Vox: “It’s just an embarrassing spectacle at this point”: Matt Taibbi on Trump’s America

Probably not so much. I think the average Trump voter, when he or she turns on the news, is more convinced than ever that there's a coastal liberal media conspiracy out to get the president. But I'm sure they would much prefer a narrative of unbridled success, as opposed to this ongoing embarrassment. Although I think the defections seem to be worse with the political class than with the voters. Even though Trump’s approval rating is down pretty low, Democrats are hardly more popular.

My sense is that the entire Trump era has just turned off most voters. I’m sure there was a large contingent of Trump voters that delighted in seeing him stride into town and blow shit up, but I don’t think he’s really delivering much on that front anymore. [...]

Well, we have a long way to go before we get to the bottom of how bad things could be. I mean, right now it's mostly just amusing. There is no nuclear war or constitutional crisis or troops in the street or financial bubbles bursting or a currency devaluation. Until something terrible happens, it’s just a fucking game for a lot of people. [...]

Absolutely. It predates Trump. We’ve gradually turned the electoral process into a reality show over the last two decades or so. The only thing different about Trump is that he was better at it than everyone else. Trump understood that politics has been reduced to a TV show, and so he made it a kick-ass show that gets awesome ratings.

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The Atlantic: What More Do Trump's Critics Want Republicans to Do?

This is one of the most polarizing political questions of the moment. To Donald Trump’s opponents, the answer is laughably obvious: Of course congressional Republicans aren’t doing enough to hold the president accountable, they argue. Most GOP lawmakers are bending over backwards to excuse and ignore Trump’s bad behavior, while those few who do routinely speak out are still voting with him 93.5 percent of the time. They are all talk and no action: corrupt partisans posing as leaders.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the divide, a popular genre of GOP apologia has emerged to contend that Republicans are being held to an unrealistic standard; that in fact they’ve already done plenty to stand up to Trump. Sure, they’ve voted for conservative bills, the reasoning goes—they are conservatives, after all! But that doesn’t mean their public criticism of a Republican president can be dismissed. As the conservative columnist Ramesh Ponnuru recently put it: “They’re falling pitifully short only if the baseline expectation is that they do whatever liberal journalists think it’s their duty to do.” [...]

Virtually everyone I talked to agreed that the single most important thing congressional Republicans can do right now is to stop the president from shutting down Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump’s critics contend that any effort by the White House to meddle with the probe would represent a brazen affront to the rule of law. [...]

But impeachment threats wouldn’t necessarily just be about getting tough on Trump—they could also be a way for congressional Republicans to hold themselves accountable. After all, it’s easy to rationalize keeping your head down and staying quiet while a scandal engulfs the White House. It becomes harder to let yourself off the hook if you’re publicly on the record saying that this particular scandal would be an impeachable offense—and legislators can justify tough votes to angry constituents by saying that they’re bound by their public commitments.

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openDemocracy: Eastern Ukraine: “We need new ways of organising”

The Eastern Human Rights Group (EHRG) — a lawyers collective that gives support to individuals, workplace collectives and community groups — is working with other activists to set up territorially-based workers’ organisations that will embrace employed, unemployed and precariously employed people in the region. [...]

Lisyansky reckons this could be the beginning of the end for Ukraine’s old post-Soviet trade unions — not only the old “official” unions, which originated in quasi-state Soviet structures, but also the post-Soviet “independent” unions set up to compete with them. Indeed, membership is falling: a worker who has been ignored at his time of need in his old workplace is unlikely to sign up in his new one. [...]

The EHRG has pursued claims for back pay by workers who were effectively abandoned by their unions at some of the largest workplaces, including the Severodonetsk Azot chemical plant, whose 5,000 workers are owed six months’ wages; Lysychanskugol coal company, with 5,000 employees at four pits; Toretskugol coal company, with 2,500 employees at four pits; and the Donetsk railway network. Workers have protested with strikes — and, at Lysychanskugol, with an underground sit-in and lobby of the energy ministry — and cases have been taken up by the EHRG and some union officials. [...]

The EHRG has participated in a widespread protest against pension reforms being undertaken by the Ukrainian government at the behest of the IMF. The reform will strengthen the link between the level of contributions and what people receive, and effectively raise the statutory retirement age, by increasing the term over which a person must contribute from 15 to 25 years. Lisyansky said: “Yes, I spoke out and will keep speaking out against this reform, which I think breaches people’s rights.” Both “official” and independent unions had protested, but this had had “little effect” on the political process, he said.

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Independent: Laws that allow rapists to marry their victims come from colonialism, not Islam

In Jordan, it’s easy for a convicted rapist to simply walk free from court; all he has to do is to subject his victim to yet another terrible ordeal.

Article 308 of the Jordanian penal code means that a rapist can escape punishment if he agrees to marry his victim. Only if the marriage lasts for less than three years does he have to serve his time. Between 2010 and 2013, a total of 159 rapists walked free in this way. [...]

Similar legislation has been abolished in Egypt, Morocco and just last week in Tunisia, while activists in Lebanon have seen their demands for abolition endorsed by the government and are now awaiting parliamentary approval. [...]

Article 308 is a remnant of the Ottoman rule, but its origin is even more distant – historically and geographically – as the Ottomans had imported it from the French penal code. In countries that were under French colonial rule, such as Lebanon and Tunisia, laws like Article 308 are a direct hangover.

The roots of these laws lie in the cultural impact of centuries under colonial rule, where subjugation was ultimately secured by a true “gentlemen’s agreement”. While foreign powers took control of the state, in exchange they offered local men complete control of their homes.

The colonialists fed and legitimised the misogynist voices within the colonised, and so many of the barriers that women face in the region stem directly from this strategy of using patriarchy as a tool of oppression.

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Al Jazeera: UN: Yazidi genocide in Iraq still ongoing, unaddressed

ISIL's genocide against Iraq's Yazidis is still "ongoing" and remains "unaddressed" by the international community, the UN has said, marking three years since ISIL began killing and capturing thousands of members of the religious minority group.

The UN human rights Commission of Inquiry, which declared the killings of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, to be a genocide, said on Thursday that the atrocity had not ended and that the international community was not doing enough to stop it. [...]

However, most Yazidis have yet to return to villages they fled when the group overran Sinjar in the summer of 2014, killing and capturing thousands because of their faith.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in ISIL captivity, and control over Sinjar is disputed by rival armed groups and their regional patrons. [...]

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed - with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive - and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to a report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

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