Quartz: Criminalizing non-violent extremism won’t prevent terrorism

In 2015, the prime minister had written that where “non-violent extremism goes unchallenged, the values that bind our society together fragment”. Going one step further, in its 2017 manifesto, May’s Conservative party called for a new approach where: “We will consider what new criminal offences might need to be created… to defeat the extremists.”

What this push for new legislation targets is not the criminal behaviour of violence, but the ideology behind it. This is based on the problematic assumption that criminalising the motivations behind an action can prevent it from happening: but my research suggests that the opposite may well be the case. [...]

Because politicians like May link certain ideologies to acts of violence, these ideologies are regarded as being just as criminal. All corresponding non-violent expressions of these ideologies—such as certain extreme interpretations of Islam—are to be considered in like terms, as a “pernicious ideology”, as May’s predecessor David Cameron stated following the terror acts in Brussels in 2016.

For instance, during the conflict in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin was censored, as were many advocating their political ideology. This led to a silencing of the political debate. Those challenging the violence of the IRA, but advocating for their goals—a united Ireland—were frequently labelled as terrorist sympathisers. For instance the former leader of the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), John Hume, notably stated: “Listening to honourable members opposite one would think that it [the pursuit of Irish unity] was a crime.” [...]

When non-violent expressions of a political ideology are criminalized this links the very ideology with criminality, and with terrorism. Holding a belief, no matter how disagreeable you may find it, does not make a person a perpetrator. Media headlines after the recent terror attacks in the UK provide disturbing examples of just how demonizing such language can be. One headline in The Daily Mail read: “Another fanatic slips through the net”, while another in The Sun called one of the attackers “The Jihadi next door”.

read the article 

Quartz: Refugees in the US quickly pay more in taxes then they get in benefits, according to new research

A recently released working paper (paywall) by the economists William Evans and Daniel Fitzgerald of the University of Notre Dame examines the financial costs of refugees to the federal government. They find that though refugees are initially quite expensive for the government, the average refugee who entered between the ages of 18-45 actually pays $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the US—including resettlement costs.

The major innovation of Evans and Fitzgerald’s research was in figuring out how to identify refugees in government data. The US Census does not include a question about refugee status in its nationwide household surveys that ask a variety of economic and demographic questions. But immigrants are asked their year of their arrival and the country they arrived from. Using this information, researchers were able to identify individuals who were highly likely to be refugees and track their progress over time.

The researchers used the data from the census and a tax-payment simulation program to estimate how much refugees pay in tax and receive in government benefits. Their data show that though the average refugee is a financial drain on the government for their first eight years in the US, by the ninth year they become net positive, and continue to be so for the next 11 years (the available data only allow the researchers to track their first 20 years).

read the article 

The RSA: The War on Truth | Matthew d'Ancona

Post-truth’ was the Oxford Dictionary word of the year 2016 – but what does it mean, and how can we champion truth in a world of lies and ‘alternative facts’? Renowned journalist Matthew d’Ancona distinguishes post-truth from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. For D’Ancona, what is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public’s response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion.

Haaretz: The Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Leftists in Israel Who Aren't Afraid to Admit It

To be sure, Bitan is not entirely representative of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community. Although he attended Ponevezh, the jewel in the crown of Ashkenazi yeshivas, he is of Mizrahi stock and grew up in an uncharacteristically political home very sympathetic to the settler movement. Unlike many of his peers, the 26-year-old divorcée chooses not to live in a strictly Haredi neighborhood but rather in a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in Jaffa. He’s also an active supporter of the largely Arab left-wing Hadash party that in the last election merged with three Arab parties to form the Joint List. [...]

Among a small, yet growing, cadre of ultra-Orthodox Israelis who have recently come out as proud leftists, Bitan is revered as both a leader and source of inspiration. After all, it takes guts to embrace an ideology considered anathema in large sections of their community.

Why the instinctive revulsion from leftist politics among ultra-Orthodox Jews?

Not because they reject the notions of peace and territorial compromise. Quite the contrary: The rabbinical leaders of the Haredi community have throughout the ages been known to espouse dovish views.

And not because they prefer free-market capitalism. Quite the contrary: Many members of the Haredi community, one of country’s poorest, owe their daily sustenance to generous social welfare programs provided by the state.

Rather, it’s because they perceive the Israeli left as anti-religious and a threat, in particular, to the very stringent form of Judaism they hold dear. Moshe Gafni, a veteran lawmaker from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, made that abundantly clear in an off-the-cuff remark at this week’s annual Haaretz Israel Conference on Peace. Asked why he insisted on aligning his party with the political right despite his dovish views, Gafni responded: “We will join the left when the left breaks its ties with the Reform movement.”

read the article 

openDemocracy: The Dutch Have Solutions to Rising Seas. The World Is Watching.

Mr. Ovink is the country’s globe-trotting salesman in chief for Dutch expertise on rising water and climate change. Like cheese in France or cars in Germany, climate change is a business in the Netherlands. Month in, month out, delegations from as far away as Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, New York and New Orleans make the rounds in the port city of Rotterdam. They often end up hiring Dutch firms, which dominate the global market in high-tech engineering and water management. [...]

It is, in essence, to let water in, where possible, not hope to subdue Mother Nature: to live with the water, rather than struggle to defeat it. The Dutch devise lakes, garages, parks and plazas that are a boon to daily life but also double as enormous reservoirs for when the seas and rivers spill over. You may wish to pretend that rising seas are a hoax perpetrated by scientists and a gullible news media. Or you can build barriers galore. But in the end, neither will provide adequate defense, the Dutch say. [...]

The project is among dozens in a nationwide program, years in the making, called Room for the River, which overturned centuries-old strategies of seizing territory from rivers and canals to build dams and dikes. The Netherlands effectively occupies the gutter of Europe, a lowlands bounded on one end by the North Sea, into which immense rivers like the Rhine and the Meuse flow from Germany and France. Dutch thinking changed after floods forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate during the 1990s. The floods “were a wake-up call to give back to the rivers some of the room we had taken,” as Harold van Waveren, a senior government adviser, recently explained. [...]

The Maeslantkering is a consequence of repeated historic calamities. In 1916, the North Sea overwhelmed the Dutch coastline, inaugurating a spate of protective construction that failed to hold back the water in 1953 when an overnight storm killed more than 1,800 people. The Dutch still call it the Disaster. They redoubled national efforts, inaugurating the Delta Works project that dammed two major waterways and produced the Maeslantkering — the giant sea gate, completed in 1997, keeping open the immense waterway that services the entire port of Rotterdam