Mixed race families: Around 50% of Black Caribbean men have white partners and the figure is just under a third for Black women. Inter-racial unions are now an unremarkable feature of British life. Miri Song, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, talks to Laurie Taylor about the meanings that these parents attach to their racial identity. Also, Nasar Meer, Professor of Race, Identity and Citizenship at the University of Edinburgh asks why racial and ethnic disparities continue to be fundamental to our society.
17 March 2018
Haaretz: Getting the Democracy We Deserve
There’s also no one to struggle with. Aligned against Netanyahu is nothing, an empty space. No one stands up to him. The prime minister is being questioned as a criminal suspect and no one challenges him seriously, except for the police commissioner and protest organizer Eldad Yaniv. Just imagine similar allegations against Shimon Peres, with Menachem Begin or even Yitzhak Shamir in the opposition – heaven and earth would be shaking. But Israel has in recent years developed a regime with no opposition, like in Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey – but with a global innovation Made in Israel: It’s the opposition’s fault that there’s no opposition, not the government’s.
The so-called opposition has nothing to sell. It has nothing to offer other than “Netanyahu is corrupt,” as if Netanyahu would be fit to continue in office if he were modest, morally pure teacher of Jewish law. There is no alternative to be found, even if you search with a microscope. This can be seen on the Facebook page of Labor candidate Avi Gabbay: It’s empty. “Together we will turn Israel into the greatest country in the world.” The populists Netanyahu and Yair Lapid couldn’t have put it any better. [...]
From the other contender, Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, we could of course expect much less. “Mr. Prime Minister, you’ve done good things for the Jewish people. But enough.” What a fighting opposition! Lapid’s Facebook page deals mainly with corruption and conscripting the ultra-Orthodox. We all know that Israel that has no other issues to deal with – or maybe Lapid just doesn’t have anything else to say.
Politico: Will Italian populism save Europe?
For the first time in Italy’s history, nearly every party mentioned the European Union in its electoral program. But while the parties presented a wide variety of options — ranging from the creation of a “United States of Europe” to holding a referendum on the country’s membership in the eurozone — the public debate remained superficial and misinformed. As a result, Europe never truly became part of the national conversation. [...]
Signs suggest that Italy may actually do neither, but rather set its own course of action within Europe — one that leads to an entirely new understanding of what EU citizens want, starting from a discussion on universal basic income and the best ways to reform the eurozone. [...]
Euroskepticism doesn’t mean the same thing in Italy as it does elsewhere. Over the last 20 years, prime ministers on from the right (Silvio Berlusconi) and the left (Matteo Renzi) have used Europe as a scapegoat for everything that is wrong in the country. [...]
In other words, the 5Stars have none of the baggage of the old-fashioned mainstream parties. Indeed, when it comes to their prowess at community organizing, the party has more in common with Macron’s La Republique En Marche party — which at the time of its creation drew inspiration from the 5Stars — than with Renzi’s Democratic Party.
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