How to create a better politics

I didn’t watch President Obama’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, but news reports alerted me to this passage:

A better politics doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything. This is a big country, with different regions and attitudes and interests. That’s one of our strengths, too. Our Founders distributed power between states and branches of government, and expected us to argue, just as they did, over the size and shape of government, over commerce and foreign relations, over the meaning of liberty and the imperatives of security.

But democracy does require basic bonds of trust between its citizens. It doesn’t work if we think the people who disagree with us are all motivated by malice, or that our political opponents are unpatriotic. Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise; or when even basic facts are contested, and we listen only to those who agree with us. Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

It’s easy to view politics as a marketplace in which trading is taking place as competing constituencies haggle over power. From that perspective, the only question is which group best represents your interests and if no such group exists, politics then becomes a dull spectator sport. Such a marketplace is inevitably dominated by the loudest voices.

Even if that characterization is reasonably accurate, it is likely to have a constricting effect.

Politics seen as jostling power groups, makes those groups into somewhat static entities and it saps a spirit of inquiry.

If the activity of asking and answering questions — an activity that needs to be driven by curiosity — seems pointless, it gets replaced by a much less constructive exercise: the solidification of opinion through affiliation.

In other words, politics is reduced to the question of who you want to stand with and who you stand against.

In the Republican response to Obama’s speech, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said:

Some people think that you have to be the loudest voice in the room to make a difference. That is just not true. Often, the best thing we can do is turn down the volume. When the sound is quieter, you can actually hear what someone else is saying. And that can make a world of difference.

It would be easy to dismiss these appeals from Obama and Haley to reduce the level of rancor in politics as simply calls for a cosmetic change — as though politics can be reformed by making it more pleasant. But I don’t think these calls for a tone change should be trivialized.

The dynamic at issue is driven by the cycle of attention-seeking and attention-giving.

Donald Trump’s success has had less to do with either his financial independence or his alignment with a large segment of the population, than it has with his skill in co-opting the services of the mass media.

He took reality TV to the next level (cliche intended) by turning a presidential campaign into a form of mass entertainment. Trump supporters commonly say that a significant part of his appeal is that they find him entertaining. The tedium of politics has been turned into a raucous circus with Trump as ringmaster.

He couldn’t have done this without the help of a media which salivates at each and every opportunity to boost ratings and make more money.

Ultimately, this is an issue of American values. If creating wealth is the axis around which American life turns, then the media will inevitably function like every other branch of commerce.

The health of any society, however, requires a balance between self-interest and collective interests.

If government, the legal system, the media, education, medicine, and the arts, are controlled by commerce then we all end up as the slaves of profit.

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Germany’s right-wing AfD party surges to new high amid concern over refugees

AfD

The Independent reports: Germany’s eurosceptic right-wing party has hit a new all-time high in the opinion polls as concern about migration rises in the country.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) would take 11.5 per cent of the vote is a federal general election were held today, according to a poll for Bild magazine.

The party is in third place after Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU, who are on 35 per cent. The centre-left social democrats are on 21.5 per cent.

The Green Party and the Left Party are on 10 per cent each, while the centre-right liberal FDP would re-enter parliament on 6 per cent after it was wiped out in the most recent Federal elections. [Continue reading…]

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Anti-immigrant ‘Soldiers of Odin’ raise concern in Finland

Reuters reports: Wearing black jackets adorned with a symbol of a Viking and the Finnish flag, the “Soldiers of Odin” have surfaced as self-proclaimed patriots patrolling the streets to protect native Finns from immigrants, worrying the government and police.

On the northern fringes of Europe, Finland has little history of welcoming large numbers of refugees, unlike neighbouring Sweden. But as with other European countries, it is now struggling with a huge increase in asylum seekers and the authorities are wary of any anti-immigrant vigilantism.

A group of young men founded Soldiers of Odin, named after a Norse god, late last year in the northern town of Kemi. This lies near the border community of Tornio, which has become an entry point for migrants arriving from Sweden.

Since then the group has expanded to other towns, with members stating they want to serve as eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfil their duties.

Members blame “Islamist intruders” for what they believe is an increase in crime and they have carried placards at demonstrations with slogans such as “Migrants not welcome”.

While most Finns disapprove of the group, its growth signals disquiet in a country strained by the cost of receiving the asylum seekers while mired in a three-year-old recession that has forced state spending and welfare cuts.

Finnish police have also reported harassment of women by “men with a foreign background” at New Year celebrations in Helsinki, as well as at some public events last autumn. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS claims deadly Indonesia attacks

The Wall Street Journal reports: Multiple blasts and gunfire jolted the Indonesian capital Thursday in what officials said were coordinated Islamic State-linked terror attacks, killing seven and shattering a relatively peaceful period.

The dead comprised two civilians — a Canadian national and an Indonesian — and five terrorists, Indonesian police said.

The extremist group claimed responsibility for the attacks in an official Arabic-language statement distributed to its social media accounts, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors global jihadist activity.

“In a unique security operation, a group of Islamic State soldiers targeted a group of Crusader citizens who are fighting the Islamic State in Jakarta,” the statement said. “May the civilians of the Crusader alliance and those who protect them know that there is no safety for them in the lands of Muslims after today, God willing.”

The gun-and-bomb assaults struck in the heart of Jakarta’s downtown, popular with shoppers and tourists, when a suicide bomber entered a Starbucks and detonated a bomb, killing himself but no one else, police said.

Two more suicide bombers detonated blasts as motorists left their cars and joined hundreds fleeing the area. A Canadian citizen was shot near the Starbucks and an Indonesian was killed by shrapnel, police said.

Police shot and killed two other militants, leaving all five attackers dead, and said they found six small bombs after sweeping the area. Twenty civilians were injured, including a Dutch national and a German, officials said. [Continue reading…]

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Q&A: Why did terror hit Jakarta’s streets – and what happens next?

By Noor Huda Ismail, Monash University

Explosions and gunfire on Thursday left seven people dead in Jakarta. The blasts and gunfight between Indonesian police and the suspected attackers took place near the busy Sarinah shopping mall in central Jakarta. Indonesian President Joko Widodo spoke of “acts of terror”.

Five suspected attackers are reportedly among those killed. What affiliation if any they had to a terrorist group is currently unknown.

Since 2000, Islamic hardliners in Indonesia have carried out several high-profile bombing attacks. Notably, the Bali bombings in 2002 killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

The Conversation spoke to Noor Huda Ismail, a counter-terrorism analyst from Monash University, on the landscape of Indonesia’s terror groups and the threat the country faces.

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Al Jazeera to shut down American news channel

The Wall Street Journal reports: When Al Jazeera America was launched to great fanfare in 2013, its then-leader boasted he didn’t have to worry too much about profits.

After all, the cable news channel was backed by the oil-and-gas-rich government of Qatar, and oil was trading around $100 a barrel.

On Wednesday, with oil trading near $30, Al Jazeera made an about-face, announcing it was shutting its American cable channel by April 30 for economic reasons.

“The economic landscape of the media environment has driven its strategic decision to wind down its operations and conclude its service,” wrote Al Anstey, an Al Jazeera executive who took over as chief executive of the American channel in May after its founding CEO was ousted in the wake of discrimination suits.

Charles Herring, president of Herring Broadcasting Co., which runs the conservative One America News Network, said his company is interested in buying the channel because of its valuable affiliation agreements. One America is currently available is about a quarter as many homes as Al Jazeera America and would like to put its channel in this wider footprint, he said. A spokesman for Al Jazeera declined to comment. Trade publication Multichannel News earlier reported Herring’s interest.

Partly as a result of its weak negotiating position, Al Jazeera America was forced to stop streaming Al Jazeera English online in the U.S., which had helped it build influence thanks to its close-up coverage of the Arab Spring. It was a condition of its deals with distributors, who are never fans of paying for channels that also put their content online free.

As part of its announcement on Wednesday, Al Jazeera said it will now “expand its existing international digital services to broaden its multiplatform presence in the United States.” [Continue reading…]

Hopefully this means the return of full online access to Al Jazeera English programming. Stay tuned…

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Here’s how genetics helped crack the history of human migration

By George Busby, University of Oxford

Over the past 25 years, scientists have supported the view that modern humans left Africa around 50,000 years ago, spreading to different parts of the world by replacing resident human species like the Neanderthals. However, rapid advances in genetic sequencing have opened up a whole new window into the past, suggesting that human history is much more complicated.

In fact, genetic studies in the last few years have revealed that since our African exodus, humans have moved and mixed a lot more than previously thought – particularly over the last 10,000 years.

The technology

Our ability to sequence DNA has increased dramatically since the human genome was first sequenced 15 years ago. In its most basic form, genetic analysis involves comparing DNA from different sets of people, whether between people with or without a particular type of cancer, or individuals from different regions of the world.

The human genome is 3 billion letters long, but as people differ at just one letter in every thousand, on average, we don’t have to look at them all. Instead, we can compare people where we know there are these differences, known as genetic markers. Millions of these markers have been discovered and, together with a genetic sequencing technology that allows us to cheaply look at these markers in lots of people, there has been an explosion in the data available to geneticists.

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Pathogens found in Otzi’s stomach reveal unexpected insights into the coexistence of humans and bacterium

The European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) reports: Scientists are continually unearthing new facts about Homo sapiens from the mummified remains of Ötzi, the Copper Age man, who was discovered in a glacier in 1991. Five years ago, after Ötzi’s genome was completely deciphered, it seemed that the wellspring of spectacular discoveries about the past would soon dry up. An international team of scientists working with paleopathologist Albert Zink and microbiologist Frank Maixner from the European Academy (EURAC) in Bozen/Bolzano have now succeeded in demonstrating the presence of Helicobacter pylori in Ötzi’s stomach contents, a bacterium found in half of all humans today. The theory that humans were already infected with this stomach bacterium at the very beginning of their history could well be true. The scientists succeeded in decoding the complete genome of the bacterium.

When EURAC’s Zink and Maixner first placed samples from the Iceman’s stomach under the microscope in their ancient DNA Lab at EURAC, almost three years ago, they were initially sceptical.

“Evidence for the presence of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is found in the stomach tissue of patients today, so we thought it was extremely unlikely that we would find anything because Ötzi’s stomach mucosa is no longer there,” explains Zink. Together with colleagues from the Universities of Kiel, Vienna and Venda in South Africa as well as the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, the scientists tried to find a new way to proceed. “We were able to solve the problem once we hit upon the idea of extracting the entire DNA of the stomach contents,” reports Maixner. “After this was successfully done, we were able to tease out the individual Helicobacter sequences and reconstruct a 5,300 year old Helicobacter pylori genome.” Continue reading →

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Does our microbiome control us or do we control it?

microbiome

Dina Fine Maron writes: We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That’s the tantalizing finding from a new study published today that reveals a way that mice—and potentially humans—can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem of germs residing in our guts essentially acts as our puppet master, altering brain biochemistry even as it tends to our immune system, wards off infection and helps us break down our supersized burger and fries.

In a series of elaborate experiments researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital discovered that mouse poop is chock full of tiny, noncoding RNAs called microRNAs from their gastrointestinal (GI) tracts and that these biomolecules appear to shape and regulate the microbiome. “We’ve known about how microbes can influence your health for a few years now and in a way we’ve always suspected it’s a two-way process, but never really pinned it down that well,” says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, not involved with the new study. “This [new work] explains quite nicely the two-way interaction between microbes and us, and it shows the relationship going the other way—which is fascinating,” says Spector, author of The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut. [Continue reading…]

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Why Putin loves Trump

Ivan Krastev writes: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, is war coming?”

The question is asked in the first frame of “Myroporyadok” (“World Order”), a manifesto-style documentary aired in the last days of December on Russian state television. And in the following two-plus hours, President Vladimir V. Putin, aided by diplomats, policy analysts, conspiracy theorists and retired foreign statesmen, attempts to provide an answer.

Though the Russian leader resists sounding the alarm, the audience is nonetheless convinced that if nothing changes in the coming months, the Big War could be imminent. And the Kremlin isn’t doing much to dissuade them: Days after the film’s airing, its new national security strategy, which declares NATO and the United States as fundamental threats to Russia’s future, was unveiled.

“Myroporyadok” is a powerful expression of the Kremlin’s present state of mind. It views the world as a place on the edge of collapse, chaotic and dangerous, where international institutions are ineffective, held hostage to the West’s ambitions and delusions. Nuclear weapons represent the sole guarantee of a country’s sovereignty, and sovereignty is demonstrated by a willingness and capacity to resist Washington’s hegemonic agenda. [Continue reading…]

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Me and my Syrian refugee lodger

Helen Pidd writes: “You are not going to like me saying this,” my dad said, “but you need to get a lock on your bedroom door and a lock on your bathroom door. Men can get very frisky when they are away from their wives.”

I rolled my eyes, hung up and panicked. I’d rung my parents to tell them that Yasser, a Syrian refugee, was coming to live with me while he arranged for his wife and baby to join him in Britain. I was a little nervous about the arrangement, but of all the many things worrying me – would he disapprove of my single heathen lifestyle? Could I carry on having bacon butties at the weekend? Should I edit my drinks cupboard? – the possibility of getting molested by my lodger had yet to occur to me.

I first had lunch with Yasser one day in August, after a mutual friend in Turkey told me he had arrived in Manchester and had no mates. She didn’t tell me he was Syrian, or how he had reached our rainy island. So I was gobsmacked when, in very broken English, he told me of his 37-day odyssey across land and sea. He had sailed across the Mediterranean in an inflatable boat in the dead of night, even though he can’t swim; walked from Greece to Macedonia, and crossed Europe until he reached the Jungle in Calais, where he jumped on trucks for six nights before making it to England hidden in the back of a lorry. After 17 hours packed between boxes of toys, he banged on the door. The truck driver was furious: he would face a £2,000 fine were the border police to discover his human cargo. Yasser scarpered. He wasn’t sure he was even in England until a car passed him driving on the left. He walked to the nearest petrol station and asked them to call the police. His new life had begun.

I wondered how I could help him. He was living on £5 a day given to him by Serco, the outsourcing company contracted by the Home Office to process asylum applications. While Yasser waited, he couldn’t take paid work and was living in a Serco house off the Curry Mile with five other asylum seekers: Syrians, Eritreans, a guy from Sudan. I asked if he fancied coming round to help me strip wallpaper on the bank holiday weekend. He agreed, but then I had to go and cover the world gravy wrestling championships in Bacup (try explaining that one to someone whose first language isn’t English), so left him to it.

When I got back, he had almost finished. We had an awkward meal together, then I tried to give him some money. Yasser looked appalled. “No, no,” he said. “I don’t want money. I want friends.”

Two days later, three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey. The mood in Britain changed. Suddenly the sort of newspapers who usually run stories about immigrants eating swans started showing compassion. David Cameron agreed to resettle 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian refugees – and I offered my spare room to Yasser. [Continue reading…]

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UN war crimes investigators gathering testimony from starving Syrian town

starving-child-madaya

Reuters reports: Residents of a besieged Syrian town have told U.N. investigators how the weakest in their midst, deprived of food and medicines in violation of international law, are suffering starvation and death, the top U.N. war crimes investigator told Reuters on Tuesday.

An aid convoy on Monday brought the first food and medical relief for three months to the western town of Madaya, where 40,000 people are trapped by encircling government forces.

Another United Nations official who oversaw the aid delivery described on Tuesday how he saw malnourished residents, particularly children, some of whom were little more than skeletons and barely moving.

The U.N. commission of inquiry documenting war crimes in Syria has been in direct contact with residents inside Madaya, the commission’s chairman Paulo Pinheiro said in an emailed reply to Reuters questions.

“They have provided detailed information on shortages of food, water, qualified physicians, and medicine. This has led to acute malnutrition and deaths among vulnerable groups in the town.” he said in the email sent from his native Brazil.

The U.N. inquiry, composed of independent experts, has long denounced use of starvation by both sides in the Syrian conflict as a weapon of war, and has a confidential list of suspected war criminals and units from all sides which is kept in a U.N. safe in Geneva. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. taxpayer due to subsidize Koch-controlled coal mine

Reuters reports: The Obama administration is set to refund as much as $14 million in royalties to a coal company run by billionaire investor William Koch that says it is entitled to the money since the now-shut mine on federal land was costly to operate.

The Interior Department recommended the payout in a December letter to Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, seen by Reuters, that gives the state executive a chance to object.

The subsidy, part of a decades-old program to promote coal production on public lands, is now under scrutiny since President Barack Obama has vowed to curb the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming. [Continue reading…]

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An attack on democracy? Worries over Poland mount in Brussels and Berlin

Der Spiegel reports: No, Frans Timmermans says, unfortunately he still hasn’t received an answer. The deputy head of the European Commission has written to the government in Warsaw twice in recent weeks to express his concern over the rule of law in Poland. Instead of the requested letter, all he got was gloating on the part of new Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszcykowski. Any EU official “who came to office via political connections” is “not a legitimate partner” for a government elected by the people, Waszcykowski scoffed.

Timmermans these days is having to exercise his utmost diplomatic skill in order to avoid an escalation of tensions. When, during a visit to Amsterdam on Thursday, Timmermans was asked about the Polish foreign minister’s jibe, he could have struck back. But there is already enough tension, so he chose to take a different tack, instead praising the transformation of Eastern European countries from socialist dictatorships to free societies. But, he added, true democracies include two important elements: the protection of human rights and adherence to the rule of law.

The fact that Timmermans had to utter something that obvious says a lot about the current state of the European Union — and developments in Poland. In less than two months, the country’s new nationalist-conservative government has succeeded in disempowering the constitutional court, passing a law establishing government control over public broadcasting and installing party-aligned political appointees at the head of its intelligence services. “We want to cure our country of a few illnesses,” Foreign Minister Waszcykowski told Germany’s tabloid Bild earlier this month.

It’s a choice of words most often associated with autocrats and has alarmed the European Commission. On Wednesday, the EU executive is expected to discuss whether or not it will open the so-called “rule of law mechanism.” Should it do so, it would mark the first time a member state has been subjected to that level of scrutiny for violating the fundamental values of the European Union. [Continue reading…]

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What ISIS speaking in an English accent tells us about the group’s strategy

By Alan Greene, Durham University

A new year brings with it the feeling of hope that can only come with starting afresh. It did not take long, however, for us to be abruptly reminded of the most unpleasant aspects of 2015.

The release of a new Islamic State execution video became almost common place last year, so IS obviously feels the need to ratchet up the shock factor.

The latest video, released on January 4, did just that. It showed a young child with an English accent threatening to kill all non-believers in the UK. The video is also notable for the appearance of a so-called “new Jihadi John” following the death of Mohammed Emwazi, the previous owner of that moniker, in a US drone-strike in November.

A key suspect in the scramble to identify this new IS executioner is Siddhartha Dhar, a British Muslim convert from east London who skipped bail and travelled to Syria to join IS in 2014. Dhar was awaiting trial for being a member of the prescribed organisation Al-Muhajiroun. He is also known as Abu Rumaysah.

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