AP: German town turns to Syrian refugees to save its school

The scene last week in the tiny town near the Polish border — population 870 — came a year after Golzow launched what principal Gaby Thomas calls an act of "mutual rescue." The school couldn't get together the 15 students needed to set up a first-grade class, and that had Mayor Frank Schuetz fearing for his town's future. [...]

Golzow has lost nearly a third of its population since German reunification, a phenomenon seen in many parts of the east after communist-era industry and collective farms went out of business or downsized. Real estate is not a booming business — in fact, taking in the families has helped the town tackle another concern by using some of its empty housing.

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Salon: Working at an abortion clinic challenged my pro-choice views — and confirmed them

Abortion is fraught with so much negative sentiment, and in a sense, abortion is plucking a life from existence that has yet to have the opportunity to thrive. No one is claiming it’s pleasant. There is nothing black and white about abortion. It’s every shade of gray. But for us pro-choicers, the woman’s life trumps the embryo or fetus. That’s the bottom line. We place value on a woman’s ability to know what is best for her. It simply needs to be a safe and legal option. When I started at the clinic, all I saw was the individual moment of pain, but over the years I began to see a much richer portrait — women coming out the other side, relieved, even if it was simply a relief to have the procedure behind them. They could go back to their lives.

Seeing every side, the whole complicated and profound process, I came out more pro-choice than ever. I started to see it from a purely biological standpoint. We were removing an unwanted growth to preserve the woman’s chosen course.

Pro-choice isn’t just about being able to choose whether to have a baby or not. It’s also about having choices and opportunities before you dedicate your life to a child, or overwhelm yourself with too many children. What if a new baby means the children you already have will go without? There are myriad variables.

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Foreign Affairs: Ukraine's Uneasy Justice

The definition of a crime of aggression as a so-called leadership crime and Ukraine’s domestic laws explain why Ukrainian officials have discussed prosecuting Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, on charges of aggressive war. It doesn’t explain, however, why the prosecutor’s office chose to try Alexandrov, Yerofeyev, and other relatively low-ranking Russians for the same crime. The extent to which an individual must control the actions of a state to be found guilty of aggressive war remains a subject of debate among legal scholars. But no serious analysis could conclude that Alexandrov or Yerofeyev met the requirements necessary for a conviction: both men are mid-level officers, tasked with carrying out the state’s directives, not designing them. Nevertheless, in its verdict, the court argued that the section of Ukrainian law that criminalizes aggressive war was based on the 1974 UN resolution—an apparent attempt to ground the trial in international law. Clearly, Ukraine is picking and choosing the portions of international law that suit its domestic purposes [...]

The politicization of the trial should come as no surprise: in today’s Ukraine, the executive’s preferences often take precedence over the law. Less than two weeks before the prisoner exchange, for example, the Ukrainian parliament voted to amend a national law in order to allow candidates without legal qualifications to become Ukraine’s prosecutor general so that Poroshenko could appoint an ally to the post. [...]

That logic was echoed in February 2015 by Irina Lutsenko, a deputy in Poroshenko’s parliamentary faction, who offered a revealing explanation of Kiev's decision not to ratify the Rome Statute, which would have brought Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Asked why Ukraine had not ratified the statute, Lutsenko responded, “for one, simple reason. Because Russia has the so-called ‘white book,’ [a widely disputed record of Ukrainian activity in the Donbas in which the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs] has fixated on the alleged crimes of Ukrainian soldiers, generals, and leaders… our soldiers will be called to The Hague to offer evidence, so that their morale will be somehow depressed.” (Although Ukraine still has not ratified the Rome Statute, in September 2015, the country accepted the ICC's indefinite jurisdiction over the conflict in the Donbas, exposing itself to potential prosecution at the court.)

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Ostpol: The lonely life

According to Jan Sowa it's not conservatism, xenofobia or strong Catholicism is the most important feature of a typical Pole, it is rather his loneliness. Although in terms of material good Poland is becoming more and more like the Western Europe, yet behind the modern facade hides a very different country from other members of the EU. It's ironic that the country which ones was the most ethnic and religious diverse in the whole of Europe is now understanding its identity to be based on national, ethinic and religious homogeneity. It is so ironic, as this ahistoric lack of diversity is a result of Hitler's and Stalin's decisions, something that most Poles would not want to acknowledge. This homogeneity unknown in other European countries can be seen not only in terms of its popualtion, but also in terms of its built enviroment, which tends to be very undiverse as well. This lack of diversity has been deepened since Poland joined the EU, because the most edcuated and active Poles have left the country in search of better perspective. 

Poland has one of the lowest rates of trust towards others in the whole of Europe and that, according to Sowa, takes a heavy toll on how people function in the society and their life standards. Furthermore, this also overshadows foreign relations of the country. Poland is basically insolated from its neighbours, none of the relations can be described as really good. It is practically striking in case  of Lithuania and Ukraine, with whom Poland shares a very long history. Yet, the unwilingess to accept the point of view of the others, acknowledge that Poles in the past were perpetrators (as well as victims) makes the impossible to built healthy relationship with any of the neighbour states. 

The difference to the rest of the EU is also due to the fact that Poland is one of the last bastions of neo-liberalism on the continent. That is linked with superficial modernisation, which is limited only to the infrustructure (symbolised by Pendolino trains), but seems to have little or no effect on the mentality or ideas. This is why Poland refuses to give up its coal (which is of very bad quality), to take any refugeese or to give rights to sexual minorities. The neo-liberal dogma also results in Poles working longer than almost all other nationalities in the EU, despite being paid siginificantly lower wages. 

The author, however, believes that it is possible that things will change in Poland and the mentalities will also change.

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The Washington Post: The forgotten story of European refugee camps in the Middle East

Tens of thousands of refugees fled a war. They journeyed across the Eastern Mediterranean, a trip filled with peril. But the promise of sanctuary on the other side was too great.

No, this is not the plight faced by Syrian refugees, desperate to escape the desolation of their homeland and find a safer, better life in Europe. Rather, it's the curious and now mostly forgotten case of thousands of people from Eastern Europe and the Balkans who were housed in a series of camps across the Middle East, including in Syria, during World War II. [...]

A British-led scheme known as the Middle East Relief and Refugee Administration, launched in 1942 and facilitated by officials based in Cairo, helped provide for some 40,000 Poles, Greeks and Yugoslavs. (By 1944, the initiative would be subsumed under the auspices of the "United Nations," the formal term for the Allied alliance.) The refugees were spread out between camps in Egypt, southern Palestine and Syria — yes, Syria. Aleppo, an ancient and thriving metropolitan center, was already a veritable hub of emigres, exiles and spies in the 1940s.

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