Reuters: Three liberal prophets of doom

In the past several months, three leading liberal figures, each with international reputations, have given speeches in defense of liberal values and practice. Two of these – the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros and the French President Emmanuel Macron – have addressed the EU’s present travails and likely future. The third, former U.S. President Barack Obama, as befitted a former leader of the still-hegemonic world power, addressed more global issues. [...]

Europe’s existential danger is “no longer a figure of speech… it is the harsh reality,” said Soros. A passion for austerity had turned the rich countries (especially Germany) into creditors, and the struggling (notably Greece and Italy) into debtors – creating “a relationship that is neither voluntary nor equal.” The Hungarian-born Soros, reviled in his birth country by the government led by rightwing nationalist Viktor Orban (who, in his student days, benefited from Soros’ largesse) is rendered especially pessimistic by the drift towards authoritarian rule of the Central European states, particularly Hungary and Poland. It’s a drift which runs directly counter to Soros’ earlier optimism that, with some assistance, the peoples of the former communist states of Central Europe could become citizens with the same civic and democratic rights as in the Western European countries. [...]

The urgency of Macron’s conviction that the Union must integrate or disintegrate has found few enthusiastic takers in the EU. Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said d that the EU could fulfil its basic promise only if individual member states are strong and able to maintain their own identity. In Germany, where voters are concerned about issues like the cost of Macron’s euro zone reform plans, Chancellor Angela Merkel – much damaged by her party’s loss of support in this year’s elections and a quarrel with her main coalition partner, the Christian Social Union – has to be even more cautious than usual. [...]

Poverty, discrimination, violence all remain, sometimes growing – as does inequality. Elites are more closed off from the mass of the people; solidarity in nations wilts; the reckless behavior which precipitated the 2008 banking crisis prompted spikes of mistrust in every kind of leadership – political, financial, corporate. Then there’s politics. “Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth,” said Obama. “People just make stuff up.” The former president did not mention the name of America’s current president, but few doubt that he was referring to Donald Trump when he mentioned “the utter loss of shame among political leaders, where they’re caught in a lie and they just double down and they lie some more.”

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The Calvert Journal: Afro-Poland A revolutionary friendship, captured in rare photos from 1955-1989

None of this was lost on the Polish Press Agency, whose journalists were tasked with documenting their African guests. The aim was to look beyond stereotypes of exoticism and present sisters, brothers and friends who could just as easily live in Polish society. The festival was the catalyst for a decades-long series of Polish press photographs showing people of African descent (PAD) visiting and living in Poland. Bartosz Nowicki, a Polish photographer and curator who currently lives in Wales, has spent the past few years researching these archive photos from the period 1955-1989. He recently curated an exhibition, Afro PRL, which highlighted the long-standing connections between white Poles and PAD, a memory that is often forgotten in contemporary Poland.

Nowicki’s exhibition revealed the myriad ways in which PAD stood alongside white Poles during the communist era. The World Festival of Youth and Students was simply a starting point, after which students from Africa were encouraged to study at Polish universities — as well as elsewhere in the Soviet sphere of influence. This was most keenly emphasised in Poland following the events of 1960, when 17 African countries declared independence from colonial rule. The arrest and murder of the Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was widely covered in the Polish press, alongside solidarity protests in Warsaw. Photos from these demonstrations show Polish students hand-in-hand with PAD. According to Nowicki, this was — in part — a technique to depict a humane Poland in contrast to a brutal West. “They were really fighting against the Americans on the level of race,” he explains. “You could see how horrible American race rhetoric was, look what was happening to the people — lynching, and so on.” [...]

The photos also highlighted to the Polish public that young people from Africa were now studying and living in Poland. “You realise that most of the images from the period, even if they are not about university or about studying, are actually of African students,” Nowicki tells me. After carrying out a year-long induction at the Polish Language Centre for Foreigners in Łódź, overseas students were free to attend Polish universities. PAD formed a large part of this contingent, starting off with around four students in 1958 and growing to a peak of around 2,000 in the 70s. Their photos were regularly displayed in Polish newspapers, albeit in an exoticising manner. [...]

Omolo suggests that while Poles may have less contact with non-white people — compared to those in countries such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany — this does not entirely explain why PAD experience racism in Poland. Instead, he believes that Polish people have often been exposed to literature and screen media that demean those from the African continent, thereby perpetuating the idea that white people are superior. For Omolo, this makes Poles more likely to believe negative, unfounded stereotypes about PAD, such as those espoused by the PiS party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. “When Kaczyński said that Europe should not accept refugees from Africa because they’re carrying some diseases that are not in Europe — most of them bought it actually,” Omolo recounts. “What about Poles who visit Africa and come back? Are they not coming with some protozoa?”

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Haaretz: Saudi King Tells U.S. That Peace Plan Must Include East Jerusalem as Palestinian Capital

The Saudi position was expressed by King Salman during a number of recent communications with senior U.S. officials, as well as in conversations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders in the region. It contradicts many media reports over the past year about a Saudi willingness to adopt Trump’s peace plan even if it is unacceptable to the Palestinians.  [...]

But things have changed in recent months, partly because of the Jerusalem decision that included the moving of the U.S. Embassy to the city — events that were opposed and denounced by Saudi Arabia. [...]

Meanwhile, Jordan and Egypt have also encouraged the administration to only present its peace plan if that plan is fair to the Palestinian side. The Jordanians warned the administration that a plan tilted toward Israel could create unrest in Jordan, forcing Amman to strongly reject it.

“The Trump administration has invested too much in thinking that the Saudis can somehow deliver Middle East peace,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former State Department and Pentagon official who worked on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the Obama administration. The Saudis, Goldenberg added, “don’t have that much leverage over Abbas,” and it was never realistic to expect them to force him into accepting the American peace plan.

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CityLab: Where New York Is Gentrifying and Where It Isn't (MAY 12, 2016)

The map below shows the location of the three types of neighborhoods across the city. The gentrifying neighborhoods (shown in dark blue) are mainly located in upper Manhattan near Harlem and across parts of Brooklyn, especially in areas adjacent to Lower Manhattan. Note the non-gentrifying neighborhoods (shown in light blue) next to many of the gentrifying neighborhoods, which reflects the juxtaposition of concentrated advantage and disadvantage in New York City today. [...]

Gentrification in New York City is the outcome of a series of economic and demographic trends that have transformed the city more broadly—notably, the surge in more educated, affluent, younger, and single people headed back to the city. In recent decades, gentrifying neighborhoods have seen substantial gains in income. Average household incomes rose by 7.3 percent in the 1990s and 6.1 percent from 2000 to 2010-2014 in these neighborhoods. Across the city, average household incomes grew slightly in the 1990s, but declined after the year 2000. [...]

Unsurprisingly, gentrifying neighborhoods have seen a significant racial transformation, losing large numbers of black residents while gaining a substantial white population. In New York, the share of white residents in gentrifying neighborhoods increased from 18.8 percent in 1990 to 20.6 percent in 2010, while the share of black residents fell from 37.9 percent in 1990 to 30.9 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of Asian and Hispanic residents in gentrifying neighborhoods grew slightly, compared to much faster growth citywide. Like many cities, New York’s overall shares of black and white residents have declined since 1990, while its shares of Asian and Hispanic residents have increased.

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IFLScience: Study Finds Yet Another Possible Benefit Of Moderate Alcohol Consumption: Sperm Quality

A new study published in the journal Andrology revealed that men who consumed 4 to 7 units (1 unit = 12.5 g of ethanol, which corresponds to 125 mL wine, 330 mL beer, or 30 mL spirits) per week had greater semen volume and total sperm count compared with those who drank between less than one unit and three units per week.

Similar to examinations on heart health and overall mortality, the team found a U-shaped association between alcohol and sperm concentration, meaning that men who drank very little and those who regularly binged tended to have no-to-low benefit whereas those in the middle showed a notable benefit. [...]

“On the other hand, different studies experimentally proved that alcohol has a detrimental effect at all levels of the male reproductive system: it interferes with the function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, impairing gonadotropin secretion with consequent decreasing of testosterone levels.”

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