The Calvert Journal: Turbofolk

And in the past decade or so, it’s become gayer than ever. Indeed, the queer side of Serbian pop culture is pretty hard to miss when music videos, performances and concerts spill over with oiled-up orange muscle men, fierce divas, flamboyant drag performances and even rainbow flags, all to a soundtrack of sick synths and thundering club beats. Belgrade’s most prolific and successful music video director, Dejan Milićević, whose work over the past 15 years shaped the genre’s entire look, is openly gay; it’s not just in the West that gay men, historically shut out of other spaces, find a natural home for themselves in the entertainment industry. [...]

While western music videos bombard us with images of semi-dressed nubile young women on a daily basis, their Serbian counterparts feature just as many scantily clad men as women, if not more. Contemporary Serbian pop-folk is a veritable homoerotic fantasy land, pioneered in full mainstream view by gay male directors and creatives, where divas call the shots, male objectification is endemic and queerness is often more a text than a subtext. Many of the genre’s biggest female stars since the millennium — from Jelena Karleuša to Goga Sekulić, Nikolija to Ana Nikolić — are simultaneously hyperfeminine and hypermasculine: dominant, uncompromising personalities wielding sexual and social power on screen and stage. Their music videos frequently feature them with hosts of scantily clad men at their beck and call, like a Balkan subversion of US hiphop videos where male rappers are surrounded by available female bodies.  [...]

The sensual clip for Daniel Djokić’s single Like It Like This, another Milićević production, is entirely focused on selling Daniel’s body as a sexual commodity. It’s near-impossible to imagine any straight-presenting western male pop star releasing a video like this that posits them so unequivocally as a piece of meat. The English lyrics to the chorus feel like a message from Serbia’s gay turbofolk community to the world: “This is the only time we’re ever gonna like it like this. There’s no money in our pocket but we like it like this. We have nothing but the music and we like it like this.”  

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The Atlantic: How Far Can Germany's Social Democrats Bend Before They Break?

The 28-page framework Merkel’s conservatives and Schulz’s Social Democrats drafted is intended to form the basis of a coalition government. On immigration, both sides agreed to cap the number of asylum seekers the country takes in to between 180,000 and 220,000 a year; before talks, the SPD had categorically rejected such a cap as a violation of the country’s moral obligation to protect refugees. Some asylum seekers with limited status will be able to bring their families to Germany, but this, too, will be restricted to up to 1,000 people a month. There would be no tax hike for the wealthiest Germans. The SPD also failed to establish what it calls a “citizen’s insurance,” a healthcare plan that guarantees the same standards for public and private patients in Germany.  

There were some wins for the center-left, like a ban on exporting weapons to countries involved in Yemen’s ongoing war (German companies have been involved in lucrative arms deals with Saudi Arabia) and reforming the EU with a euro-zone budget and better protections against financial crises. After delegates voted on the framework agreement Sunday, Schulz promised to wrest further important concessions in the next stage of talks. [...]

If the grand coalition fails, the populists could point to the inability of centrist parties to achieve anything substantial. But if it succeeds, it could fuel the argument that nothing will change in Berlin, despite social upheaval over migration and globalization. The AfD would also gain important symbolic power as the largest opposition party. In parliamentary sessions, it would be the first to speak after the governing coalition, and it would chair parliamentary committees as well, possibly including the budgetary committee—the most important in the Bundestag.

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Bloomberg: Six Lessons From Merkel’s Impasse and What They Mean for Germany

Merkel has kept her hold on power for 12 years by occupying the political middle ground, sticking to pro-European policies and finding partners to govern with who broadly shared that outlook. But the days of steady, stable coalition-building in Germany are over, hastened by the refugee crisis of 2015-16 that upended the political landscape. A fragmented parliament, acrimonious partisan standoffs and factional fighting over migration within Merkel’s bloc make Berlin look more like Rome or Washington these days. With the Social Democrats still wavering and the pro-market Free Democratic Party having pulled out of previous coalition talks, only Merkel’s bloc is showing it wants to govern. Yet its worst election result since 1949 makes her more dependent than ever on a coalition partner to govern with a reliable majority in parliament. It’s a paradox with no obvious solution, neither for Merkel nor any other political leader. [...]

Polls suggest Merkel remains popular with the public and has strong backing among party leaders, with no obvious successor in sight. She has a record of humbling and outlasting enemies, including in her own party. Lindner may be the latest victim. Since he walked out of coalition talks in acrimony, support for the Free Democrats has fallen to as little as 8 percent, compared with 10.7 percent in the federal election, while his own approval ratings nose-dived. It’s a warning to other would-be challengers as his gamble looks to have failed. [...]

Merkel, 63, dodged a bullet on Sunday when the Social Democrats voted to pursue talks on governing with her Christian Democratic Union-led bloc. While it isn’t the final step, just getting there underscores her perseverance and determination. If she gets a coalition deal with the SPD, her stamina, command of policy details and “step by step” mantra -- ridiculed as a lack of vision by critics -- will have carried the day again. She remains the head of Europe’s biggest economy, the most experienced leader of the G-7 nations, and a formidable negotiator. Whether her domestic opponents get the better of her now, as they must surely do one day, it would be a foolish adversary who wrote her off just yet.

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Haaretz: Young American Jews Increasingly Turning Away From Israel, Jewish Agency Leader Warns

Israel is rapidly losing its hold on young American Jews, who increasingly view the Jewish state as antithetical to their liberal values, a leader of the Jewish Agency warned on Monday. [...]

“I think it’s very important that we move to a new mode and encourage young Jews not only to engage in Israel advocacy and in defending Israel – those are all important things – but also to have them accept the legitimacy of challenging Israel,” Hoffman said. He was alluding to the tendency among Israeli political leaders to view Jewish students as their ambassadors on college campuses. [...]

“In the year since Trump was elected, the situation has only been exacerbated,” he said. “Jewish student college students in the United States, not including those who are Orthodox, see Israel, justifiably or not, as something opposed to their basic liberal and progressive values.” [...]

Older American Jews are not as disengaged from Israel as their younger counterparts, he said, but they were deeply offended by recent actions of the government. “Among large sections of American Jewry, there is a real question today about how much Israel is home to them,” he said.

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CityLab: More Bike Lanes Could Save up to 10,000 Lives a Year in Europe

That’s the finding from a new European Commission-funded study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health that seeks to assess the relationship between cycling’s popularity and death rates. The findings, compiled from 167 cities and published in the journal Preventive Medicine, are striking. If 24.7 percent of all journeys were taken by bike, London could see 1,210 fewer premature deaths annually, Rome could see 433 fewer, and Barcelona could see 248 fewer. Spread across the entire network of cities investigated, that’s a substantial drop in mortality. But how exactly could cycle network expansions make this happen?

Improving bike infrastructure (thus boosting cycling’s modal share) can reduce urban deaths by three key factors: air quality, public health, and collisions. By encouraging more people to switch from other forms of transit (other than walking, whose modal share the study predicts would remain stable), installing more bike lanes increases physical activity and provides health benefits. This modal shift slashes the volume of particulate-emitting vehicles on the road, meaning the air people breathe is less damaging to their health. And finally, as the modal share for motor vehicles drops, the number of people these vehicles kill in collisions drops off. [...]

Thankfully, this money could be more than recouped, the study finds. By reducing premature deaths through improvements in air quality, public fitness, and a drop in fatal road collisions, the benefits of a larger modal share more than outweigh the costs—quite strikingly so, in some cities. If Rome increased its cycling modal share by even 10 percent of its current level—still a major improvement—it could save €70 for every euro spent on bike lanes. Barcelona could save €35 for every euro spent on infrastructure, and London could save the pound equivalent of €8 for every euro spent.

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