Politico: Where Marine Le Pen goes from here

She also needs to find a new formula that will help the Front avoid extinction in its next two major political battles: municipal and European Parliament elections in 2019, which party troops now see as a historic showdown with Macron’s pro-European form of liberalism. As far as they are concerned, 2019 should be payback time for Le Pen’s heavy loss to Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election this year.

What to expect? Most likely, an abrupt lurch back to traditional National Front messages: anti-immigration, hardline on law and order, and strong on French cultural identity — with much less emphasis on EU-bashing. [...]

First things first: banish Philippot’s name, airbrush his likeness from official portraits, smash any statues devoted to him. In the tradition of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, the National Front immediately got to work dismantling Philippot’s legacy after he left. “He’s a conceptual guy. He doesn’t go into the field. He lacks human empathy, and that crucial political substance: a feeling for people,” said Jean Messiha, a senior party member and campaign strategist. “He had a fixation on the economic question. He considered that everything had to start with an exit from the eurozone.” [...]

Edouard Ferrand, an MEP, went further on the EU. “We are not an anti-EU party. There are a lot of things to keep about the EU. So we will propose an alternative relationship with the European Union,” he said. Meanwhile, the Front will drill down on the two topics it sees Macron as neglecting: immigration and identity. “We’ll have a political line that’s adapted to the situation of France today. We need to adapt to the circumstances today. If you ask the French what are the main challenges facing the country, they tell you: immigration, Islamism, burkinis. You can make a program out of this question,” said Messiha.

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Politico: Theresa May: UK to follow EU rules for 2 years after Brexit

Her position means the U.K. will stay inside the single market in all but name during a transition period, though without any say over its rules. Such an interim arrangement could last two years, May said, but she did not rule out a longer transition if one was needed. A two-year transition would mean few tangible changes as a result of Brexit until 2021 — five years after the referendum.

While the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator and other senior officials welcomed May’s speech as a signal of her willingness to move forward in a constructive fashion, they strongly criticized her for not providing sufficient clarity on the three main divorce issues: citizens’ rights, the financial settlement and Ireland. [...]

This will see the U.K. allow the continuation of freedom of movement during a transition — something that had previously been a red line for May. The U.K. will require EU citizens coming to work in the U.K. during the transition to register with British authorities, but officials characterized this as within EU rules and similar to measures already taken by other countries such as Belgium. [...]

The speech was received warmly by the British business lobby who said their voice had been heard. When in July the Confederation of British Industry called for the U.K. to stay in the single market and the customs union for as long as it took to agree a new U.K.-EU relationship, it seemed like an unlikely scenario. [...]

After weeks of clashes within her cabinet over the nature of the future relationship, May ruled out two opposing “off the shelf” models — European Economic Area membership, and a trade deal along the lines the EU has agreed with Canada. She said long-term EEA membership — the Norway model, under which the U.K would be in the single market but with no say over EU rules — would represent a “loss of democratic control” that “could not work for the British people.” On the Canada model, she said the U.K.’s existing regulatory harmony with the EU meant that the two sides could “do so much better” with a deeper, more comprehensive free trade agreement.

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The Intercept: Islamophobic U.S. Mega-Donor Fuels German Far-Right Party With Viral Fake News

Election-watchers expected a flood of fake news and inflammatory social media aiding Alternative for Germany, known by its German initials, AfD, to come from Russia. But one of the major publishers of online content friendly to the far-right party is an American website financed in large part and lead by Jewish philanthropist Nina Rosenwald.

Rosenwald’s site, the Gatestone Institute, publishes a steady flow of inflammatory content about the German election, focused on stoking fears about immigrants and Muslims. In one of the most recent posts, the website warns of the construction of mosques in Germany and claims that Christianity is becoming “extinct.” [...]

Gatestone articles are also regularly reprinted by far-right German blogs and web forums that are popular among AfD’s grassroots base. Philosophia Perennis and Politically Incorrect News, two popular sites that specialize in German nationalist content, routinely syndicate Gatestone’s articles. Gatestone content can also be found on Krautchan, a German knockoff of 4chan, the online forum frequented by the far right. [...]

As The Intercept previously reported, Rosenwald’s foundation not only finances Gatestone, but also funds leading Islamophobic pundits, including Robert Spencer, Frank Gaffney, and David Horowitz. Horowitz is the conservative activist who mentored Stephen Miller, a White House aide who was closely involved in President Donald Trump’s executive order temporary banning individuals from several Muslim-majority countries. As journalist Max Blumenthal reported in 2012, Rosenwald is an active supporter of hardline pro-Israel groups, and a former board member at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

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Al Jazeera: Taking a step against US impunity in Guantanamo

Djamel Ameziane was detained without charges for eleven years at Guantanamo. During this time, he faced prolonged incommunicado detention, multiple forms of torture, and never received a judicial determination regarding the legality of his detention. Although the government first approved him for transfer from Guantanamo in 2008, he was detained for another five years before ultimately being repatriated to Algeria, where he feared persecution. Since then, he has worked to rebuild his life while facing health problems, financial difficulties, and the stigma of Guantanamo. [...]

During the course of his campaign, the current United States President Donald Trump repeatedly stated his desire to not only keep Guantanamo open, but expand it. Since his inauguration, there have been numerous worrying developments. In January, a leaked draft of an executive order outlined plans to revive CIA black sites, halt transfers from Guantanamo, and send new detainees to the facility. In March, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions characterised the facility as "a perfectly acceptable place". He later visited Guantanamo in July, in what was widely perceived as a gesture of support. Lastly, reports have emerged of planned new construction at the military base that would increase its detention capacity.

Adding to these concerning political developments, the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act provide broad civil and criminal immunity to those responsible for the human rights violations at Guantanamo. In the face of these legal and political impediments to recourse at the national level, Djamel and his representatives hope the Commission will act.

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Quartz: Scientists finally discovered why languages don’t have the same number of terms for colors

Interestingly, the ways that languages categorize color vary widely. Non-industrialized cultures typically have far fewer words for colors than industrialized cultures. So while English has 11 words that everyone knows, the Papua-New Guinean language Berinmo has only five, and the Bolivian Amazonian language Tsimané has only three words that everyone knows, corresponding to black, white, and red. [...]

The most widely accepted explanation for the differences goes back to two linguists, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. In their early work in the 1960s, they gathered color-naming data from 20 languages. They observed some commonalities among sets of color terms across languages: If a language had only two terms, they were always black and white; if there was a third, it was red; the fourth and fifth were always green and yellow (in either order); the sixth was blue; the seventh was brown; and so on. [...]

What’s more, this nativist theory doesn’t address why industrialization, which introduced reliable, stable, and standardized colors on a large scale, causes more color words to be introduced. The visual systems of people across cultures are the same: in this model, industrialization should make no difference on color categorization, which was clearly not the case. [...]

So contrary to the earlier nativist visual salience hypothesis, the communication hypothesis helped identify a true cross-linguistic universal—warm colors are easier to communicate than cool ones—and it easily explains the cross-cultural differences in color terms. It also explains why color words often come into a language not as color words but as object or substance labels. For instance, “orange” comes from the fruit; “red” comes from Sanskrit for blood. In short, we label things that we want to talk about.

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