Deutsche Welle: German pilots refuse to carry out deportations

Following an information request from the Left party, the government said that 222 planned flights were stopped by pilots who wanted no part in the controversial return of refugees to Afghanistan, which has been deemed a "safe country of origin" in some cases, despite ongoing violence and repression in parts of the country.

Some 85 of the refusals between January and September 2017 came from Germany's main airline Lufthansa and its subsidiary Eurowings. About 40 took place at Dusseldorf airport, where the controversial deportations are routinely accompanied by protesters on the tarmac. The majority of the canceled flights, around 140, took place at Frankfurt Airport, Germany's largest and most important hub. [...]

In order to reduce the number of appeals and speed up deportations, the government has proposed a program to begin in February 2018 that would see rejected asylum seekers given 3,000 euros as an incentive to accept deportation.

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Business Insider: China should send 30,000 troops into North Korea

Their choice of self-restraint rested on many factors, none more critical than the security afforded by military alliance with the United States, bolstered by deployment on their territory of U.S. military forces. As historian Michael Howard explained years ago, reassurance of allies is scarcely less crucial than deterrence of adversaries. Durable strategic stability depends on both. [...]

Gradually, reluctantly, Beijing has been drawn into the multilateral campaign to pressure Pyongyang economically and politically. Recent months have seen China joining strong U.N. Security Council resolutions and stern sanctions against North Korea, particularly in pledging curtailment of trade between the two neighbors. On present evidence, it remains doubtful that even the sharpest diplomatic and economic measures will dissuade Kim from his nuclear and missile ambitions.

Perhaps it is time to explore a different initiative: Could China reassure North Korea as the United States reassures South Korea? As Beijing has grown anxious over North Korea’s behavior, it has qualified its 1961 defense agreement with Pyongyang by emphasizing that it would assist against attack — but it would not support the Kim regime if it began a war. [...]

That guarantee would be most credible, however, if coupled with actual deployment of Chinese forces on North Korean territory. A symmetrical policy of reassurance could involve possibly 30,000 Chinese military personnel stationed there, a total comparable to U.S. forces south of the 38th parallel. [...]

The task of persuading North Korea would fall to the Chinese, just as the United States would have to surmount predictable South Korean apprehension regarding the concept. North Korean leadership might perceive the offer of Chinese troops less as a stabilizing arrangement than as a prelude to overthrowing the Kim regime.

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The Atlantic: The Odds of Impeachment Are Dropping

That’s because impeachment is less a legal process than a political one. Passing articles of impeachment requires a majority of the House. Were such a vote held today—even if every Democrat voted yes—it would still require 22 Republicans. If Democrats take the House next fall, they could then pass articles of impeachment on their own. But ratifying those articles would require two-thirds of the Senate, which would probably require at least 15 Republican votes. [...]

Among Republicans, Trump’s approval rating has held remarkably steady. The week Mueller was named, according to Gallup, Trump’s GOP support stood at 84 percent. In the days after Donald Trump Jr. was revealed to have written, “I love it” in response to a Russian offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton, it reached 87 percent. In Gallup’s last poll, taken in late November, it was 81 percent. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has not dipped below 79 percent since he took office. None of the revelations from Mueller’s investigation—nor any of the other outrageous things Trump has done—has significantly undermined his support among the GOP rank and file.

The GOP senators who have challenged Trump, by contrast, have seen their support among Republican voters crash. In July, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s brave and honorable book was excerpted in Politico as “My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump.” Trump retaliated, of course. And by October, a Morning Consult poll found that Arizona Republicans disapproved of Flake by 13 points. That month, he declined to run for reelection. The other GOP senator to most frontally challenge Trump has been Tennessee’s Bob Corker, who in a series of interviews in October, accused him of “debasing” the presidency and warned that he could lead America into World War III. The result: A similar collapse of support. As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has noted, Tennessee Republicans approved of Corker in February by 40 points. By the end of October, they disapproved of him by 12 points. Not surprisingly, Corker isn’t running for reelection either. [...]

The last decade has shown that you can get big things through Congress with the support of only one party. In 2009, Democrats passed a stimulus bill and Obamacare with no help from the GOP. Last week on tax cuts, Republicans did the reverse. But removing a president requires bipartisanship. And in this ultra-partisan age, that means removing a president is virtually impossible, even when he’s Donald Trump.

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The Guardian: The church leaders' campaign against marriage equality harms those who are already hurt

There is a pattern to this behaviour; first, claim to be protecting an institution, often “marriage” or “the family”, then attack a reform designed to protect actual people from exclusion, prejudice or a denial of equal rights.

This practice has a history in Australia. Rightwing politicians and some conservative Christians opposed no-fault divorce laws in order to protect the social value of the family unit. Fringe Christian groups resisted attempts to reform marital rape laws in this country – as did conservative MPs who cited defence of the family as their motivation – ensuring it took approximately 22 years for change to be fully implemented at a state level.

Not coincidentally, it took approximately the same period to decriminalise homosexuality across our nation, a process that was not completed in Tasmania until 1997. Again, rightwing politicians and conservative Christian groups delayed the process and battled against the reform, increasingly using language adopted from the religious right of the United States – note how the nebulous, and rather American, use of the word “freedom” has increasingly entered into the Australian conservative religious lexicon. [...]

Religious freedom in this nation will not be destroyed by marriage equality. “Family values” – at least those modelled by the Jesus of the gospels – are more than safe. This open letter is religious assault on another reform that is designed to advance marriage and family as protective institutions in our society. We are used to Christian conservatives opposing reform in this country. The tragedy is the way this adds harm to the already hurt and excluded that Christ invites us all to protect and include as he did.

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Social Europe: Globalisation, Migration, Rising Inequality, Populism…

Then they have noticed that, of course, some people at the top have done extremely well over that time. I believe that it was realisation of this issue that brought inequality to the fore. Now, why is inequality in general important? I think it is important, even for economic growth. Let me just put it in very simple terms. We know that in societies, where inequality is extremely high, we have a cementing of privileges across generations. We don’t have intergenerational mobility. We have lots of people who are never able to contribute to society by working, or by studying or anything else, because, simply, they don’t have money to actually engage in that.

Very high inequality is clearly not good. On the other hand, we have the example of formerly socialist economies that actually reduced inequality to such an extent that there was no incentive to even work harder or to study. That low level of inequality was unsustainable too and bad for growth. Clearly, I think, that we have to realise that not only there is some kind of optimal level of inequality, but there are two different types of inequality. Just like there are two different types of cholesterol. There is an inequality which is good, which actually, prompts us to take risks, work hard or study. There is inequality, which is bad, which essentially enables an elite to maintain its position without contributing much to society. [...]

We see inequality increase after the crisis in particular in Spain, Greece, Portugal. Then central European countries, that used to be and remain countries with relatively low inequality, but they are also small countries, very homogeneous in terms of education, ethnically as well. Like, Hungary, Austria, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Slovenia, they are countries with relatively low inequality. [...]

On the other hand, migration might lead to increases of inequality in some countries, as migrants actually put further pressure on wages, domestically. It might lead to political problems. Basically, there is a trade-off there. We cannot opt, I believe, for the extreme solutions. Free migration would not be politically feasible and then cutting migration to zero, I think, would be economically self-destructive, even for the countries that do do that.

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