NATO’s military strength and unswerving trans-Atlantic solidarity enabled it to contain and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union. But with Vladimir Putin’s Russia resurgent, and eager to restore some of its past glory, people speak of a new “Cold War”. But this one is very different from the first. It is being fought out on the internet; through propaganda; and by shadowy, deniable operations. It is not the kind of struggle that plays to the Alliance’s traditional strengths. Worse still, NATO – currently marking its seventieth anniversary - is more divided than ever; its member states having very different priorities. President Trump has added additional strains, raising a question-mark over Washington’s fundamental commitment to its European partners. So can NATO hold together and adapt to the new challenges it faces or will it sink into a less relevant old age?
24 November 2019
The Guardian: Why are poor Americans more patriotic than their wealthier counterparts?
If we define patriotism not only as an attachment to country but also as a belief in its greatness, if not superiority – the brand of patriotism expressed by America’s poor is extraordinary. Data analysis from the authoritative General Social Survey (run by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago) shows that over 90% of America’s poorest would rather be citizens of the United States than of any other nation. The figure is higher than that for working-class, middle-class and upper-class Americans. About 80% also believe that America is a “better” country than most other countries. [...]
First, America’s poor still see their country as the “last hope” for themselves specifically and for humanity more generally. Because of its foundational social contract, the country offers each citizen a sense of dignity. As Ray (all names have been disguised), an older African American man in Birmingham, Alabama, told me, only in America is everybody equal in principle to everyone else. [...]
Second, to many, America is seen as the land of “milk and honey”. It’s perceived as a rich and generous place, where those who work hard can achieve much. The people I spoke with took personal responsibility for the difficult trajectories they had experienced, even if in fact all odds were stacked against them. As Kysha, an African American woman in her 60s in a shelter in Birmingham, told me, “It’s on you … you got a chance like anyone else … everybody got a chance. Some people don’t wanna do right. You gotta realize that.” America, moreover, gives money to countries all over the world: it’s a place of abundance, that attracts people from all over the world. Under this reasoning, anyone who’s poor in America should be thankful to be here.
Associated Press: Facts Poll: Facts missing from American democracy
A meager 9% of Americans believe that campaign messages are usually based on facts, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Opinion Research and USAFacts. Only 14% think policy decisions are often or always fact-based, or that Americans’ voting decisions are rooted in facts. [...]
Overall, 53% of the public thinks voters sometimes cast ballots based on facts, while 32% say they rarely or never do. Hamm-Oliver said voters in her home state of Idaho did so when they voted to approve a ballot measure last year that forced the state to accept the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, which had previously been rejected by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. [...]
McKee’s view is widespread, with 55% of Americans saying policy decisions are sometimes based on fact while 3 in 10 think they rarely are. Republicans are more skeptical than Democrats that public policy is even sometimes fact-driven, with 33% saying it rarely or never is compared to 23% of Democrats.
The Atlantic: An Alarming Discovery in an Astronaut’s Bloodstream
The study was designed to study different, well-known side effects of space travel. A decade ago, scientists started noticing that astronauts who spent months on the International Space Station came home with swollen optic nerves, slightly flattened eyeballs, and changes in vision. NASA started putting glasses on board the station for astronauts who found that their eyesight had worsened. Scientists have suspected that the cause involves an accumulation of the body’s fluids such as blood and water. Free from the steady tug of gravity, the fluids float toward the head and can increase pressure inside the skull. [...]
Scans showed that blood flow in the vein stalled in five of the 11 astronauts. “Sometimes it was sloshing back and forth a bit, but there was no net-forward movement,” Marshall-Goebel says. Seeing stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein is rare, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, such as when people sit still for hours on a plane. The finding was concerning. Stagnant blood, whether it’s in the neck or in the legs, can clot. Blood clots can dissolve on their own or with the help of anticoagulants, but the blockages can also cause serious problems, such as lung damage. [...]
The researchers attribute the effects they observed to the space environment. All the astronauts were considered to be in good health before they launched. And when they came home, the conditions vanished in nearly all of them. When the researchers analyzed the data, they found that a second astronaut may have developed a blood clot no one had seen while they were in orbit. But no one experienced any health troubles. “None of the crew members actually had any negative clinical outcomes,” Marshall-Goebel says.
23 November 2019
The Guardian: How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe
No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world. [...]
Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect. [...]
Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity. [...]
The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) that cannot speak its name.
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