Places Journal: The Accidental Planners

The buildings were supposed to be torn down and replaced with private apartments and offices, following the fate of other state-owned properties. But here a handful of artists staged a remarkable intervention. What began as an effort to protest Berlin’s lack of affordable housing turned into a serious plan to save the Haus der Statistik and adapt it to community needs, backed by €140 million in state funding. Now the artists are working directly with public officials, planners, and architects to lead a participatory process that will transform the area around Alexanderplatz. “It’s a huge statement about the future of development in Berlin,” said organizer Harry Sachs. If it works, it will be a model for bottom-up city-making — and a lesson in how outsiders can claim political power. [...]

The project did not actually exist, of course, but the conditions it proposed to solve were real. Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Berlin’s government had sold off state-owned housing companies and estates to international investors. More than 110,000 public apartments went private. 3 In the years since, rising rents had forced artists and other vulnerable tenants out of their homes and workspaces. According to one tally, 350 artist studios were lost in 2014; another 500 were in danger. As evictions rippled through the city, artists formed the Alliance of Threatened Berlin Studio Houses, which agitated for tenant protections. [...]

About half of the square footage would be set aside for housing — for seniors, refugees, young families, and students. A quarter would be converted to live-work and studio spaces for artists. The rest would be dedicated to education and other cultural uses, including a new town hall for the district government. This all played out against a backdrop of social change and political turmoil, as Berliners fought to define the soul of the city. Germany was on pace to take in more than one million refugees in 2015. Activists argued that luxury real estate development was incompatible with a free and independent city that welcomed people of all generations, classes, and ethnicities. Meanwhile, rents continued to rise, and longtime residents kept getting evicted. 7 ZUsammenKUNFT spoke to a wide range of social concerns. “We were shaping it in such a way that it was difficult for a politician to say no, basically,” Sachs said. “Almost impossible. You would be saying no to public housing, no to administration, no to education, no to social infrastructure.” [...]

Opening up these spaces while planning is ongoing might seem premature, but there’s a political motivation. The project has gotten as far as it is has with the backing of the Berlin Senate, which is controlled by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Left Party. The next government might not be so sympathetic to this model of “co-produced city development,” Sachs said. Construction of the new buildings is expected to start in 2022, but there are elections in fall 2021, and if they go the other way, Sachs said, “It could all collapse.”

The Los Angeles Review of Books: Cruising for Sex, Cruising the Political: Alex Espinoza’s “Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime”

For Espinoza, cruising has profound social and political implications. “Cruising has provided a safe outlet for sexual exploration,” he writes. “It is devoid of the power dynamics that plague heterosexual interactions and exists outside of traditional hierarchies. True cruising allows people to set the terms of their own desire and both leave satisfied. It is founded on equality.”

These are bold claims, but he makes a reasonable argument for them. In a patriarchal culture, male privilege is upheld by an institutionalized misogyny that rigidly enforces gender roles in which men must always be the sexually active partner (a point Espinoza illustrates in his discussion of ancient Greek and Roman homosexuality). The act of men having sex with each other as equal partners, especially mutual penetrative sex, represents a sexual fluidity that undermines those rigid gender roles and, by implication, male privilege itself. Moreover, because cruising sex is undertaken purely for pleasure and, as the phrase goes, with “no strings attached,” it also implicitly rejects “natural law” notions that conflate sex with procreative or family-building purpose; cruising isn’t functional — it’s Dionysian. Espinoza’s further argument that cruising is “founded on equality,” refers apparently to who can play rather than who gets chosen. Cruising is equal in the sense that the man tapping his foot invitingly in the toilet stall next to you might be a day laborer or a United States senator. Doubtless, even Espinoza would agree that the same problematic hierarchies of attractiveness that prevail on cruising apps like Grindr operate in park bushes and shopping mall bathrooms. Finally, as his own experience shows, cruising can be initiatory, particularly for gay men who have no other outlet to explore their sexuality. [...]

One of the most interesting discussions in the book asks whether the contemporary hook-up culture promoted by apps like Grindr and Scruff is an extension of cruising or an entirely different practice. Espinoza comes down of the side of the former. “Though the excitement of a potential sexual exchange is tempered somewhat through the use of apps and websites, there is nonetheless a pleasant efficiency that comes with the use of these new tools that past generations have not had,” he explains. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it remains essentially cruising.” Along with this “pleasant efficiency,” however, comes the kind of racism that masquerades as “preferences,” a controversy Espinoza notes but does not discuss at length. Indeed, there are many thorny questions raised by the culture of cruising that Cruising side-steps or simply does not ask. [...]

In the more recent years, some LGBTQ activists have downplayed this central principle of the queer movement, fearing undue emphasis might alienate potential straight allies. That’s a mistake. It feeds into the belief held by some straights that demonstrations of same-sex affection as innocent as hand holding or kissing are “icky” or unnatural and should be confined to private spaces. This, in turn, fuels verbal and even physical violence against queer people who refuse to keep their hands to themselves in public. Clearly, the LGBTQ community should defend the right of its members to publicly display the ordinary physical expressions of love that heterosexuals take for granted. But, where to draw the line? Does this right to PDA include the right to have sex in parks and public toilets? Is that a hill the queer community is or should be willing to die on?

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Social Europe: East versus west? The battle within the far right in Germany

Yet, the story of the AfD is also one of significant regional differences. Ever since the party first participated in elections, it has proved much more popular in the eastern Länder of the former German Democratic Republic. Polls for the state elections in autumn 2019 in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony show that it may even become the biggest party there, repeating victories from the European elections earlier this year.

Initially viewed as conservative or Eurosceptic, the AfD’s shift towards the populist radical right has only recently become more obvious and well-documented. This is partly because it was treated as a unitary actor across Germany, neglecting the splits within it from its outset. Although it gained the image of being a ‘professors’ party’ in its initial stage, particularly due to its co-founder Bernd Lucke, this does not describe the full picture. [...]

Instead of establishing the AfD as a potential coalition partner for the Christian democrats, its extreme-right Flügel’ (wing) has expressed support for fundamental opposition in parliaments and often joined neo-Nazis and hooligans in efforts to mobilise protests and express anger on the streets. The positions of the Flügel have become increasingly openly racist and anti-Semitic. The rhetoric often resembles that of the Nazi era, with Höcke’s remarks on the Holocaust memorial in Berlin in 2017 only one example.[...]

The annual study on authoritarian attitudes across Germany by Decker and Brähler illustrates this ‘demand side’. They find significant differences between east and west Germany regarding support for right-wing, authoritarian dictatorship, xenophobia and social Darwinism—all more widely supported in the east. In particular, the proportion of respondents agreeing to statements such as ‘Germany is overrun by immigrants to a dangerous extent’ is consistently higher in the former GDR.

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The Calvert Journal: Afro-Poland: a revolutionary friendship, captured in rare photos from 1955-

Between 31 July and 14 August 1955, the 5th World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Warsaw. The festival — organised by the anti-imperialist and left-wing World Federation of Democratic Youth — gave Poles the opportunity to meet around 30,000 delegates from 114 countries, incorporating other Eastern Bloc allies, revolutionaries from South America and young socialists from the postwar capitalist West. 911 African delegates from colonial states still largely subordinate to European powers were also in attendance. For the communist leaders of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL), this was a timely occasion to promote socialism and solidarity to the soon-to-be independent African states. For Polish citizens, this was one of the first opportunities to interact with non-white people after the destruction of the multicultural Second Polish Republic during the Second World War. [...]

Nowicki’s exhibition revealed the myriad ways in which PAD stood alongside white Poles during the communist era. The World Festival of Youth and Students was simply a starting point, after which students from Africa were encouraged to study at Polish universities — as well as elsewhere in the Soviet sphere of influence. This was most keenly emphasised in Poland following the events of 1960, when 17 African countries declared independence from colonial rule. The arrest and murder of the Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was widely covered in the Polish press, alongside solidarity protests in Warsaw. Photos from these demonstrations show Polish students hand-in-hand with PAD. According to Nowicki, this was — in part — a technique to depict a humane Poland in contrast to a brutal West. “They were really fighting against the Americans on the level of race,” he explains. “You could see how horrible American race rhetoric was, look what was happening to the people — lynching, and so on.” [...]

Omolo suggests that while Poles may have less contact with non-white people — compared to those in countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany — this does not entirely explain why PAD experience racism in Poland. Instead, he believes that Polish people have often been exposed to literature and screen media that demean those from the African continent, thereby perpetuating the idea that white people are superior. For Omolo, this makes Poles more likely to believe negative, unfounded stereotypes about PAD, such as those espoused by the PiS party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. “When Kaczyński said that Europe should not accept refugees from Africa because they’re carrying some diseases that are not in Europe — most of them bought it actually,” Omolo recounts. “What about Poles who visit Africa and come back? Are they not coming with some protozoa?”

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The Calvert Journal: This new book captures the history and reality of the black experience in Russia and Europe

These collective issues relate to the experience of being “a black citizen living in Europe”. The book — illustrated by gritty, original photography — details Pitts’ quest to offer up a more unified picture of black communities across the continent. His aim was to explore “blackness” as something “taking part in shaping European identity at large” as opposed to a sub-plot in a frequently whitened history. He writes that the term “Afropean” suggests “the possibility of living in and with more than one idea: Africa and Europe, or, by extension, the Global South and the West, without being mixed- this, half- that or black- other. That being black in Europe didn’t necessarily mean being an immigrant.” [...]

Afropean adds to a rarely acknowledged but rich body of literature detailing black experience in Russia. The most famous account comes from a group of African-American writers and artists who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1932. Frustrated with the lack of fair representation in Hollywood, they saw the Soviet Union as a place where people of colour could be portrayed in the arts as more than white projections of black identity. Though many eventually became disillusioned with the communist project, their initial impressions were overwhelmingly positive. “I’d read so many pieces of literature by the likes of Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Claude McKay, black actors and poets and writers who had all gone to Moscow and had a great time,” says Pitts. “A lot of those writers — Harlem renaissance writers specifically — were looking for places they might get equality and Russia seemed like it was leading the way. It seemed here was a real viable alternative.” [...]

A recent report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance concluded that although the number of hate crimes and racist murders has declined in Russia, “comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation is still lacking and racist and homo/transphobic hate speech is widely used in public discourse”; in March 2019, a professional Russian footballer was fined and given a suspended ban for telling a local newspaper it was “laughable” to have black players in the Russian National team, before later apologising for his comments.

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The Guardian: The Trump administration is trying to make war with Iran inevitable

Like the recent oil tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman, the Trump administration has framed the drone incident as if it occurred in a vacuum – implying that the Iranians are launching these (alleged) attacks without provocation, and providing an aura of legitimacy to a possible American military response. [...]

The current Iran predicament is the result of a years-long campaign by the same people who pushed for invasion of Iraq. Instead of learning from the Iraq debacle, they’ve decided that any means, including a potentially catastrophic war with Iran, are justified in order to achieve regime change in Tehran. Their public arguments for escalation with Iran have generally been cloaked as criticism of Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement, by disingenuously calling for what they know is an unachievable “better deal”. [...]

But instead of capitalizing on these gains, the Trump administration threw it all away to take a different path. Slowly, over time, Trump officials ramped up their bellicose rhetoric toward Iran; falsely accused Tehran of coordinating with al-Qaida (presumably to invoke the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force as legal justification for a possible attack); pulled out of the JCPOA; and imposed sanctions so devastating that the Iranians were almost certain to lash out, whether in the form of the minor skirmishes we’ve seen in recent weeks or rejection of the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord.

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CNN: US condemns Saudi Arabia over religious freedom abuses

The State Department's top official for international religious freedom said Friday that Saudi Arabia continues "to be one of the worst actors in the world on religious persecution" -- a blunt assessment in light of the administration's consistent pro-Saudi policies.[...]

"Freedom of religion is not provided under the law. The government does not allow the public practice of any non-Muslim religion. The law criminalizes 'anyone who challenges, either directly or indirectly, the religion or justice of the King or Crown Prince.' The law criminalizes 'the promotion of atheistic ideologies in any form,' 'any attempt to cast doubt on the fundamentals of Islam,' publications that 'contradict the provisions of Islamic law,' and other acts including non-Islamic public worship, public display of non-Islamic religious symbols, conversion by a Muslim to another religion, and proselytizing by a non-Muslim," it notes.

The report describes discrimination against and abuse of Shiite Muslims, including up to 34 individuals who faced possible execution. Saudi Arabia executed 37 men, the majority of them Shiites, in April 2019. One of them was crucified. Three were minors when the kingdom said they carried out their crimes. [...]

The Chinese government has detained "possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim groups, mostly Chinese citizens, in specially built or converted detention facilities in Xinjiang and subjected them to forced disappearance, torture, physical abuse, and prolonged detention without trial because of their religion and ethnicity since April 2017," the report notes.

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The Guardian: Uruguay court orders government to sell Nazi bronze eagle from battleship

A court in Uruguay has ordered the country’s government to sell a huge Nazi bronze eagle that was recovered off the South American country’s coast in 2006.

The eagle with a swastika under its talons was part of the stern of the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that sank off Uruguay’s coast at the outset of the second world war. The divisive symbol has been kept hidden inside a sealed crate in a Uruguayan navy warehouse for more than a decade.

The court ruled on Friday that it must be sold within 90 days and the proceeds must be split equally among the investors who organized the effort to recover the eagle from the bottom of the River Plate.[...]

Germany then said it was the rightful owner of the eagle and the vessel and opposed its sale, while Jewish groups asked that the swastika under the eagle’s talons be covered with a cloth. Finally, the eagle was stored in the navy warehouse in a sealed wooden crate.

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