is not unique to Syria; it is a mainstay of practically all authoritarian regimes, including the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and many Central Asian republics. But while there’s an attempt in these places to rally the nation around a symbol or a leader, in Syria the intent seems to be different: The statues are meant to reinforce fear of a regime crackdown on dissent, especially during and after a crisis. The closest parallel is neighboring Iraq, where statues of Saddam Hussein multiplied in the 1980s and ’90s as he faced internal and external pressures. [...]

Manaf Tlass, Bashar’s childhood friend and a former Republican Guard general who defected in 2012, had his own take on the return of the statues. “Bashar has declared victory, but so far he has not been able to harvest its fruits,” Tlass told me when I met with him in Paris, where he has lived for the past seven years. Tlass points to the fact that the European Union and the U.S. recently increased—not relaxed—sanctions on Assad’s regime, as well as the widespread domestic discontent among large segments of the population over miserable economic conditions and recent fuel shortages. “[Bashar] knows in his heart of hearts that he has not really won, and the statues are a way of convincing himself otherwise.”

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UnHerd: No, you can’t pray the gay away

First, for all that Widdecombe uses the language of helping unhappy people, as in any other psychotherapy, the history of “gay cures” and “conversion therapy” is troubling. Much of the theory underpinning it comes from really odd post-Freudian psychoanalysis about seeking out an idealised “good penis” because of some trauma involving the patient’s mother; from 1952 to 1973 homosexuality was declared a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Until 1988 it still remained in there in the confusing name of “ego-dystonic homosexuality”.

And the treatment was often brutal. Some subjects had electric shocks applied to the hands or genitals as aversion therapy while they were shown homoerotic images, for instance. Others underwent electroconvulsive therapy – not the modern, safe and effective treatment for hard-to-treat depression, but the old kind, barely distinguishable from torture. In rare cases, brain surgery – lobotomies – were performed. [...]

One reason that gay people might be unhappy is that large parts of society – including but not limited to many members of the Conservative Party and the Catholic Church – insist that they have need of a “cure” or an “answer”. You do wonder whether Widdecombe has, as she might claim, no concerns about “happy” gay people continuing to be gay, or if the language of providing therapeutic options for those who want it just is a mask for bog-standard homophobia. [...]

You could also note the large number of prominent anti-gay voices who later turn out to be gay. There’s a website that counts down the number of days since that last happened. At the time of writing, it’s 135 days since, in fact, a Mormon gay conversion therapist came out as wanting to date men, and you’d think that if conversion therapy was going to work on anyone, it would be highly motivated people like that. And yet it consistently doesn’t.

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UnHerd: Just how English is London?

‘English’ is both an ethnic and national designation. The English, for example, are the largest ethnic group in most of the more populated parts of English-speaking Canada, in the American state of Utah and in northern New England (see light purple shades on the linked map). They are also an overwhelming majority – around 70% – of the population of England. In London, however, they make up no more than 45% of the total. [...]

Equally, those of English national identity are also a majority in England, but not in London. Of England’s residents, 60% said they were ‘English Only’ in the 2011 census. In London, this was only 37%. This is because more than any other groups, ethnically English people also claim their national identity to be ‘English’.

Even though, according to the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS LS), minorities under 30 are increasingly identifying as ‘English’, it is still accurate to claim that London is not an English-majority city in either ethnic or national terms. [...]

If this is the case, then a good test of what nationality ‘British not English’ Londoners hold deep down would be to see if they back the English football team, or feel defensive about the anti-English barbs levelled by relatives in Wales or Scotland, or care when they hear that Scotland gets more out of the Treasury than England. If they do, they quite possibly do have an English national identity. Though because they imagine a white, traditional Englishness, rather than the more modern version, they consciously reject it. On this measure there are only a few Londoners who aren’t English – unconsciously or otherwise.

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The Guardian: Led not into temptation: pope approves change to Lord's Prayer

Now Pope Francis has risked the wrath of traditionalists by approving a change to the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of saying “lead us not into temptation”, it will say “do not let us fall into temptation”. [...]

Some have expressed concern about changes to the wording. Meredith Warren, a lecturer in biblical and religious studies at Sheffield University, said: “This new version of the Lord’s Prayer tries to avoid implying that God has some hand in evil.

“But in doing so the pope not only overlooks the many biblical examples where God works with the devil to tempt his followers and even his own son. The new version actually goes against the plain meaning of the Greek of the gospel text.” [...]

The Catholic church in England and Wales said it had no immediate plans to change the wording. “The Lord’s Prayer has been changed in the Italian language – there are no plans at present for it to change in English,” a spokesperson said.

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The Guardian: It is absurd to question whether we can afford to keep our planet liveable

If the question sounds absurd, that’s because it is. If we fail to move to a low-carbon economy, the consequences will be dire. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the UN, we must drastically reduce our emissions in the next decade to avoid a catastrophic situation in which droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather across the globe devastate lives, destroy agriculture, lay waste to wildlife and force millions to flee.

Set against that, the costs – of £50bn a year in investment, according to the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which set out the case last month for a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, or £70bn a year, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – of maintaining our current lifestyles and orderly existences are trivial. The UK’s economy is worth roughly £2tn a year at present, so Hammond’s estimate of a £1tn cumulative cost by 2050 amounts to less than half of one year’s GDP in three decades. [...]

He added: “If reports of the letter are correct, Hammond has not understood the urgency of the challenge and the immense costs of climate change, and has failed to understand the capabilities of the UK. The UK is in an enormously powerful position to take leadership, with its strengths in research and development, in innovation, in finance in the City, with our skills in city planning – there is enormous potential here.”

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Council on Foreign Relations: The Military Wins Big in Thailand

Prayuth’s victory was all but guaranteed. The military and its allies made certain of that by announcing criminal charges against opposition leaders and overseeing an unusual interpretation of electoral laws that helped the pro-military party gain the most seats possible. Prayuth essentially remains in power, with the military firmly behind him, and his unwieldy coalition will likely now have more than the 250 seats needed in the lower house to pass legislation.

But the parliamentary vote does not indicate overwhelming popular support for the military and its main party, Palang Pracharath. To be sure, Palang Pracharath earned the most votes of any one party during the March election, but the anti-junta opposition coalition earned more votes overall. It probably would have won more than 250 seats in the lower house, if not for the Thai election commission’s dubious reading of electoral laws. [...]

Now Prayuth, who is thin-skinned in dealing with public criticism, will have to operate in a more politically open environment. Before the vote for prime minister, he declined to present a platform of any kind. And in parliament, the unified opposition—convinced that the election was stolen from them—will likely work to stymie Prayuth, defeat legislation, and try to investigate the military. With Prayuth facing challenges from parliament, it is not inconceivable that the military could stage another coup and retake total control of politics.

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