The Observer view on Boris Johnson’s Brexit fantasies

When politicians can spread untruths with little accountability and few electoral consequences, an irreversible rot starts to set into the political system. There’s no greater indicator that this is happening in Britain today than the fact that a man within spitting distance of Downing Street is getting away with deploying utterly misleading information about what might happen in the aftermath of a no-deal Brexit, in order to strengthen his leadership bid. [...]

Johnson’s claims contradict the views of trade experts. The House of Commons library summarises it thus: “Trade law experts have repeatedly and authoritatively dismissed the view that the relevant rule offers an easy solution to UK trade with the EU in the case of ‘no deal’.” So Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, was entirely correct to reject Johnson’s assertion. If there is no withdrawal agreement when Brexit happens, Britain and the EU will have to trade under WTO tariffs, unless they choose to lift tariffs for other countries. [...]

A no-deal Brexit will have destructive economic and political consequences for the country. The government’s forecast is that it would depress GDP between 7.7% and 9.3% over a 15-year period and it is the least affluent areas of the nation that will be hit worst in terms of jobs and growth. Moreover, a no-deal Brexit risks the breakup of the UK; it would increase the pressure for a vote on Irish unity and fuel the campaign for Scottish independence. This does not seem to worry the Conservative members who will select our next prime minister. One poll last week suggests they are so ideological about Brexit that they are happy to countenance significant economic damage, the breakup of the union and the destruction of their own party in order to see it happen. Johnson is currently expected to secure a comfortable victory among them, despite the fact that 40% believe he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

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statista: Lebanon Has By Far The Most Refugees Per 1,000 Population

Turkey hosts the most refugees of any country worldwide with 3.7 million in total at the end of 2018, ahead of Pakistan (1.4 million) and Uganda (1.2 million). As a share of the population, however, Lebanon hosts the most by far with 156 per 1,000 of its inhabitants. Jordan comes second with 72 per 1,000 of its population while Turkey rounds off the top three with 45 per 1,000 of its people. Prior to the war in Syria, Lebanon only hosted 8,000 refugees and the huge influx has pushed its socio-economic absorption capacity to the very limit.

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Places Journal: The Accidental Planners

The buildings were supposed to be torn down and replaced with private apartments and offices, following the fate of other state-owned properties. But here a handful of artists staged a remarkable intervention. What began as an effort to protest Berlin’s lack of affordable housing turned into a serious plan to save the Haus der Statistik and adapt it to community needs, backed by €140 million in state funding. Now the artists are working directly with public officials, planners, and architects to lead a participatory process that will transform the area around Alexanderplatz. “It’s a huge statement about the future of development in Berlin,” said organizer Harry Sachs. If it works, it will be a model for bottom-up city-making — and a lesson in how outsiders can claim political power. [...]

The project did not actually exist, of course, but the conditions it proposed to solve were real. Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Berlin’s government had sold off state-owned housing companies and estates to international investors. More than 110,000 public apartments went private. 3 In the years since, rising rents had forced artists and other vulnerable tenants out of their homes and workspaces. According to one tally, 350 artist studios were lost in 2014; another 500 were in danger. As evictions rippled through the city, artists formed the Alliance of Threatened Berlin Studio Houses, which agitated for tenant protections. [...]

About half of the square footage would be set aside for housing — for seniors, refugees, young families, and students. A quarter would be converted to live-work and studio spaces for artists. The rest would be dedicated to education and other cultural uses, including a new town hall for the district government. This all played out against a backdrop of social change and political turmoil, as Berliners fought to define the soul of the city. Germany was on pace to take in more than one million refugees in 2015. Activists argued that luxury real estate development was incompatible with a free and independent city that welcomed people of all generations, classes, and ethnicities. Meanwhile, rents continued to rise, and longtime residents kept getting evicted. 7 ZUsammenKUNFT spoke to a wide range of social concerns. “We were shaping it in such a way that it was difficult for a politician to say no, basically,” Sachs said. “Almost impossible. You would be saying no to public housing, no to administration, no to education, no to social infrastructure.” [...]

Opening up these spaces while planning is ongoing might seem premature, but there’s a political motivation. The project has gotten as far as it is has with the backing of the Berlin Senate, which is controlled by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Greens, and the Left Party. The next government might not be so sympathetic to this model of “co-produced city development,” Sachs said. Construction of the new buildings is expected to start in 2022, but there are elections in fall 2021, and if they go the other way, Sachs said, “It could all collapse.”

The Los Angeles Review of Books: Cruising for Sex, Cruising the Political: Alex Espinoza’s “Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime”

For Espinoza, cruising has profound social and political implications. “Cruising has provided a safe outlet for sexual exploration,” he writes. “It is devoid of the power dynamics that plague heterosexual interactions and exists outside of traditional hierarchies. True cruising allows people to set the terms of their own desire and both leave satisfied. It is founded on equality.”

These are bold claims, but he makes a reasonable argument for them. In a patriarchal culture, male privilege is upheld by an institutionalized misogyny that rigidly enforces gender roles in which men must always be the sexually active partner (a point Espinoza illustrates in his discussion of ancient Greek and Roman homosexuality). The act of men having sex with each other as equal partners, especially mutual penetrative sex, represents a sexual fluidity that undermines those rigid gender roles and, by implication, male privilege itself. Moreover, because cruising sex is undertaken purely for pleasure and, as the phrase goes, with “no strings attached,” it also implicitly rejects “natural law” notions that conflate sex with procreative or family-building purpose; cruising isn’t functional — it’s Dionysian. Espinoza’s further argument that cruising is “founded on equality,” refers apparently to who can play rather than who gets chosen. Cruising is equal in the sense that the man tapping his foot invitingly in the toilet stall next to you might be a day laborer or a United States senator. Doubtless, even Espinoza would agree that the same problematic hierarchies of attractiveness that prevail on cruising apps like Grindr operate in park bushes and shopping mall bathrooms. Finally, as his own experience shows, cruising can be initiatory, particularly for gay men who have no other outlet to explore their sexuality. [...]

One of the most interesting discussions in the book asks whether the contemporary hook-up culture promoted by apps like Grindr and Scruff is an extension of cruising or an entirely different practice. Espinoza comes down of the side of the former. “Though the excitement of a potential sexual exchange is tempered somewhat through the use of apps and websites, there is nonetheless a pleasant efficiency that comes with the use of these new tools that past generations have not had,” he explains. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it remains essentially cruising.” Along with this “pleasant efficiency,” however, comes the kind of racism that masquerades as “preferences,” a controversy Espinoza notes but does not discuss at length. Indeed, there are many thorny questions raised by the culture of cruising that Cruising side-steps or simply does not ask. [...]

In the more recent years, some LGBTQ activists have downplayed this central principle of the queer movement, fearing undue emphasis might alienate potential straight allies. That’s a mistake. It feeds into the belief held by some straights that demonstrations of same-sex affection as innocent as hand holding or kissing are “icky” or unnatural and should be confined to private spaces. This, in turn, fuels verbal and even physical violence against queer people who refuse to keep their hands to themselves in public. Clearly, the LGBTQ community should defend the right of its members to publicly display the ordinary physical expressions of love that heterosexuals take for granted. But, where to draw the line? Does this right to PDA include the right to have sex in parks and public toilets? Is that a hill the queer community is or should be willing to die on?

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Social Europe: East versus west? The battle within the far right in Germany

Yet, the story of the AfD is also one of significant regional differences. Ever since the party first participated in elections, it has proved much more popular in the eastern Länder of the former German Democratic Republic. Polls for the state elections in autumn 2019 in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony show that it may even become the biggest party there, repeating victories from the European elections earlier this year.

Initially viewed as conservative or Eurosceptic, the AfD’s shift towards the populist radical right has only recently become more obvious and well-documented. This is partly because it was treated as a unitary actor across Germany, neglecting the splits within it from its outset. Although it gained the image of being a ‘professors’ party’ in its initial stage, particularly due to its co-founder Bernd Lucke, this does not describe the full picture. [...]

Instead of establishing the AfD as a potential coalition partner for the Christian democrats, its extreme-right Flügel’ (wing) has expressed support for fundamental opposition in parliaments and often joined neo-Nazis and hooligans in efforts to mobilise protests and express anger on the streets. The positions of the Flügel have become increasingly openly racist and anti-Semitic. The rhetoric often resembles that of the Nazi era, with Höcke’s remarks on the Holocaust memorial in Berlin in 2017 only one example.[...]

The annual study on authoritarian attitudes across Germany by Decker and Brähler illustrates this ‘demand side’. They find significant differences between east and west Germany regarding support for right-wing, authoritarian dictatorship, xenophobia and social Darwinism—all more widely supported in the east. In particular, the proportion of respondents agreeing to statements such as ‘Germany is overrun by immigrants to a dangerous extent’ is consistently higher in the former GDR.

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