Jacobin Magazine: By Any Other Name

For Macedonians, the name dispute has always been central to political life. But what is perhaps not so widely discussed, even when the issue reaches international news, is Greece’s power as a member of the EU and NATO to veto Macedonia’s membership in these organizations. Many Macedonians who see membership in the West’s major international organizations as a path to prosperity thus see Greece as the major obstacle faced, notwithstanding austerity-hit Greece’s otherwise weak position within the EU order. Indeed, this issue has been exploited by right-wing parties and nationalist movements in both countries. [...]

Macedonian elections usually have relatively high turnout — in the last vote, some 66 percent. Yet if last Sunday’s referendum saw a decisive 94 percent victory for Yes, only 37 percent of voters actually turned out. As always, a part of the population was simply indifferent and didn’t vote, but what was noteworthy in this case was an effective boycott campaign, driven by multiple different forces. Most important was that a large part of the right-wing electorate didn’t vote, also thanks to a boycott campaign premised on the need to defend the country’s national identity. At the same time, a much smaller group of left-wing forces, such as those from the party Levica (The Left) opposed the deal because of their anti-imperialism and opposition to NATO. [...]

It was largely nationalist forces that drove the boycott campaign. Their strategy was to render the referendum illegitimate through low turnout, rather than any attempt to mobilize a “No” vote. Especially visible was the #Бојкотирам (“I boycott”) movement, which declared itself “an anonymous decentralized group without a leader” and equated Macedonian identity with the defense of its current name. Tellingly of its politics, its website also features an image of alt-right meme Pepe the Frog. The real size and influence of this movement is, however, debatable. Similarly, while international media made inevitable comments about “Russian interference” in the referendum — as displayed by the “I boycott” position advanced by Janko Bachev and his newly founded United Macedonia party, which has openly vaunted its pro-Russian stance — both the scale of the boycott and the longstanding nature of this dispute point to multiple internal reasons for the surprise vote.

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Haaretz: Merkel and All the Men

I felt the need to take a picture of this aberration and post it on Instagram as a legacy of the past, but last Thursday, a photo of the scene at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem was not much different from the Beraud painting in Paris, as if 129 years had not elapsed. There they were, ramrod straight, standing next to one another in similar suits: 22 men surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the most powerful woman in the world, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The businessmen were invited to attend an exhibition on innovation and a roundtable discussion as representatives of the ground-breaking high-tech field. The men, like the Parisian intellectuals in the painting, represent progress. They too are totally blind to the fact that in practice, they are outmoded. The photo, which was meant to glorify and promote the crown jewel of Israel’s economy, unwittingly laid bare something else entirely – the banality of erasing women from the most important arena that there is, the centers of power. [...]

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s apology in the face of growing protests on social media over the absence of women in high tech in the picture demonstrates the magnitude of the problem: “The roundtable at which Merkel participated was part of a series of events organized in cooperation with a number of entities, including the Israel Export Institute, the Innovation Authority, the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office,” the Foreign Ministry said. “The companies that were invited are leaders in innovation from Israel and Germany. … They selected and sent their representatives. In the course of the preparations, the shortcoming of the absence of women among the representatives was not identified.”

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openDemocracy: 'Go Home?’ – five years on

It is five years this summer since the Home Office commissioned a poster van reading ‘In the country illegally? Go Home or Face arrest’ to drive through the streets of diverse areas of London, between 22 July and 22 August 2013. The vans episode was part of a wider campaign Operation Vaken. Responding to this as researchers, we kick-started a group research project that culminated in the publication of the book Go Home: The Politics of Immigration Controversies. [...]

Five years later, the vans are back in the news again. But this time, they’re being mentioned in relation to the ongoing Windrush scandal. The vans have become symbols of the cruelty and the whipping up of anti-immigrant sentiment which mark the hostile environment. The newspapers are filling up with the heart-breaking stories of Paulette Wilson, Anthony Bryan, Michael Braithwaite and others. They came to the UK as British citizens many years ago and have now found themselves on the wrong side of a system in which NHS staff, landlords, teachers and others are acting as proxy border agents. The term ‘hostile environment’ itself has now become toxic; the newly appointed Home Secretary Sajid Javid has replaced it with the euphemistic ‘compliant environment’. [...]

This shift happened very quickly; even as the news was breaking, PM Theresa May initially refused to discuss the situation of the Windrush generation with Caribbean diplomats. Is it because the hostile environment now touches a generation which was integral to the building of Britain’s post-war welfare state (and therefore more difficult to scapegoat as scroungers or job-stealers)? Is it because (to a limited extent) the Windrush has become memorialised as part of Britain’s official history – and related to this, Britain’s self-perception as fair and decent? Is it because taking away the rights of British citizens is unacceptable but taking away the rights of migrant workers, international students or refugees is perceived as a necessary evil to keep immigration under control? What is crucial is how much the shift in attitudes will be limited to compensation for the Windrush generation, or how much it will involve a wider critique of the hostile environment.[...]

Finally, the study we conducted revealed re/newed forms of community activism at play. People who had never been political or never marched, took to the streets and protested against the vans, the raids and the profiling being done both in London and throughout the UK. Such community-driven activism was a key element of the action against the Windrush scandal (for example, Wales Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families, Bristol Solidarity with the Windrush Generation and their Families) and a UK Government petition for amnesty for anyone who was a minor that arrived in Britain between 1948 and 1971. The petition garnered 179,952 signatures, and the outcome of the subsequent debate was that “the Government is clear that an amnesty for this group is not required because these people do not require amnesty: they already have the right to remain here”.

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99 Percent Invisible: Making It Rain

This was the beginning of a top secret military project called Operation Popeye. The goal was to actually create more rain in Southeast Asia by artificially extending and intensifying the naturally occurring monsoon season (which ran from April to October) by a month on either side.

Humans — especially military humans — have wanted to control the weather for a long time. Some rainmaking ceremonies have ancient roots. “It goes back to traditional rainmaking ceremonies,” explains historian Jim Fleming. “Turns out that if you do a rain dance for up to two weeks it’ll probably rain and then you can take credit for that.”

Fleming says that in the 19th century — after the Civil War — a theory began to develop that major military operations were somehow disrupting the clouds and causing big rain storms. So in the 1890s, the federal government actually simulated battle activity in Texas during a drought. They fired off cannons and created explosions. “The locals loved it,” explains Fleming. “They loved to go out on the hillside and watch the cannonading, but it was during the monsoon season. So there was a really good chance it was going to rain anyway.”

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The Atlantic: Brazil Turns Its Back on Democracy

Jair Bolsonaro, the former army captain who dominated the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, talks a lot about killing people—common criminals, political opponents, the organizers of queer-art shows. Promising to cleanse the nation of corruption, he holds up the 1964–85 military dictatorship, when torture was state policy, as “a period of glory for Brazil.” Since Brazil’s return to democracy a generation ago, no major politician has spoken like this. But it turned out to be highly effective in an atmosphere of seemingly unending crisis, both economic and political—and one in which more than 60,000 people were murdered last year.

Bolsonaro still must win the runoff on October 28. But by taking 46 percent of the vote in the first round of elections on Sunday, he nearly claimed an outright majority, which would have prevented a second round altogether for the first time in 20 years. Making a mockery of the latest polls, other right-wing populists edged out established candidates in governor’s races. Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party, which previously had eight seats in Congress, will now have 52, second only to the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT). In São Paulo, Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo—who recently tweeted a photo of himself standing beside the former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a supporter—won the most votes of any congressional deputy in Brazil’s history. [...]

It’s not just the poor and the poorly educated who yearn for a strongman. Business leaders were initially put off by Bolsonaro’s fervor, common in the Brazilian military, for state intervention in the economy. But then he tapped a quasi-libertarian with a doctorate from the University of Chicago as his economic adviser, and the chance to propose cutting pensions and peeling back labor regulations proved too tempting to pass up. Now the stock market rallies when Bolsonaro gains in polls. Luciano Hang, the owner of a chain of department stores that feature towering replicas of the Statue of Liberty, has threatened to fire his 15,000 employees if Bolsonaro doesn’t become president.

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