French Press: American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go

Today let’s dive into one of the toughest questions of our religious, cultural, and political lives. While we write and print millions of words about race in America, why is it still so hard to have a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue about perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue in American life? It’s a huge topic, but let’s start with what I believe is a true principle of human nature, a maxim called Miles’s law: Where you stand depends on where you sit. [...]

Yet millions of Americans read the accusation that America is beset with “systemic racism” and hear a simpler and more direct meaning of the term—you’re saying our systems (and by implication the people in them) are racist. But that’s completely contrary to their experience. They think, “How can it be that ‘the system is racist’ when I just left a corporate diversity training seminar, I work at an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, my son’s college professors are constantly telling him to ‘check his privilege,’ and no one I know is a bigot? It seems to me that the most powerful actors in ‘the system’ are saying the same things—don’t be racist.” [...]

For example, if you’re a conservative, you’re likely quite aware that the Obama Department of Justice decisively debunked the “hands-up, don’t-shoot” narrative of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. You’re less likely to remember that there was a second Ferguson report, one that found Ferguson’s police department was focused on raising revenue more than increasing public safety, and it used its poor, disproportionately black citizens as virtual ATMs, raising money through traffic stops, citations, and even arrest warrants. It painted a shocking picture of abuse of power.

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Social Europe: Rekindled north-south stereotypes are harmful for the European project

Alarmingly, north-south stereotypes have been rekindled in terms of how the pandemic has been handled by various European countries, resonating with the noxious discourse of austerity during the eurozone crisis. The dominant political rhetoric in the European north and the EU institutions has been one of moral tales contrasting the ‘frugal north’ with the ‘imprudent, reckless south’. [...]

In southern-European member states, the media have meanwhile been aflame with indignation and Euroscepticism is rapidly increasing among their 130 million citizens, fuelling populist narratives, for instance in Italy. Such anger stems not so much from the EU’s (expected) slow response—the usual cacophony, the lack of agreement, the limits to sanitary aid and the refusal to mutualise the debt and approve eurobonds—but the disdainful declarations on the part of several member-state leaders. [...]

Creditors or debtors, we all need each other to keep the European economy afloat in an increasingly competitive global context. There is no future based on destructive derision and disrespect. Humiliating southern citizens threatens the viability of the union, on top of the nationalistic tensions already generated by ‘Brexit’.

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Social Europe: Seven ‘surprising’ facts about the Italian economy

A country lives beyond its means if it imports significantly more goods and services than it exports over the long term. A country that exports as much as it imports is not however living beyond its means, as production and consumption are in line. Indeed, Italy has been recording export surpluses since 2012. Italy’s export surpluses are by no means only due to tourism, as the country exports more industrial goods than it imports. The Italian economy therefore consumes less than it produces—it lives below its means.

If the Italian economy as a whole has not been living beyond its means, the problem of debt must be confined to the public sector. This is indeed the case: Italy’s private-sector debt relative to gross domestic product is relatively low by the standards of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This also illustrates that high debt-to-GDP ratios are not a problem across all sectors of the Italian economy. [...]

Italy overtook the United Kingdom in 1969 and France in 1979 in per capita purchasing power. In 2000, Italy’s average standard of living was virtually equal to that of Germany (98.6 per cent of its GDP per head). But after the introduction of the euro in 1999, the country fell behind the UK (in 2002) and France (in 2005) once more. By 2019, Italian per capita income was more than 20 per cent below that of Germany. [...]

‘Structural reforms’ from the market-liberal playbook not only reduced inflation in the 1990s. They may also have contributed to reducing unemployment, as the rate in Italy was lower than in Germany and France when the financial crisis hit in 2008. But cheap labour also diminished incentives for Italian companies to make labour-saving investments, key to the productivity improvements which are the basis for long-term growth and rising incomes. Both austerity and market-liberal reforms have inhibited Italy’s productivity growth and, on balance, may have brought more macroeconomic damage than benefits.

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euronews: Europeans 'radically' reassessing view on world order due to COVID-19, research finds

Drawing on data from nine EU member states — which together comprise two-thirds of the bloc's population — research from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that 63 per cent of Europeans are in favour of more EU cooperation to tackle the pandemic and other issues of global significance.

The authors found that although some commentators predicted that the pandemic would lead to a surge in Euroscepticism and nationalism as borders were shut, the opposite is true. Large majorities of people in all surveyed countries said that they are now more firmly convinced of the need for further EU cooperation than they were before the crisis. [...]

Across all nine countries surveyed — Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden — only 29 per cent of respondents have greater confidence in their government. In contrast, 33 per cent have lost confidence in the power of government. [...]

But the "Strategic Sovereigntists" made up the biggest group with 42 per cent of respondents. They believe that the EU's relevance will be dependent on its capacity to act as a cohesive bloc.

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FiveThirtyEight: New Polling Shows Trump’s Electoral College Advantage Is Slipping

The Times/Siena is one of the most highly-rated pollsters in FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings — one of six with an A+ mark — so these new surveys did adjust our averages a bit, most notably in Pennsylvania. There had been few high-quality polls conducted in the Keystone State, so our polling average did shift roughly 1.5 points in Biden’s favor because of the Times/Siena survey, which found Biden up by 10 points.

It wasn’t just the Times/Siena survey that found Biden up, either. We got two more polls of Pennsylvania today that showed Biden with double-digit leads. One from GOP pollster Hodas & Associates gave Biden a 12-point lead, and one from Redfield & Wilton Strategies put him up 10 points. [...]

But perhaps what’s even more significant about this batch of recent polls is that Trump’s possible Electoral College advantage is slipping. Biden doesn’t lead by as much in most of the battleground states as he does nationally, but his leads are big enough — anywhere from 5 points in Arizona to 9 points in Nevada — that it won’t matter that many battleground states lean to the right of the country.[...]

And the fact that Biden now has multiple paths to the White House is the biggest problem facing Trump. He needs a notable shift in voter sentiment that makes the national environment less favorable for Biden. With four months to go, that’s quite possible, but at the moment, our polling averages suggest that he’s in a lot of trouble.

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Fact Source: The tale of Hansel and Gretel and the Great Famine of 1315-1317

Europe enjoyed a long period of prosperity between 11th and 13th centuries. European population grew from 56.4 million in year 1000 to 78.7 million in year 1300. The idyll (if anything in medieval times was an idyll) ended abruptly between years 1314 and 1315. Many regions of Europe reported prolonged periods of rain in 1314. It rained most of the time in summer and autumn of 1314 in Great Britain. Most of Europe experienced prolonged heavy rain in spring of 1315, although temperatures remained cool, almost wintery. Fields were so muddy, it was impossible to plow them. Some of the seed grain rotted before it managed to germinate. [...]

In 1316-1317 peasants resorted to slaughtering working animals, eating dog meat, cooking leather hides and shoes, even dirt, and animal and human feces. There were also reports of cannibalism, but even chroniclers are not sure, whether they were true. [...]

In affected regions of Europe 10–25% of population died of starvation, or of diseases like pneumonia or bronchitis attacking weakened bodies. But around year 1325 food stocks returned to normal levels. Life was good again. Not for long. Soon Europe would have to endure the Black Death epidemic of 1347–1351.

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Mish Talk: Trump is Trailing Badly in All Recent Florida Polls: Why?

Biden tops Trump by 9 points, 49-40 percent, in a Fox News survey of Florida registered voters. That’s up from a 3-point edge in April (46-43 percent). [...]

The former vice president owes his advantage to the backing of Hispanics (+17 points), women (+18 points), and Millennials born between 1981 and 1996 (+30).

Some groups that are key to a Trump reelection split down the middle, including men (46 Biden vs. 44 Trump) and voters ages 65 and over (47-48 percent) -- Trump’s 8-point edge among white voters (42-50 percent) also trails expectations. [...]

It is by no means impossible for Trump to win. I have Trump's odds at about 30%.

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Politico: Weak support for liberal democracy in EU’s east, poll says

The study published by the Globsec think tank found that in four out of 10 countries surveyed — Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria — less than 50 percent of respondents backed "liberal democracy with regular elections and multiparty system" as the best form of government. [...]

In Austria, the preference was reversed, with the equivalent figures 7 percent and 92 percent. Meanwhile, in Hungary and Poland, 81 percent and 66 percent, respectively, voiced support for the system of liberal democracy. Twelve percent and 26 percent respectively want a strong leader. [...]

Majorities in Slovakia (72 percent), Estonia (56 percent), Hungary (52 percent) and the Czech Republic (72 percent) said migrants threaten their identity and values. [...]

In Hungary, 64 percent of respondents said they believe the government influences the media, while 62 percent said the same in Poland. Meanwhile 57 percent of Austrians said "oligarchs and strong financial groups" have such an influence.

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The Prospect Interview #135: Trumpocalypse, with David Frum

American political commentator and Atlantic senior editor David Frum joins the Prospect Interview to discuss the presidency of Donald Trump, whose potential legacy Frum investigates about in his new book, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American democracy. Frum talks to editor Tom Clark about his journey from George W. Bush speechwriter to one of the most high-profile conservative critics of the latest president, whether he thinks Joe Biden has a chance this November, and how he would make a start patching together the deep inequalities and anger that plague the US.

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BBC4 Thinking Allowed: Trust in a time of pandemic

Trust in a time of pandemic. Laurie Taylor explores the role of social capital and trust in combatting Covid-19. He's joined by Michael Calnan, Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Kent and Tannistha Samanta, Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Gandhinagar.

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New Statesman: The hot war in the east

In retrospect the hubristic complacency infecting all three communist capitals seems astounding. Stalin, of course, was operating on a policy of limited liability, turning Mao into the banker of last resort as his price for the new Sino-Soviet pact. In Fearing the Worst: How Korea Transformed the Cold War (Columbia University Press), a magisterial new study using archives from all the key countries, the American historian Samuel F Wells Jr observes that, “At Stalin’s insistence, Mao agreed to give Kim a blank cheque to cash if he got into trouble.” There were shades of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the July crisis of 1914. And the parallels don’t stop there. Kim lacked the logistical capacity for a war lasting more than a few weeks. “Much like the German Schlieffen Plan…” comments the military historian Allan Millett, “the North Koreans planned for a short war since it was the only war they could win.” [...]

Like many crisis decisions by leaders, the president was acting from the gut but also on his reading of the past. “Korea is the Greece of the Far East,” Truman told an aide – alluding to the firm line he had taken on providing anti-communist aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947. “If we are tough now,” he added, “they won’t take any next steps.” But, “There’s no telling what they’ll do if we don’t put up a fight now.” The president also took the international dimension seriously, commenting that the UN was “our idea” in 1945 and “in this first big test we just couldn’t let them down”. [...]

As Truman’s biographer Robert J Donovan observes, “war without congressional approval” was “a costly mistake”, for which the president later paid a heavy price when he lost control of the conflict. At this stage in the fighting, political and public opinion was largely supportive. That was true even of a senior Republican such as Senator Robert A Taft, who accused Truman on 28 June of embarking on “de facto war” with North Korea “without consulting Congress” and warned that “if the president can intervene in Korea without congressional approval” he could “go to war in Malaya or Indonesia”. (Taft might as easily have said Vietnam: in the 1960s Lyndon Johnson followed the same tactic as Truman.) Yet Taft added that he would be willing to vote for a resolution of approval if one were put before Congress. The president, however, considered that he had sufficient constitutional authority as commander in chief, and he was confident that the fighting would be over quickly. [...]

Yet Washington had no idea what that job would entail and lacked even rudimentary information about what was going on behind the bamboo curtain. Although Truman had created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, in its early years the CIA lived up to none of those three words. Not only did it fail to deliver accurate intelligence on many of the major crises of the late 1940s – including the Soviet atomic test – its actions were lethargic and, far from being centralised, it operated as a series of rival fiefdoms spread out in ten different buildings across Washington, DC. In the spring of 1950, after a Soviet spy notified Moscow that the US had broken the codes used by the USSR to communicate with its emissaries in Beijing and Pyongyang, the ciphers were changed and the CIA went blind during the crucial months before the North Korean attack.

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SciShow: 6 Animals Living Their Best Lives in Cities | Synurbic Species

When humans build a city, most species in the area tend to disappear. But there are some, called synurbic species, that are living their best lives in our concrete jungles.

TLDR News: Why The Supreme Court's Major LGBTQ Ruling Was so Shocking: What it Means for the Future

Yesterday the US supreme court made a major ruling in favour of LGBTQ+ rights. The decision was good news for activists, but it also represented a major surprise, with two conservatives justices siding with the four more liberal judges leading to a major 6-3 decision. In this video we explain what happened, the implications and why the move was such a shock.

PolyMatter: The Hong Kong Passport Question

BBC4 Analysis: Modern Parenting

More time and money is being spent on children than ever before. And it's a global trend. Professor Tina Miller, who has studied how parenting styles have changed over several decades, considers what this investment in our sons and daughters tells us about the modern world. She considers whether the gold standard of educational achievement goes hand in hand with rising inequality and individualism. What might the unintended consequences be and how difficult is it for parents to opt out?

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The Red Line: Guyana (Cambridge Analytica and the next Cuban Missile Crisis)

While everyone has their eyes on its imploding neighbours Guyana is entering its own new phase, one that is likely to make it one of the world's next big geopolitical flashpoints. With Iranian missiles, Cambridge Analytica buying elections, and a country up for sale this isolated jungle nation could be the next launchpad to threaten the world superpower at home.

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Cautionary Tales: A Tsunami of Misery

Saving people from an urgent threat can cause their lives to be blighted in profound, yet hidden ways. A monstrous wave and then a nuclear disaster forced Mikio and Hamako Watanabe from their home. But being saved from the potential dangers of a radiation leak destroyed their lives in a different way. Why do urgent dangers prompt us to take action, when far worse long-term ills are so often ignored?

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New Statesman: The history wars

Unthinking racism was woven into the fabric of everyday life in Britain through the Fifties, accepted as part of the natural order of things for the great majority of white people. In the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, white working-class Teddy Boys assaulted black people on the streets and attacked their houses. In the Smethwick constituency in the West Midlands, the Conservative candidate at the parliamentary election of 1964, Peter Griffiths, fought on an openly racist platform – and won.

Open racism reached its apogee in Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech in April 1968, with its vulgar racist language (“grinning piccaninnies”) and threats of violence, which prompted London dockers to down tools and march on Westminster waving banners with the slogan “Back Britain, not Black Britain”. An opinion poll conducted shortly after the speech showed 74 per cent approval for Powell’s attack on “coloured” immigration. Labour’s defeat in the 1970 election was widely attributed to the favourable reaction of significant parts of the white electorate to Powell’s words. [...]

Still, nostalgia for empire has been a significant factor in the minds of many Leave voters, 39 per cent of whom told the same recent survey they would like Britain still to have an empire, compared to 16 per cent of Remainers. Such fantasies find expression in the minds of some right-wing Conservatives, who think that pride in Britain’s long-vanished overseas empire should be part of the national identity. [...]

Rhodes stipulated in his will that race was no reason for exclusion from the scholarships. However, the scholars had to have Latin and Ancient Greek and nobody thought that black Africans or African Americans could pass this test. The selectors did not interview candidates at the time, and when a Harvard student who did have these languages, Alain Leroy Locke, son of freeborn African Americans, applied, his brilliance ensured he was admitted. By the time he arrived in Oxford, in 1907, it was too late to rectify the misunderstanding. Locke graduated in 1910, and went on to become an influential philosopher and the effective founder of the Harlem Renaissance. [...]

Pulling down a statue can strike a blow for the recalibration of public memory and the proclamation of a new national identity. But in the long run, it often does not settle anything. In February 1917 revolutionary crowds pushed over statues of the reigning tsar, Nicholas II, and imperial memorials were cleared away across Russia and its provinces. After that, the new Russia proclaimed by Lenin and Stalin generated its own, equally celebratory statuary.

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Pindex: Coronavirus: 3 Hidden Killers. w Stephen Fry

Your greatest risk of death might surprise you, and there's a good chance you can prevent it. Plus, new research shows how to end the coronavirus pandemic.

Literary Review: Come Hell & High Water

As Stephen Taylor argues in this enthralling new book, it was men like these who, in the great age of sail, made the British Empire possible. He tells the story of Britain’s rise to maritime supremacy in roughly the century from 1750 to 1850, using first-hand accounts of life on the lower decks, official records – ships’ logs, muster rolls, court martials and so on – and other contemporary sources. [...]

When their personal discontent became intolerable, they deserted in their tens of thousands. Nelson himself reckoned that 42,000 deserted between 1793 and 1802 alone, a figure Taylor believes may be on the low side. Their skills made them highly prized commodities and they were happy to sail under any flag, towards any compass point. The institution that valued that commodity least was the Royal Navy.

Perhaps the most resented British naval practice in this period was impressment, the seizure of experienced seamen (and, after 1798, almost any suitable man) for service on the waves. Those pressed on land often left behind wives and children, who were condemned to destitution. Taylor highlights the case of Mary Jones, a mother of two, one newborn, who was evicted from her home after her merchant seaman husband was taken. She was hanged in October 1771 – suckling her baby on the gallows, it was said – for stealing a length of cloth. Those pressed at sea might have spent two years sailing to India and back, only to be seized within sight of English shores – and two years’ backpay – for another year or more of service.

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FRANCE 24 English: France won’t ‘erase’ history by removing colonial-era statues, Macron says

Unusually for a French leader, Macron acknowledged that someone’s “address, name, color of skin” can reduce their chances at succeeding in French society, and called for a fight to ensure that everyone can “find their place” regardless of ethnic origin or religion. He promised to be “uncompromising in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination”. [...]

Amid calls for taking down statues tied to France’s slave trade or colonial wrongs, Macron said “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history ... it will not take down any statue”. [...]

But government minister Sibeth Ndiaye — a close Macron ally and the most prominent black figure in current French politics — wrote an unusually personal essay Saturday in Le Monde calling for France to rethink its colour-blind doctrine, which aims at encouraging equality by ignoring race altogether.

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Deutsche Welle: In search of identity: The new generation of photo artists from China

The Alexander Tutsek Foundation is now showing "About Us," an exhibition of contemporary photography from China, with works by internationally renowned artists such as Chen Wei, Ren Hang and Yang Fudong, as well as names that are still largely unknown outside China, such as Gao Mingxi and Liang Xiu.

Seventy photographs from the last 20 years by 14 Chinese artists are presented in the show — works reacting to the radical changes in Chinese society.

The themes of this new generation of artists revolve around self-perception, subjective experiences, and daily life. They look at memory and history, melancholy and resistance, dreams and visions, the body and individuality — and the common denominator for all of them is the search for their own identity. How can one anchor oneself in a country that is changing as rapidly as China?

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Bloomberg: There's Nothing Exceptional About Any Country

For every commentator declaring the end of a given national exceptionalism, others pop up reasserting it. This seems to be an iron law of history: Every nation at one point or another claims to be superior to others or endowed with a special mission. Exceptionalism, ironically, is universal. [...]

Of the many exceptionalisms around today, one in particular resembles the 19th-century German variety. Russia has long seen itself as a “Third Rome,” following the empires of the Caesars and the Orthodox Byzantines, whose role “Holy Rus” tried to take over. Like the Germans of yore, Russians are sure their culture and soul is deeper than the West’s. As expressed in the thought of scholars such as Aleksandr Dugin, this exceptionalism implies a manifest destiny to rule over an anti-Western “Eurasia.” Putin is said to subscribe to much of this worldview. [...]

The problem is that exceptionalism leads to bad things. The first is hypocrisy. How, for instance, could the U.S. or U.K. ever have claimed to be morally superior when the first English ship carrying African slaves to America arrived in 1619, a year before that other English ship, the Mayflower, brought the Pilgrims to their city upon a hill? And what would either country say if the anti-racism riots of recent weeks — late blowback for that earlier legacy — had taken place in, say, China or Iran? Exceptionalism requires editing a country’s past, and indeed lying.

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Phenomenal World: Trade Wars Are Class Wars

Michael Pettis: Our argument is fairly straightforward: trade cost and trade conflict in the modern era don’t reflect differences in the cost of production; what they reflect is a difference in savings imbalances, primarily driven by the distortions in the distribution of income. We argue that the reason we have trade wars is because we have persistent imbalances, and the reason we have persistent trade imbalances is because around the world, income is distributed in such a way that workers and middle class households cannot consume enough of what they produce. [...]

That's an important difference. Hobson’s interpretation was that there are middle courses between overthrowing the entire system and tolerating exploitative international relationships, and we agree. We don’t argue that we’re in an inevitable crisis of capitalism, but rather that the problems we face can be solved using the kinds of redistributional tools that policymakers have used in the past. [...]

mp: That's why it's interesting to go back to Hobson. He argued that the reason England and other European countries exported capital abroad was not military adventurism, but income inequality. You had incredibly high savings because much of the income was concentrated among the wealthy, and so England had to export those excess savings and the accompanying excess production. Imperialism enabled it to lock in markets for both of those exports. Hobson’s prescription was that increasing the wages of English workers such that they’re able to consume what they produce would make imperialism unnecessary—and this is where I see the connection to today. [...]

mk: Right. The Hartz reforms were named after Peter Hartz, who was also the head of HR at Volkswagen. During this period, there was a belief shared on both sides that the only way to preserve employment and induce growth was through a combination of wage and hour cuts. Much of this was rooted in the way German unification occurred. The belief was that there would be this incredible growth story when you brought West German technology, management, capitalism, and democracy to a new population with a shared language and history. But for a variety of reasons it didn't work out that way. The German government lost a lot of money underwriting this whole process and that soured a lot of people on the possibilities for fiscal policy to generate growth.

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Facts vs feelings in the BLM debate

The most important fact is that there is no single black minority. Over recent decades some ethnic minority groups have been climbing the ladder faster than others. That divergence story can now be told about Britain’s black minority itself, which in recent decades has generally experienced less good outcomes than most other big UK minorities. [...]

Black children now slightly outperform whites in the Government’s Progress 8 school measures. Young black people are more likely to go to university than whites, 41% to 31%, albeit only 9% go to elite Russell Group universities compared to 12% of whites. Black people are well represented at the top in sport, music the arts, and the public sector, while under-represented in business and academia. [...]

There is, however, a substantial minority of the black population stuck to the bottom of British society, (14% of black people live in households with persistent low income compared with 8% of whites). They are likely to live in public housing in inner city London or other big cities. Their lives are shorter, more violent, poorer and less healthy than other black people and almost all other groups in Britain. It is their pain, and anger, that is easily connected to a narrative of slavery and humiliation, to historic white stereotypes of inferiority, as well as to more recent stories of police brutality. [...]

To repeat, none of these people say there is no black racism here. But they would, I think, challenge the BLM story in three main ways. First, if you want to help disadvantaged black people focus on practical solutions to inner city problems: more investment in anti-knife crime units; more black police officers (just 1% at present); greater efforts to deal with obesity levels and chronic bad health; a national volunteering scheme for inner-city school mentors. Second, do not ignore the self-inflicted wounds of violent crime, fatherless families, anti-educational “acting white” culture. Third, reject victim culture which can discourage young blacks from aiming higher, using racism as an excuse for any setback.

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Salon: Female voters are fleeing Trump, hurting his re-election odds: polling analyst

After reviewing polling over the last 70 years, the pollster wrote, "[Joe] Biden is leading among female registered voters by 59% to 35%, a 25-point margin when the numbers aren't rounded. That's a significant increase from his 19-point advantage earlier this year and the 14-point lead Hillary Clinton had in the final 2016 preelection polls of registered voters. Clinton had a 13-point edge with likely female voters." [...]

What keeps Biden's numbers against Trump from being overwhelming is the fact that president still does better with men, with the pollster writing, "Perhaps what makes Biden more impressive with women is how weak he is with men. He's seen only a 2-point climb with them from earlier this year and is still losing them to Trump by 6 points. That's about how Clinton did with them in the final 2016 preelection polling. Clinton trailed by 5 and 7 points among registered voters and likely male voters, respectively." [...]

"Still, you'd rather have women on your side than men for the simple reason that they make up a slightly larger share of voters. Biden's overall advantage would be about a point less if women and men made up an equal share of the electorate. That doesn't matter at this moment, but it could if the polls tighten up," he wrote before concluding, "For now, all we can say is if this election were just left up to men, we'd be talking about a clear Trump lead instead of what it is in reality: a big Biden advantage."

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NBC News: Trump might be remaking both parties' memberships

Republicans have long been the male party, and their identification advantage among men is unchanged, at 8 percentage points. But the numbers among women have moved sharply in the Democrats' favor. In Pew's latest data, a merge from 2018 and 2019, Democrats held an 18-point ID edge among women, up from a 12-point advantage in 2015. [...]

The partisan divide over race, meanwhile, seems to be changing in some groups. For years, non-Hispanic whites have leaned Republican, while other racial and ethnic groups have leaned Democratic. Since 2015, Republicans have seen their edge among white, non-Hispanic people slip, while, at the same time, the Democrats have grown their advantage among other groups.

The GOP lead in party ID among whites has fallen to about 11 points in Pew's 2018-19 data. It was 14 points in 2015. Among African Americans, Democrats have maintained their advantage in the new data, up very slightly to 73 points from a 71-point edge in 2015. The Democratic ID edge among Hispanics has climbed a bit, about 5 points, to 34 points from 29 points in 2015. And the Democratic advantage among Asian Americans has skyrocketed in the last few years to a 55-point edge, up from a 26-point lead in party ID in 2015.

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Deutsche Welle: The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany

In Germany in the 1960s, people in some circles viewed sex with children not as a taboo but as progressive.

One key figure behind such thinking was the Berlin-based psychology professor Helmut Kentler. Today, it is clear that he was nothing less than a matchmaker for pedophiles. But for a long time, he was widely viewed as a visionary and one of Germany's most prominent sexologists, or sex experts.

His books on education sold well, and he was a popular expert and commentator on radio and TV. His theory of "emancipating sexual education" was based on the premise that children are also sexual beings who have are right to express their sexuality. [...]

Abuse was also systematic at one of West Germany's most "progressive" schools: the Odenwald boarding school in the southwestern state of Hesse. As many as 900 pupils were victims of sexual abuse in the three decades from 1966 to 1989. [...]

But the vulnerable boys were not just turned over to "pedophile caretakers." The Hildesheim report is clear: "Evidence so far gathered shows that the care homes were, in fact, men living alone, often powerful and influential men (…) from academic life, research organizations and other educational contexts."

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Al Jazeera: Putin's rating is collapsing as anger grows in Russia

Putin's decision to introduce constitutional changes, which would allow him to stay in power until 2036, when he would be 84 years old, have also been particularly unpopular. Although the Kremlin may consider this the best time to push through these amendments, given that protests are banned due to the coronavirus outbreak, they are making the Russian public that much more frustrated. The idea of Putin remaining in power for life is causing indignation even among his staunchest supporters.

In a May poll conducted by independent research centre Levada, just 59 percent approved of the Russian president, down from 69 percent in February. Just five years ago, amid the Russian intervention in the Ukrainian crisis and the annexation of Crimea, Putin's approval rating stood at 85 percent. Support for his presidency was never so low, even during the anti-government protests of 2011-13.

Other indicators of public support have also fallen dramatically. In another May poll by Levada, just 25 percent of people said Putin is among the Russian politicians they trust - the lowest value this indicator has had for the past 20 years he has been in power (even during his premiership in 2008-12). In January this year, public trust in him stood at 35 percent; just three years ago, it was as high as 59 percent.

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LSE Blog: Italians want more Europe, not less

When we wish to understand the nature of public Euroscepticism in Italy, and other member states, as a matter of fact, my research suggests that it is important to keep two things in mind. First, Euroscepticism is multi-dimensional. It relates to people’s evaluations of the EU as it stands, but also to their preferences about the EU’s future. Second, Euroscepticism is not a stand-alone phenomenon. It develops in reference to people’s views about their own country. Let me elaborate both points in some more depth by focussing on public opinion data from Italy and member states that I have collected together with the eupinions team supported by the Bertelsmann Foundation. [...]

Yet, we need to remember that Euroskepticism is multi-dimensional. It is not only about evaluating the current direction of the EU, but also about what people want from the EU in the future. If we check the preferences of Italian respondents about more political and economic integration, a quite different picture emerges. Figure 2 suggests that Italian respondents are in fact the more supportive of further political and economic integration in Europe compared to those from other member states. In March this year, 71 per cent of Italians respondents state that they wish to see more political and economic integration in Europe. [...]

Next to multi-dimensionality, we need to think about Euroskepticism in relationship to how people view their own country. My work suggests that Euroskepticism becomes more pronounced when people are very satisfied about own country. This is because they think there would be a viable alternative to EU membership. When we look at how Italian respondents evaluate the direction of their own country, see Figure 3, it becomes clear that they are relatively less satisfied with their own country. Only 18 per cent of Italian respondents think that their country is moving in the right direction in March this year. The same is true when we look at how satisfied Italian respondents are about the state of democracy in Italy. Only 31 per cent of Italian respondents are satisfied with democracy in their own country.

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Politico: U.N. vote deals Trudeau embarrassing defeat on world stage

Despite being a founding U.N. member and part of the G-7 and G-20, Canada’s size and history once again counted for little: the government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was defeated by Portugal in 2010, even as the former colonial power was in the midst of the humiliating EU bailout. [...]

With Norway, Ireland and Canada all taking similar approaches to such core global issues as climate change, multilateralism and peacekeeping, Canada’s relatively late entry into the race — as well as stumbles like Trudeau’s brownface scandal — hurt Canada’s ability to stand apart and make its case.[...]

The Canadian government shelled out roughly $1.7 million and employed 13 full-time campaign staff, compared to Norway’s $2.8 million budget and Ireland on $1 million. Ireland splurged on U2 and Riverdance tickets for diplomats, and Canada on Céline Dion tickets, BBC reported, in addition to giveaways such as greeting cards, chocolates and Canada-branded facemasks.

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The Atlantic: Despise Bolton, but Read His Book Anyway

And Bolton doesn’t have many friends outside the White House, either. He seems to be doing his best to present himself as a principled whistleblower going head-to-head with a White House trampling his rights. But his welcome within anti-Trump circles has been decidedly frosty. Democratic Representative Mike Quigley, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, suggested to Politico that anyone who wants to see what Bolton has to say should borrow his book from the library, rather than give the former national security adviser any money. Clicking on any of #JohnBolton’s recent tweets, meanwhile, reveals a cascade of replies calling him a coward and accusing him of selling out his country for book profits. [...]

The best answer is to treat the book—and its author—bloodlessly, as a source of information that needs to be evaluated with due consideration for the source but without an instinct to either valorize or condemn. Bolton has a story to tell. It is very likely a story worth hearing. To absorb it implies no heroism or redemption for the man. It is not an embrace. It is possible to hear his story while maintaining one’s disdain for his behavior. The relationship is transactional. [...]

And what does Bolton get in this transaction? We actually don’t know. Maybe he’s motivated by the money. Maybe he just wants to tell his story. Maybe he craves the attention. (This is a guy, after all, who tried to create a hashtag out of his own name.) That’s really his business. He’s getting something, or he presumably wouldn’t have written the book. The point is that hearing his story need not mean validating or vindicating him.

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UnHerd: The defector taking on Kim Jong-un

Park is a remarkable and resolute man. Once he was a rising young bureaucrat from a well-connected family, a fervent believer in the Kim family dynasty that has ruled North Korea for more than seven decades. Today he is public enemy number one in the North, having fled to the South and dedicated his life to defeating the brutal regime that brainwashed him along with 25 million other citizens. He has survived assassination attempts, death threats and even missile responses to these nocturnal launches of clandestine materials. In recent days, he has been denounced again as ‘human scum’.

Yet he is also detested by South Korean authorities who see this diminutive dissident as a danger to their stability. They have launched legal actions and legislative efforts to thwart his activism. And now he is at the centre of rising tensions in the region. [...]

Yet the North’s fury also indicates the success of the activities pursued by Park and other dissident groups as they send in contraband to corrode the hermit kingdom from within by undermining belief in the bloodstained Kim dictatorship. I have heard from several dissidents about how they would watch foreign soap operas and films secretly to see the clothes, the cars and the food that strongly challenged their own government’s claims about life being so much better under their thumb. I also met a woman jailed for eight years for watching foreign films, and a party cadre — a member of the state censorship team — who defected after being caught sharing seized books and films with his friends. [...]

President Moon has promised a crackdown on such efforts and tried to sue Park and his brother, to the anger of the conservative opposition party. Yet many of his countrymen look down at dissidents and show little interest in the suffering of North Koreans trapped in the bubble of the world’s most barbaric state. The balloon launches also infuriate people living near the border when they fall short and spew rubbish over homes in the area — although satellite trackers found some flew almost 500 miles to Vladivostok in Russia.

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UnHerd: The Tories are facing a new revolt on the Right

Boris Johnson is a prime minister under pressure. Public disapproval of his government is drifting upwards. Confidence in the economy has collapsed. His approval ratings have shed more than 20 points in two months. The ‘rally effect’ that saw his support surge to nearly 70% has long gone. Former advisors are criticising the inner workings of his government. MPs openly complain about U-turns and indecision. The Conservative Party’s lead in the polls has crashed from more than 20 points to just five. And Keir Starmer now has the highest rating for any leader of the opposition since Tony Blair led Labour in 1995 and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory was topping the charts. Life comes at you fast, as my students say. [...]

This is what encouraged the sceptics to walk away. Ever since the referendum the Conservative Party has been haemorrhaging middle-class professionals and graduates. Already alienated by Brexit, the fumbled response to the Covid crisis and what they see as populist amateurism has pushed these former Tory voters further away. In the past six months alone Labour’s share of the Remain vote has jumped by nearly 10 points, with Remainers slowly but steadily starting to align in the way that Leavers did six months ago. [...]

Delivering Brexit, controlling migration and rebalancing an unequal nation struck a loud chord across Britain’s heartlands. And this rebalancing act was never just about bridges and trains. It was about reasserting all of the things that conservatives feel have been eroded over recent years — the family, our civic culture, virtue, morality, community, tradition, heritage and our national identity. The Conservative Party would, in short, be all that its name implied. [...]

It is this growing sense of disillusionment with Johnson’s premiership which now lies behind plans to launch a new movement. Embryonic talks started in the early days of the Great Lockdown and there is talk of significant financial resources. Given that the country no longer holds European elections under a more favourable system of proportional representation these activists contend that the main purpose would be to once again apply indirect rather than direct pressure. It would not be hard, they argue, to attract 8-10% of the vote simply by demanding that the Conservative Party be… conservative. “Boris has gone very, very wet”, complained one.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Latest Swing State Polls Look Good For Biden

In Michigan, the most notable result comes from long-time Michigan pollster EPIC/MRA, which found Biden up by 12 points in a poll conducted between late May and early June, 53 percent to 41 percent. For context, in 2016 the pollster never found Hillary Clinton with more than 47 percent in a single general election poll. However, in Wisconsin, Biden’s lead might not be that secure. The Marquette Law School Poll — often seen as the gold standard in the Badger State — had Biden up only 3 points in early May, 46 percent to 43 percent. Biden and Trump also ran about even in Pennsylvania, another pivotal state in 2016, which might seem at odds with the data from Michigan and Wisconsin. But unlike those states, Pennsylvania didn’t have any surveys from highly rated pollsters, and what they found was a bit noisy — two put Trump up by 4 to 5 points, while another put Biden ahead by 9 points. We wouldn’t read too much into this yet without higher quality polling, but the inconsistent results here could be evidence that Pennsylvania will remain competitive.

As for the polling picture in the Sun Belt states — Arizona, Georgia and Texas — they all seemed more or less in line with what you would expect, once you account for Biden’s lead in the national polls and how these states voted in 2016. But they do signal potential trouble for Trump. For instance, the fact that Trump carried Arizona by 3.5 points in 2016 seems to have been erased by Biden’s polling lead. On average, Biden led by 3 points, including a high-quality early June survey from Fox News that showed him up 4 points. In Georgia and Texas, on the other hand, Trump was still in the lead, by 1 and 2 points, respectively. Yet this is not as cushy of a margin as one would expect for Trump, considering he carried Georgia by 5 points and Texas by 9 points in 2016. If this trio of states are all in play — and Arizona is possibly even leaning Democratic — that would give Biden many additional paths to 270 electoral votes. [...]

There are two big takeaways here. One, Biden is in an enviable position in many of these battleground states. However, the second takeaway — which is the caveat we mentioned earlier — is that all of these battleground states save Michigan are more Republican-leaning than the national average. In other words, most of the states that will decide the presidential election are to the right of the country as a whole, and that speaks to Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College. Should Biden continue to hold a sizable lead, the chances of an Electoral College-popular vote split will probably be low. But if the polls get closer, the odds will increase because the eventual tipping point state is almost certainly among these eight states. But as it stands now, if Trump carries Arizona along with every state that’s more Republican-leaning in those recent polls, he would almost certainly win the presidency.

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Aeon: Gentileschi. Let us not allow sexual violence to define the artist

But ever since Gentileschi made it out of art-historical obscurity in the early 20th century, her work has never moved beyond Tassi’s shadow. Early reappraisals qualified her artistic abilities with references to her ‘lascivious’ and ‘precocious’ manner. The American art historian Linda Nochlin cited the case of Gentileschi in her epochal essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971) to call for a ‘dispassionate, impersonal, sociological’ art history. Yet just three years later, fellow scholar Eleanor Tufts cast Gentileschi as a kind of sex-positive icon – one who, despite the trauma of her ‘introduction to the ways of love and desire’, had numerous affairs and ‘was, not surprisingly, a superb writer of love letters’. [...]

In the present moment, the confluence of commodified feminism and the #MeToo movement has produced a surge of interest in Gentileschi and in biographical interpretation of her work. With eyes on her images of violated or vengeful women, Gentileschi has become a Baroque #MeToo heroine who turned the horrors of her life into brutal painting, according to The Guardian. When one of Gentileschi’s depictions of Lucretia – a Roman noblewoman who stabbed herself in the heart after she was raped – went to auction in Paris in 2019, pre-sale publicity leaned heavily on its ‘autobiographical’ content. ‘The story of Artemisia is just like that story,’ said the auction-house specialist, ‘except that Artemisia decided on another outcome for her life.’ [...]

For Gentileschi, yet another double standard enters the picture: the readiness to separate life and art for an aggressor, against the eagerness to conflate life and art for a victim. Eric Gill; Roman Polanski; Pablo ‘each time I leave a woman, I should burn her’ Picasso. So much transcendence granted to the man-made artwork, lifted high above the abuse, however flagrant. When in 2017 Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in East Sussex mounted an exhibition addressing Gill’s sexual abuse of his teenage daughters, the critic Rachel Cooke in The Observer wondered why this information was forced on visitors. By contrast, Gentileschi’s biography is frequently ‘forced upon’ both her work and its viewers – a process that allows sadistic relish to masquerade as gender-progressive concern, and objectifies the artist rather than recognising her immense ability.

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The Guardian: Fast-growing mini-forests spring up in Europe to aid climate

Advocates for the method say the miniature forests grow 10 times faster and become 30 times denser and 100 times more biodiverse than those planted by conventional methods. This result is achieved by planting saplings close together, three per square metre, using native varieties adapted to local conditions. A wide variety of species – ideally 30 or more – are planted to recreate the layers of a natural forest.

Scientists say such ecosystems are key to meeting climate goals, estimating that natural forests can store 40 times more carbon than single-species plantations. The Miyawaki forests are designed to regenerate land in far less time than the 70-plus years it takes a forest to recover on its own. [....]

The higher biodiversity is due partly to the forests’ young age and openness, explained Fabrice Ottburg, an animal ecologist who led the Wageningen study. This allows more sunlight to reach flowering plants that attract pollinators. Diversity is also boosted by planting multiple species, which “provide more variety in food and shelter for a higher diversity of animals like insects, snails, butterflies, amphibians, bugs, grasshoppers”, Ottburg said.

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The Guardian: Labour councils launch slavery statue review as another is removed

All statues in Labour councils across England and Wales, and across London, will be examined for links to slavery and plantation owners, their leaders have said, as an east London authority took one down off its plinth on Tuesday evening. [...]

Earlier, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said the capital’s landmarks – including street names, the names of public buildings and plaques – would be reviewed by a commission to ensure they reflect the capital’s diversity, with a view to removing those with links to slavery after Black Lives Matter protesters tore down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.

In Manchester, the council announced a city-wide review of all the statues in Manchester “to understand their history and context”. Councillor Luthfur Rahman said members of the public would also be asked for suggestions on “missing” statues. [...]

Pressed on Sky News about where to draw the line, given Winston Churchill held some racist views, Khan said the cases of Churchill, Gandhi and Malcolm X showed that many great historical figures were not perfect and history should be taught “warts and all”. But there were clear-cut figures such as those actively involved in the slave trade and ownership who should not be celebrated, the mayor said. [...]

Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has said it was “completely wrong” for protesters to pull down the statue of Colston and dump it in the harbour in Bristol – putting him at odds with some MPs on the left of his party – while emphasising the monument should never have been there in the first place.

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The Red Line: The Geopolitics of Turkmenistan

Often referred to as the North Korea of Central Asia, Turkmenistan is simply a desert of contradictions. A nation where you memorize poems to get your driver's license, where the president raps on TV, and where many Guinness world records are broken; but more importantly a nation of starving people on top of the 4th largest gas reserves in the world. We go deeper into this reclusive society and talk about their abandonment of Moscow and their newfound masters in Beijing, as well as how this country tries its best to stay neutral in a very dangerous geopolitical neighborhood. Guests this week are Peter Leonard (Eurasianet) Naz Nazar (Radio Free Europe) Alexander Cooley (Harriman Institute).

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UnHerd: Will Macron dump his Prime Minister?

The constitution and conventions of the French Fifth Republic provide for a double-headed, or chauffeur-driven, government. The president is in power but not at the wheel; the prime minister runs the country day-to-day. The president controls foreign and defence policy and sets the course for the nation. In Charles de Gaulle’s conception of things, it was the prime minister’s job to deal with “events, dear boy,” and become unpopular. The president should remain aloof, monarchical and — in theory — adored by his people. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in becoming the object of blame for the death of a semi-wild cat, was doing more or less what Le Général had intended. [...]

The age of Facebook and Twitter, the decay of the traditional media, and the decline of deference, has made the notion of wholesale power without detailed responsibility unsustainable. The French people now take the view that they elect a president to run the country — not just to represent and guide the nation. If things go wrong, even if they do not go very wrong, it is the president in the Elysée Palace that they blame; they tend to be forgiving, or indifferent, towards the man (there has only once been a woman) in the Palais Matignon, the home and office of the prime minister. [...]

There have been opinion polls showing prime ministers to be more popular than presidents in the past — but an 11 to 13 point gap is exceptional. Macron has received the blame for what has gone wrong in France’s response to the Covid crisis, even though France has got many things right. Philippe, who has been in day-to-day control and was personally responsible for at least one bad decision, has prospered in popular opinion. He is seen as a likeable man and a safe pair of hands. [...]

Meanwhile Philippe made a series of very competent appearances at press conferences and on the TV news, painstakingly explaining the science and the logistics of the Covid crisis. Overall, France has coped better than most similar countries but, unlike Germany, failed to test widely and rapidly. The government initially misled the nation on the reasons for this failure. Philippe and his ministers made more mis-statements than Macron, but Philippe has attracted less of the blame.

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Aeon: Money and modern life

Time is no longer governed by the seasons or celestial bodies, but is abstracted and measured. The city also compresses space, social and geographical. Diverse classes, strata, cultures, linguistic groups and vocations are brought into close proximity. This is why, as Simmel observed, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche preached against the city bitterly: it threatened to subsume his noble individualism into a mass.

While Simmel was a deep reader of Nietzsche and shared his romantic attraction to ‘an endless succession of contrasts’, he took an urbane distance from the latter’s aristocratic radicalism. Instead of seeking extremes in the mountains of Sils Maria, Simmel found them in the metropolitan crowd, where one can feel the uniquely modern loneliness of passing a thousand faces without recognising a friend. Nietzsche’s peaks and valleys produced noble heights and abject depths. Simmel’s metropolis instead cultivated blasé citizens who, afraid of being subsumed, distinguish themselves with externally cool indifference. [...]

Instead, he concluded that ‘truth is valid, not in spite of its relativity but precisely on account of it’. Simmel saw that the individual’s quest for truth would inevitably fail, revealing itself to be as perniciously circular as the movement of money. Thus, relativism – a doctrine of constant flux – was to be the only viable absolute. Simmel presented this as liberating: ‘the expropriator will now be expropriated, as Marx says of a process that is similar in form – and nothing remains but the relativistic dissolution of things into relations and processes.’ But there is also an element of tragedy here: to love truth is to love something we feel duty-bound to seek, even though it remains always out of reach. Like Herman Hesse’s protagonist in Steppenwolf (1927), Simmel chased an elusive absolute.

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UnHerd: America is the greatest story ever told

Why, if people in Britain feel that they have a moral responsibility to march against Donald Trump, are they not also breaking the lockdown to protest the crushing of liberty in Hong Kong — a city that was, unlike America, a British colony as recently as 1997? Why, when the death of a black man in Minneapolis can provoke such anguish among minorities here, has the detention of a million Muslims in Xinjiang — and a systematic attempt by the Chinese government at cultural genocide — failed to provoke a matching storm? [...]

Britain has been in hock now to American narratives for at least a century. Sharing as we do a common language with Hollywood, we have always been readier than other nations to be seduced by its mythologies. Today, in an era of computer games and box sets, these mythologies have become more potent, more influential than ever. If it is true, as Bruno Maçães has brilliantly argued, that life in the United States today “continuously emphasises its own artificiality in a way that reminds participants that, deep down, they are experiencing a story”, then the challenge of disentangling fiction from reality becomes all the more difficult. The racist cop, the innocent victim, the violence-shadowed city: these are stories that we experience simultaneously as reports on the news and as series on Netflix. [...]

Steeped in the language of intersectionality and postcolonial studies though the protests may be, the slogans derive ultimately from a much more venerable source. A dread of damnation, a yearning to be gathered into the ranks of the elect, a desperation to be cleansed of original sin, had long provided the surest and most fertile seedbed for the ideals of the American people. Repeatedly, over the course of their history, preachers had sought to awaken them to a sense of their guilt, and to offer them salvation. Now, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, there are summons to a similar awakening.

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UnHerd: Our demeaning obsession with Madeleine McCann

And so, she was punished. Seventeen thousand people signed a petition requesting that Leicester Social Services investigate why the children were left alone; did they want her to lose her remaining children? Did they, in the thrill of mystery, forget that someone else — and not she — had taken the child? No, it was never condolence. It was a public expiation of shared fears, and a judgement of the parents. People read about Madeleine McCann for a jolt of terror, and to feel comforted. Because the children we love are here, and she is not. Our children are not safer because we judge Kate and Gerry McCann. It just feels that way. [...]

If the suffering of little children interests people, I wish they would also read child poverty statistics. I wish that they would campaign, too, to reverse them, and pray for the return of all lost children. But that is too much to hope for. Reading about Madeleine McCann is easy; caring about children you have not been forced into imagined intimacy with by media cynicism and parental despair is something harder.

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CNN: Satellite images of Wuhan may suggest coronavirus was spreading as early as August

The study, which has not yet been peer-viewed, found a significantly higher number of cars in parking lots at five Wuhan hospitals in the late summer and fall of 2019 compared to a year earlier; and an uptick in searches of keywords associated with an infectious disease on China's Baidu search engine.

The reseachers note they can't directly link the traffic volume to the virus; even if there was an increase in traffic to hospitals, it doesn't mean a new virus was the cause. There has been no other evidence to show the virus was circulating in China in the late summer. [...]

Using images from October 2018, the researchers counted 171 cars in the parking lots at one of Wuhan's largest hospitals, Tianyou Hospital. Satellite data a year later showed 285 vehicles in the same lots, an increase of 67%, and as much as a 90% increase in traffic during the same time period at other Wuhan hospitals. [...]

"The data is actually especially compelling because we saw increases in people searching for gastrointestinal disease -- diarrhea -- which were increasing at a level that we hadn't seen at all, historically, and we now know now that gastrointestinal symptoms are a really important marker for Covid," he added. "A huge percentage of people that actually end up testing positive in Wuhan actually had presented symptoms of diarrhea."

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Politico: Swedish prosecutor says local man killed Prime Minister Olof Palme

The prosecutor leading the investigation, Krister Petersson, told a news conference he was satisfied Engström, who died in 2000 and was long regarded as a mere witness to the killing, was in fact the murderer. Petersson said the investigation would now be closed, despite Engström’s death meaning the accusation can never be tested in court. [...]

He identified a raft of inconsistencies in Engström’s testimony to police at the time of the murder, which raised suspicions that rather than trying to help efforts to save Palme’s life after the shooting, as he had claimed, he had in fact carried out the killing and fled before using information from the media to create an alibi. [...]

While there appear to have been some focus by police on Engström early in the case, he was soon discounted as interest shifted to other suspects, including a group of members of the Kurdish group the PKK, and agents for the South African secret service.

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The Red Line: Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia vs Azerbaijan)

In the South Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan lies an island of Armenians in the middle of Azerbaijan, two countries now firmly at war with each other. The Armenians have invaded and now occupy a quarter of the Azeris territory, but they assert are only doing to protect their people from the government who threatens to "cleanse" the pocket of Armenians.

A complicated conflict with Russia selling to both sides and Turkey (and therefore NATO) obligated to defend the other, this war is a classic situation of "the tail wagging the dog". Will we see another 1914 with a small mountain nation dragging the great powers into war, well for that we turn to our experts?

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BBC4 Analysis: The Smack of Firm Leadership

What does the way in which rival political systems around the world have managed the Covid-19 pandemic tell us about the global political future?

Writer and broadcaster, John Kampfner, considers what has made a "good leader" during the months of the outbreak and how that is likely to affect the vitality and long-term future of individual regimes. Are today's authoritarians - often savvier and subtler than their twentieth century counterparts - becoming more confident and optimistic? Is this a good time for the world's populist leaders from the Americas to Europe to East Asia? And has democracy, already tainted by its response to the global financial crisis and enduring questions over its popular legitimacy, continued with its woes or might there be a glimmer of light after the years of darkness?

Among those taking part: Francis Fukuyama (author of "The End of History and the Last Man"); Anne Applebaum (soon to publish "The Twilight of Democracy"); Singaporean former top diplomat and President of the UN Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani; writer and broadcaster, Misha Glenny; eminent international affairs analyst, Constanze Stelzenmüller; Bulgarian political thinker, Ivan Krastev (joint author of "The Light that Failed") and Lionel Barber, former editor of the "Financial Times".

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UnHerd: Why the rich are revolting

The rich have always paradoxically been radical, something G.K. Chesterton observed over a hundred years ago when he wrote “You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists: they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.” [...]

Likewise, the Russian Communist movement. While Karl Marx made endless references to the proletariat, he made very little effort to actually deal with them in the flesh, and when he did, he was disappointed by their moderation; when Marx’s comrades formed the First International they made sure that working-class socialists weren’t allowed anywhere near the important positions. [...]

This indicates a significant radicalisation of the rich, a process that began in the 1960s when the heavily class-based politics of the 20th century began to shift. That social revolution, referred to in Britain as the permissive society, was entirely led by from above, a conflict epitomised in Britain by Midlands housewife Mary Whitehouse and her hopeless crusade against the public school liberal Hugh Greene. [...]

So while around half of 18-year-olds are going onto college, only a far smaller number of jobs actually require a degree. Many of those graduates, under the impression they were joining the higher tier in society, will not even reach managerial level and will be left disappointed and hugely indebted. Many will have studied various activist-based subjects collectively referred to as ‘grievance studies’, so-called because they rest on a priori assumptions about power and oppression. Whether these disciplines push students towards the Left, or if it is just attending university that has this effect, people are coming out of university far more politically agitated.

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The Atlantic: A Solution to the Confederate-Monument Problem

Once they are down, must they go straight to the smelter? Certain charmless totalitarian ideologues have enjoyed obliterating evidence of their predecessors—think of Wahhabi grave-leveling, the denuding of churches by Protestant zealots, the erasure of enemies of Stalin. Not wanting to be like Stalin is good. Certain hemming-and-hawing, bien-pensant types have proposed that we “put them in a museum.” The problem is that museums are also sometimes sites of veneration, and in a museum Lee could retain his dignity, unless he is perhaps used as a coat rack, or put on a mechanically rocking pedestal so children can ride him if they insert a quarter (U.S. currency only, please). [...]

Or, if Virginia must honor its heritage with museum treatment, it could emulate another eerie European site—this one untainted by genocidal associations. In Copenhagen, Denmark, one of my favorite landmarks is a bronze statue, Agnete and the Merman, which is installed permanently at the bottom of one of the city’s canals. Passersby can see it under the surface if they stop to look, but most of the time no one is looking at all—and because it is submerged, it remains present but locked away in another world. The water is usually clear. [...]

Ridding ourselves of history is a fantasy—in this case a fantasy of absolution, as if any place could be washed free of its sins by a single act of iconoclasm. But history can be managed in more and less graceful ways. Either of these would create a public space without consecrating one—and make the statues’ final home redolent of history without stinking of it.

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Freakonomics: Which Jobs Will Come Back, and When?

Covid-19 is the biggest job killer in a century. As the lockdown eases, what does re-employment look like? Who will be first and who last? Which sectors will surge and which will disappear? Welcome to the Great Labor Reallocation of 2020.

Today’s show is the first of two episodes about employment and of course unemployment, considering what’s been happening with the Covid-19 pandemic. It is especially about re-employment — that is, what kind of jobs are coming back and when, and which jobs aren’t coming back. So we will hear from a labor economist with the Federal Reserve; another economist who used to work in the White House and the Department of Labor; another economist who thinks that even before the pandemic, we had automated away too many jobs; and another person who shares that view about jobs and automation: the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, whose call for a universal basic income has become a lot more urgent in the past few months.

But these two episodes are also about prisoners — specifically, prisoners and re-employment. And we’ll ask whether that research can tell us anything about Covid-19 re-employment generally. We are living through a historic disruption, a jolt to the labor markets that was unimaginable just a few months ago. There will be books and books written about it, and 50 years from now, it will show up in economics textbooks. Maybe they’ll call it then what we’re calling it now: the Great Labor Reallocation of 2020.

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Talking Politics: HISTORY OF IDEAS: MacKinnon on Patriarchy

Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David discusses what she thinks we can do about it.

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Politico: American nationalists’ European vacation

“It’s a definite paradox,” said Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, a social media analytics firm that tracks these campaigns. “The U.S. far right, a nationalist and racist movement, is now trying to go global itself.” [...]

Despite a groundswell in the volume of American-made misinformation in Europe, activists’ efforts largely failed to sway public opinion, according to online campaign analysts, hate-speech experts and policymakers who have tracked the growth of American digital activists operating in the EU over the last four years. [...]

Soon, the hashtags #GetBrexitDone and #TakeBackControl started trending in the U.S., despite most Americans being largely apathetic toward Brexit. The idea of a polarized Britain — and a leader like Johnson who rose to the occasion to champion the will of the people — served to boost Trump’s “stick it to the elites” narrative. [...]

While the groups failed to get much attention in France, their anti-Macron hashtag was soon trending back home in the U.S. — despite most American Twitter users not interested in European politics. That allowed these activists to portray the soon-to-be French president as someone from a corrupt political elite and to link the scandal to Trump’s pledges to “drain the swamp.” [...]

Ahead of the European Parliament election in May, 2019, for instance, European activists grew tired, and even angry, over American groups’ interest. The efforts coincided with the failed attempt by Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, to unify the region’s nationalist political parties under one umbrella. [...]

Increasingly, political operators — on the right and the left — are moving away from paid-for social media ads and toward so-called organic content, or regular social media posts published in private Facebook groups to reach their target audiences.

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Social Europe: Women in power: it’s a matter of life and death

Current data show that countries with women in position of leadership have suffered six times as few confirmed deaths from Covid-19 as countries with governments led by men. Moreover, female-led governments have been more effective and rapid at flattening the epidemic’s curve, with peaks in daily deaths again roughly six times as low as in countries ruled by men. Finally, the average number of days with confirmed deaths was 34 in countries ruled by women and 48 in countries with male-dominated governments.

Of course, correlation is not causation. But when we look at most female-led governments’ approach to the crisis, we find similar policies that may have made a difference vis-à-vis their male counterparts: they did not underestimate the risks, they focused on preventative measures and they prioritised long-term social wellbeing over short-term economic considerations. [...]

Over the past few years, most women-led governments have also placed a stronger emphasis on social and environmental wellbeing, investing more in public health and reducing air pollution (which seems to be closely associated with Covid-19 deaths). Our analysis shows that countries with higher female representation in national parliaments perform better in terms of reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions, containment of air pollution and biodiversity conservation. [...]

On the other hand, the leadership style promoted by some of these female leaders may also matter: they have explicitly adopted development philosophies that are centred on social and environmental wellbeing, understanding that this has a positive effect on society’s resilience and benefits the economy too. It would be wise for their male colleagues to take note.

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Social Europe: The big failure of small government

From the United States and the United Kingdom to Europe, Japan and South Africa, governments are investing billions—and, in some cases, trillions—of dollars to shore up national economies. Yet, if there is one thing we learned from the 2008 financial crisis, it is that quality matters at least as much as quantity. If the money falls on empty, weak or poorly-managed structures, it will have little effect, and may simply be sucked into the financial sector. Too many lives are at stake to repeat past errors.[...]

Consider two core government responsibilities during the Covid-19 crisis: public health and the digital realm. In 2018 alone, the UK government outsourced health contracts worth £9.2 billion ($11.2 billion), putting 84 per cent of beds in care homes in the hands of private-sector operators (including private-equity firms). Making matters worse, since 2015, the UK’s National Health Service has endured £1 billion in budget cuts. [...]

New Zealand is another success story, and not by coincidence. After initially adopting the outsourcing mantra in the 1980s, the New Zealand government changed course, embracing a ‘spirit of service’ and an ‘ethic of care’ across its public services, and becoming the first country in the world to adopt a wellbeing budget. Owing to this vision of public management, the government adopted a ‘health first, economy second’ approach to the current crisis. Rather than seeking herd immunity, it committed early to preventing infection.

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