#you could argue that both of them reference the baltic even

[wafflessquad]

not to be a 🤡 but cocktail d'amore 0:06-0:08 vs the beginning of incenso thank you for your attention

[theconstantsidekick]

Power Broker (7) | b.b

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Stark!Reader, Past Steve Rogers x Stark!Reader, OC x Stark!Reader (brief)

Genre: Fluff with a touch of angst.

Summary: Bucky breaks out Zemo. Sam suggests they need help handling him, seeing as he can push Bucky’s buttons unlike anyone else. So they go to the only person who can handle both Bucky and Zemo, the only Stark left in the Superhero business… well kind of. Only problem is, she seems reluctant.

Warnings: Swearing, definitely.

a/n: These are snippets of scenes that introduce y/n into the story as a character without making drastic changes. The plot points remain mostly same as they take place in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, except that y/n is also a main character with them. The rest of the MCU events stay the same as well. No drastic retcons. The reader is not only a Stark but also enhanced. Thanks for you support. And oh, I guess the tag list is open?

sidenote: this really is a method I use to calm myself down from a panic attack.

Power Broker (6) | The Whole World Is Watching (1) | Series Masterlist

“You okay?” Bucky asks Sam, when he finally sits down after getting off the phone with Torres.

He’s sitting diagonal to Sam, with Y/n in front of him, who he notices keeps looking down where Bucky’s cleaning his left palm with his handkerchief.

“Yeah,” Sam breathes out. “Just thinking about all the shit Sharon had to go through. And Nagel referring to the American test subject like Isaiah wasn't even a real person.” Sam sits up straight and turns over to look at Bucky, fury evident in his voice. “Just makes me wonder how many people have to get steamrolled to make way for this hunk of metal.”

“Well, it depends on who you ask. That hunk of metal saved a lot of lives.” Bucky argues.

“Yeah, I get that. All right,” Sam concedes. “Maybe I made a mistake.”

There’s a determination in his voice, Bucky can’t yet place.

“You did,” Bucky agrees.

“Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have put it in a museum. Maybe I should have destroyed it.”

Ah, there it is. 

Bucky looks back at him, his voice is soft when he says, “Look, that shield represents a lotta things to a lotta people, including me.” He leans forward, turning to face him, “The world is upside down, and we need a new Cap, and it ain't gonna be Walker. So before you go and destroy it, I'm gonna take it from him myself.”

“Besides,” Y/n finally chimes in, both men turn to look at her, “You can’t kill a symbol, Sam. Most you can do... is wear it.”

Sam’s phone begins ringing, he picks it up as Zemo walks over with a plate full of…? Who knows? Poisoned biscuits probably. He takes a seat behind Bucky, their backs facing each other. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Good work,” Sam says into the phone, presumably to Torres. “They found Madani... Dead. She died in Riga, a city near the Baltic Sea,” He informs the group in front of him.

“I have a place we can go,” Zemo suggests. “I, for one, am looking forward to coming face to face with Karli.” That doesn’t sound fucking ominous at all. “Oeznik, we're changing the course,” Zemo calls out.

Eventually, they all settle in for the night. Each grabbing one corner of the fuselage for themselves.

But sleep is a precious commodity for people like Bucky. It should be sold in tiny little boxes at the jewelry store along with diamonds. At least then maybe Bucky could probably afford some.

He wakes up gasping, unable to breathe, almost choking. Everything around him is hazy except the faint voice that pulled him out of the slumber to begin with.

“James?” The voice calls out, but Bucky can’t fucking focus. There isn’t enough oxygen going into his brain. He isn’t even sure he’s fully awake yet because it kinda sounds like his maa’s calling him, like she did when he and Steve were kids. Nobody calls him ‘James’ anymore… right?

“James?” The voice is louder this time, more urgent. Bucky wants to go to it, see who the fuck actually gives enough of a shit about him to sound so damn worried. “Come back to me, James?”

Y/n.

His eyes fly open, he’s still disoriented and the world still feels like a dream. But he can see Y/n kneeling in front of him, so it really can’t be a dream. Bucky doesn’t have such fucking pretty dreams anymore. 

“There you are, sunshine,” She coos at him. Her voice is hushed and so very soft. “Can you do me a solid and breathe with me?”

Bucky can’t really understand much at the moment but he trusts her, so he nods. And begins breathing in tandem with her. He inhales and exhales heavily a couple of times, coming back to enough of his senses to realize that he's holding her hand. She doesn’t seem to mind though. Instead she’s running soothing circles with her thumb over the back of his hand. And again he’d blame faulty wiring for the feeling of electricity coursing through every inch of contact their skins are making, but it’s not his damn left hand.

“Can you hear me better now?” She asks.

He nods an assent.

“Good, that’s good. Just listen to my voice okay? Focus on my voice and keep breathing. Can you do that for me, sunshine?” She asks gently.

Bucky nods again.

She smiles a small adorable smile and begins, “Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means,” She recites. “I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it's just a made up word. A politician's word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?” She leans over and carefully wipes away the thin layer of sweat that was coating Bucky’s forehead with her hand, as she continues, “There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't.” She pushes his hair back with one hand, still rubbing small circles on his hand with her thumb, with the other. Bucky’s not even sure she knows she’s doing it. “That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit,” She completes.

Bucky realizes he’s breathing much easier now. His vision is fully restored and he’s painfully aware of Y/n crouching in front of him on her knees.

“Feel better?’ She asks, a kind smile on her face.

“Yeah,” Bucky chokes out. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” she dismisses easily. 

“I’m sor—”

“—Are you really about to apologize for having a nightmare?” She cocks her eyebrow, her voice coated in annoyance.

“I just—”

“—Fuck off,” she throws back.

“Sor—” He’s cut off by the glare she throws her way. “Fine, what would you like, then?” He asks, completely lost.

“My hand back…”

Well, fuck. 

He’s still holding her hand… Bucky is still holding her fucking hand… and he doesn’t let go even after she asks for it… He looks down at their hands and then looks back up at her. And yet, does not let go. Oh how he wishes it could’ve been the left one so he could’ve claimed innocence, blaming it on Shuri’s  equipment.

Let go, you fucking creep! He scolds himself.

“I kinda need it to go get you some water, that’s all,” she explains patiently. Bucky looks down at their joined hands again, and still doesn’t let go. He can’t put his finger on why. “I’ll be right back, I promise,” she swears genuinely. 

And the moment he hears those words, he relaxes and lets go easily. 

Well fuck times two.

She makes her way over to the cockpit, picking up two water bottles  from the broken fridge and walking right back to him. She urges him to shift a bit and sits down on the extended seat next to him.

“Drink up, cowboy,” she gives him a bottle while setting the other down on the seat between them. “It’ll help.”

When the first drop of water touches his lips he realizes he was parched all along. He chugs more than half the bottle in one go before she interrupts, “Eaasyyy, cowboy. Easy," she says brushing a gentle arm over his shoulder. He looks over at her. “Go slower. You’re taking all the romance out of it,” she suggests, laughing at her own joke.

He’d laugh too, but he just had a gut-wrenching nightmare. So excuse him. 

He finishes the rest of the bottle, putting it down on the floor. They both settle into their seats. He looks over at her and finally it clicks, “Did you— did you just quote Shawshank Redemption at me to calm me down?” He asks, incredulous.

“Maybe…” She replies slyly, her lips curling up at the edges.

“Wha—And I say this with the utmost respect, but what the fuck?” He asks.

And she breaks out laughing. Bucky decides then and there, flying over the Caspian Sea, that he would fight wars to hear that sound again.

“It’s just something I do for myself, you know? To get out of my head, when I’m about to get caught in it…” she speaks in whispers, with a calmness not often associated with nightmares and panic attacks. He can’t help but admire the sight in front of him. The sun’s beginning to rise and the soft rays of the sun filtering in along with the dimmed lights of the cabin makes her look almost angelic. 

There’s a silence between them. It’s comfortable but he doesn’t mind it when she breaks it.

“How did you even know it was Shawshank Redemption?” She asks suddenly.

What is it with people thinking Bucky’s fucking illiterate?

“I read it,” he defends.

“With all the rest of Stephen King’s collection, of course.” She nods in understanding.

“Who told you that?”

“You just did,” she says looking at him, a smile finally breaking out on his face, “nerd.”

Bucky chuckles, “Come on, he writes good stuff, alright?” He defends himself.

“And a lot!” She throws back. “And I mean, a lot, a lot. That like, at least 50 books.”

“62,” He corrects her. “And well, not much else to do when you can’t sleep you know?” 

“Touché,” she agrees with an understanding in her voice that only comes from experience. “Kinda how I ended up with a law degree,” she adds after a pause, almost to herself.

“About that,” Bucky begins, but is cut off by her yawn. She mumbles out a hushed apology, looking embarrassed. “Oh shit, we can do this later, you should get some sleep.” He feels like an ass.

“No, no. Come on, ask whatever you were going to—”

“It can wait. I woke you up—”

“You didn’t—”

He barrels on “—and now I’m keeping you up.”

“I wasn’t exactly having the most peaceful sleep, alright? This is much better than whatever twisted scenario my brain had cooked up... “ she says with a hint of resentment in her eyes. “Besides, I don’t want to miss this…”

Bucky has no fucking clue if she means the sunrise or this conversation because she’s looking at him and he’s looking back at her and the world is fading away.

Until she says, “Ask away, Sarge.” She pushes herself back to the edge of the seat, resting her back on the wall. She takes off her boots, and pulls her legs up, folding them halfway and rests her arms over her knees. Her feet brush over the leg Bucky has folded up sideways on the seat while the other one remains hanging off. He cherishes the small intimacy of the touch.

“Where’d you go?” She asks, her head tilting to follow his gaze.

He looks up at her, “Nowhere,” he dismisses.

“You’ve got me on the edge of my seat here. What’s the damn question?

He chuckles softly, “Oh, nothing big. Just… Did you really get my pardon..?”

She shrugs in response, “I am technically the official lawyer for the Avengers.”

“What?” Nobody told him about that!

“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t know, I guess,” she smiles. “Well, I was Tony’s lawyer, but then I made a deal with Fury to work with Shield and then Washington happened, then the accords and somehow I ended up becoming the whole team’s lawyer.”

“You could’ve told me before,” Bucky says, desperately trying to convey his gratitude. “I didn’t even know it was you. I thought it was Sam pulling strings for me. Least I could’ve done is get you flowers or something.”

She chuckles, “I ain’t dead yet. And I like tulips.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He will.

“Like I said, it all got too much. I just wanted to get things settled and done away with as soon as possible, without much human interaction. I wasn’t coping very well with the whole thing... Morgan was the only person I talked to... I’m sorry.”

“No, no!” He rushes to console her. “I’d just like to have expressed my thanks before, is all. You must be pretty damn good at your job to get a former assassin for Hydra off scot free.”

“Umm… but it wasn’t scot free though, was it?” She asks rhetorically with a cheeky smile.

“Wait… the therapy? That was you?” He asks with disbelief washing over his face. He’s jumped up from his seat and is sitting straighter now. 

“Shh!” She shushes him.

“Don’t shush me!” He whisper yells back at her.

She chortles and then, “I thought it would be good for you.”

The honesty of her words, makes him relax and fall back in his seat, “It is… sometimes.”

She smiles, “That’s better than none of the time…”

Bucky hums in agreement.

Another silence falls over them, just as comfortable as the previous one. She’s looking out the window and he’s looking at her. He doesn’t want to break it but he wants to know her.

So he asks, “Is that what you wanted to be?”

She looks back at him, confused.

“You said the hero gig wasn’t for you… Did you want to be a lawyer?”

“Well, not exactly. It was kind of an impulse decision taken cause of boredom.”

“Boredom?” He repeats the word, hoping to understand how someone can become a lawyer because of boredom. He doesn’t. He chooses to ask, “Care to explain?”

“Alright,” she takes a deep breath, sitting up straighter, “I had a shit time sleeping, and Tony—that overachieving asshat—had just gotten into MIT. He was a teenager now, and thought that made him ‘too cool’ to hang out with me.” Her voice is drenched in sarcasm and mock offence but adoration, evident. She even uses fucking air quotes. Bucky can’t help but smile. “So with nothing better to do after having finally stepped out into the public as Tony’s adopted sister, I went and got a law degree.”

“There a reason you specifically picked law? He asks, genuinely curious.

“Of course there was; Anthony Edward Stark!” She exclaims. He has to reach over and cup her mouth to stop her yelling from waking up Zemo and Sam. The moment he realizes what he’s done he’s about to apologize. But she continues undeterred, simply pulling his hand off gently and adding, “That kid had a fucking neon sign over his head, the size of Ohio, just screaming, ‘Litigation’.”

“He was a troublemaker since the beginning, I take it?” He asks, laughing.

“Oh, If we had to hire him a legal team, he’d never have become a millionaire, let alone a billionaire.” 

Her face is lit up so bright, Bucky thinks he might need to invest in some really good quality sunglasses if he wants to keep seeing her smile like that. And oh boy, does he want to keep seeing her smile like that!

“Couldn’t have been that bad,” Bucky ventures.

“No,” she says, “it was worse.”

Bucky snorts  in disbelief.

“You don’t believe me?” She asks rhetorically, before crossing her legs over one another and moving closer to him. “21st birthday. He can legally drink now, like that had ever stopped him before. But anyway, he’s not only drunk off his damn rocker but higher than the Empire State building, alright? It’s like 3 am in the morning and he stumbles out of the club, leaving behind the most extravagant party of that year, cause the young genius is craving a fucking donut.” Her hands are moving around in animated motions and Bucky has never been this captivated by anything before. “The nearest 24 hour Dunkin’ Donuts is about a 20 minute ride away. Now, the kid might be hungry but he isn’t suicidal. So his brilliant mind supplies him with the most Stark solution there is.”

“Which is?” Bucky urges.

“Breaking into the local convenience store two blocks away from the club, and make the damn donuts himself,” she deadpans. And Bucky can’t help but fucking giggle. “Oh you laugh now but the police did not find it funny at all.”

“Where were you when this was happening?” He asks in between his chuckles.

“Right behind him screaming instructions at him on how to pick a lock,” she replies plainly. “Why do you think they called the police?”

Fuck! Bucky can’t hold it, he breaks out into a hearty laugh, doubling over..

“Will you two quit your giggling?” Sam chides from behind them. They both hush each other but can’t stop their laughter. “Us regular folk need sleep!”

He doesn’t really get any though. Cause the two of them spend the rest of the flight telling each other stories from their childhood. Their giggles even manage to wake up Zemo by the end. 

tag list: @thisisparadisemylove @justab-eautifulmess @intothesoul @buckyisperfect @aryksworld @ceo-of-daichi @ireadthensuetheauthors @fckdeusername​ @hotleaf-juice @itspetitfantomestuff

Read next part here.

Find series masterlist here.

[urmomsstuntdouble]

If ur still doing the 100 followers thing, well I challenge YOU with deciphering Lithuania.

ok anon thank you so much for asking this question because i have in fact recently fallen in love with lithuania, because they are such an interesting character! (also hhhh im so sorry for how late this is) 

Gender

As you may have noticed, I usually use they/them pronouns to refer to Lithuania. I hc them as being nonbinary and using he/they pronouns, though I personally prefer to use they rather than he in that case because. Idk what pronouns you use. But in my experience it’s really hard to get people to call you ‘they’ when you go by ‘he/they’ or ‘she/they’ or smth like that. Though I don't imagine any of the nations are very attached to their “birth gender” (are nations born???), lithuania is one of those who is a bit less attached. They’re just sort of there, in terms of gender. In my headcanons i also think this has something to do with religion, as lithuania was one of the last european countries to convert to Christianity- just because so much of gender as we know it comes from christianity and what people in the 16th and 17th centuries considered a ‘good’ christian. Thats not to say that there are no gender roles in other religions, but that the way westerners typically conceptualize gender has quite a lot to do with the religious conflicts occurring within christianity. Like you can trace the ideas behind the nuclear family archetype back to the protestant reformation. Additionally, I hc them as being Jewish, which further distances them from the western christian gender roles (though that’s not why i hc them as jewish! More on that later). Finally, i just like myself some trans/nb characters. There’s so few popular trans hcs and that makes me kinda sad ya know? Welcome to the trans agenda its just me projecting onto all my faves

Mental Health

Okay, so, i think it’s pretty well known that lithuania’s mental health is wack. They’re often characterised as being a very anxious person, but i think the ways in which they’re anxious is super interesting. For one, they are extremely conflict averse and like to avoid it by being a sort of people pleaser. It’s a sort of defense mechanism, because nobody can hate you if you do whatever they say. Like, if you let people be shitty to you, they won’t hate you for your personality. This is clearly flawed logic because then people are still going to be shitty to you, but. It makes sense to liet. In their mind, it’s okay to let people hurt if your reason is sound enough- Because if they’re not super emotionally engaged in a relationship that’s unhealthy for them, then they can’t get hurt, right? Of course, they can. A good example of this is their relationship with Russia. I think tolvydas sees compliance as necessary there, in order to avoid being hurt. The thing is…compliance is also hurting them, even if they see it as ‘worth it.’ To them, behaving in a submissive way is a survival tactic. A really bad one, but a survival tactic nonetheless. 

This also plays into their tendency to be self-martyring. I think Tolvydas is very good at fighting, and all around a really awesome warrior (strong aragorn energy), which makes them think that they need to be the one to save everyone. Hero complex, sort of. This, coupled with their almost maternal care for Latvia and Estonia, makes them feel like they have a sort of weight-of-the-world on their shoulders. Though Estonia and Latvia do look up to them a lot, Tolvydas can sometimes fail to realise that they are also their own people and can fight their own battles. He feels a sort of obligation to protect them due to their shared culture and languages as The Baltic Trio, though it doesn’t go much further than a sense of obligation. They spent most of their youth fighting, to the extent that that’s most of what Tolvydas personally knows as ‘life,’ but they never actually got to know the other two Baltics very well until the modern day. They have to protect, have to be a caregiver, but they don’t actually know super well the things they’re trying to protect. It’s both a sense of obligation to protect as well as the sense that this is all they’re good at and as long as they’re fighting for a morally just cause, that’ll do. 

I think something that would expose this flaw would be when they were first taken over by the Russian Empire in the 1790s, they were pretty miserable about a lot of things- Like the loss of all their territory and the sudden statelessness of their people- but a big one would’ve been the loss of Poland. This isn’t meant to be super shippy, but you know. They were united into one kingdom, and they had been for centuries, so i don’t imagine it was an easy separation. Though this is more up for debate where real people are concerned, these characters were essentially a big part of each other, ya know? Regardless of how much Lithuania actually likes Poland, they’re still a part of each other and that separation will undoubtedly be painful. Anyway, all that is to say that this separation was at the forefront of their mind during the beginning of the 19th century, and they let it sort of prevent them from taking care of the other Baltics. The issue with that is that they still considered themself to be protecting Estonia and Latvia, even though, in reality, nobody was. Also in reality, Lithuania was making themself out to be the worst off, and were generally sort of annoying to be around at this point in time. Their whole woe-is-me attitude wasn’t fun, and they were hypocritical in that they saw themself as being a better friend than they actually were. They still see themself as being a great friend, and though it’s improved in recent years, they’re still sort of. Flighty, i guess, where friendship is concerned. There was also a lot of annoyance by the other baltics about them being so self-martyring- Tolvydas was Ivan’s favorite, after all (that’s not necessarily a good thing, but. He was softer on them in certain ways). Anyway, I guess the big takeaway of this paragraph is that Liet often lets their self perception cloud the way they act in relationships. 

Much of the stuff I’ve mentioned so far is a result of them having quite a lot of PTSD. I think Lithuania’s character tends to be explored through a few common lenses, those being the medieval vibes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and through being oppressed by the Russian Empire/Soviet Union. Not to say that there’s not a lot of other content about them, but this is what I see most often. I think that all the nations have some form of PTSD, but with Lithuania it’s very pronounced, and it’s made clear that a lot of their tendencies are a result of past trauma- Like the need to take care of others. This is likely originating with their childhood, as they grew up in a very violent environment where their survival was never guaranteed (survivor’s guilt much?) and violence was just the way of things. This is where the need to protect comes from. There used to be several more Baltic nations, though you could argue that now there’s only two- Lithuania and Latvia, as Estonia does not speak a Baltic language and would really like to be considered Nordic. 

Finally, Lithuania is also an interesting character where forgiveness is concerned. I think their sense of morality is very black and white, so some people (Feliks) will be easily forgiven where others (Ivan) will not. In reality, I think it would definitely be valid for Tolvydas to hate both of them, yet they don't- Because they decided that Feliks was a friend and Ivan was not. Both Feliks and Ivan care very deeply about them, but neither treats Tolvydas in a very good way. Of course, I’m aware that the situation in the Russian Empire/USSR and the Commonwealth were very different, but I’m talking about these three dudes and their relationships with each other beyond the lens of politics. Because Feliks tried to be their friend in a way that didn’t hurt them tremendously, and because. Look at them, Feliks isn’t 5’4 and can’t hurt you. They’re not an intimidating person and they’re not incredibly powerful like Ivan is. Though that’s not all of it- Feliks’ feelings for Tolvydas are definitely a purer, more selfless type of love than what Ivan feels for them- it makes it harder for Tolvydas to hold a grudge against them. Whereas for Ivan, their relationship was about control. He needed to control them as a way of expressing how he felt about them. He represents a lot of what Tolvydas fought against in their youth, so of course they hate him. Of course, I don’t think they like holding grudges. They want to be able to care for everyone, because they know that everyone deserves to be treated well and cared for and all that. You can't exactly do that if you hold a grudge against someone, so it actually kind of sucks for them when they see someone they hate suffering. It’s a sort of conflict of interest- The caregiving instincts vs the hatred for this person- and they often don’t know what to do in that situation. Usually they wind up helping but not happy about it. They just don’t want to see others suffer, despite the fact that they dislike this person (Russia is of course the exception. They don’t want to help him at all anymore). 

Relationship with family

So, this is a bit of an interesting topic. I think the Baltics consider themselves family just because of what they’ve been through together, but they’re not actually blood related. Though they share similar cultures, and languages, they’re just not related. Maybe Lithuania and Latvia are cousins, but yeah. Lithuania sees themself as the head of their little family, as they have the oldest surviving European culture and language. They sometimes get in their head about that, and can act like both a mom friend and a mom who is bad at mom-ing. It’s a sort of self appointed thing, and can be really annoying to the other two. They don’t pay the utmost attention to their fellow Baltics, and are more concerned with physical well being than emotional well being, so, despite establishing themself as a caretaker, do not wind up actually caring for the other Baltics in the ways they need to be cared for. 

Fighting style

So, as I’ve mentioned, Lithuania is a talented fighter. They go hard as shit, and can very much kick your ass. I think they prefer to be very technical about how they fight, with something boring like a broadsword as their weapon of choice, but are not afraid to fight dirty. Like rip off an ear with their teeth kind of playing dirty. I think they take fighting very seriously. Though Lithuania as we know it is only about 800 years old, I think Tolvydas is much older. The definition of a nation (a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory, according to the oxford dictionary) does not require there to be a central governing body, so I think it’s quite possible for Lithuania to be well over 2000. Anyway, all that is to say that they didn’t grow up in medieval times, so by the time they’re like. Achieving dominance in Eastern Europe, they’re already very old and well versed in many different styles of fighting. In the modern day, I think they’ve learned more different fighting styles from other parts of the world, but will always fall back on the way they learned how to fight in ancient times. 

Religion

So as I mentioned earlier, Lithuania is Jewish in my headcanons (orthodox, specifically. I think they're kinda traditional). I have a couple reasons for this- There has been a historical presence of Ashkenazi Jews in Lithuania, going back to the 13th or 14th century, and this is due to certain legal protections granted to Jewish people under pre-Commonwealth law. They were legally on similar footing to the average free people of Lithuania, and were able to create a slightly more prosperous community than Jews in other areas of Europe. This was also affected by the Black Plague of the 1340s. Orthodox Jews tend to put a high value on cleanliness, and often have two sinks in their houses (my childhood home, for example, had two sinks, and i lived in a majority jewish area). They also happened to be concentrated in Eastern Europe, due to the protections. Because of this, Eastern European Jews have some of the highest sruvival rates for the Black Plague and actually brought up the survival rates of the region as a whole- Though this also resulted in some intense antisemitism, as many Christians blamed Jewish people for the plague even happening, due to their higher survival rates. Despite various expulsions  and the loss of legal rights, the Jewish population remained relatively steady up until world war 2. Jewish people made up about 10% of the total population of Lithuania in 1941, and 45% of the total population of Vilnius. (To put this in perspective, the entire world population is only about 0.2% Jewish). Anyway, all this is to say that it’s not out of the question for Lithuania to be Jewish. 

Extras/Fun stuff

Lithuania loves reading, especially the fantasy/fairy tale genre. It makes them nostalgic without the trauma of reading historical fiction. 

They’re also very musically gifted, and can play the piano, bass, ukelele, and flute. 

They wear docs.

They love hot chocolate. 

They remind me of both Aragorn from lotr and Hozier. They’re such a sweet lad. 

Bicon who has like 5 people thirsting for them at a given moment but is either oblivious or not looking for a relationship right now. 

Here are my fics with lithuania as a main character!

My previous character analyses of lithuania (sorry they’re mostly in shipping contexts, rip) and another good analysis someone else did

My playlist for them

and i think thats it! of course i could always talk more about them, but those are my thoughts for now! thank you so much for the ask, i hope i was able to meet your challenge! 

writing requests

[taiblogcomics]

A Jerkass at the Circus

Hey there, spicy Gushers. Well, let's do one of our things on the back burner. But which should we do? I dunno. Want to base it solely on the cover? Okay, we got a boring team pose as usual on Suicide Squad, and Red Hood is an annual. You know what, let's do the annual, we don't gotta worry about continuity that way~

Here's the winning cover:

Hey, it's Nightwing! Will he be the newest Outlaw? Well, considering he has his own ongoing series and doesn't appear outside of this annual, I highly doubt it~! It's a cool, dynamic sort of cover at least, so that's good. What is that last word on Ma Gunn's sign, though? "Criminally Infirmed"? Is that a thing? Maybe this comic will tell us if that's a thing~

This comic takes place before the events of issue 12, but it waits until page 5 to tell us this. So you can fit it into continuity if you want to, presumably~

So we open on a big cruise-looking ship. A yacht of some kind, I dunno. It's got a huge deck with a lot of people on it. One is clearly the captain, since he's wearing white and has a hat (he might also be a milkman, but I'm betting captain). Another is an old guy with his grey hair in a ponytail, who's smoking. His name is Dimitri, and he's hired the captain here to pilot this boat out in the middle of the Baltic Sea to meet a fellow he wants to hire. Because the middle of the sea is a great place for a clandestine meeting. Dimitri got shown up by Red Hood at some point (he's too generic for me to remember, if it ever even appeared in a previous issue), and now he's hiring KGBeast for revenge. The captian panics as soon as Dimitri reveals who he's meeting, and for good reason. KGBeast blows up the boat and shoots everyone but Dimitri. Now they can talk privately.

So, where do you go from there? Well, how about a circus in Russia, where Dick Grayson, AKA Nightwing, is watching the performance. And what a performance it is: Jason Todd as a combination trick-shooter and motorcycle stuntman, Artemis as a more traditional horse-mounted bow-based sharpshooter, and Bizarro as the strongman. Buy T-shirts, kids! Anyway, after the performance, Nightwing (who we'll refer to by his supranym, since unlike Jason and Roy, we actually respect Dick Grayson and think he's cool) goes seeking out Jason's trailer, since apparently he got a text more or less requesting a meeting. Bizarro serves beans while Jason explains the situation. So, those Russians Jason threw out of Gotham back in issue 7? The ones we long forgot? Well, they're back, and they're using this circus as a front or something. Anyway, the long and short of it is that basically Jason wants to hang out with Nightwing, but is too much of a dope to come out and say it~

And just because Jason and Nightwing have made up enough that Jason doesn't want to murder him anymore, he may just have had a flashback revealing he admired Nightwing ever since they were both kids and Jason went to one of his circus performances, but he still enjoys taking the piss out of him. We may respect him, but Jason doesn't: Nightwing will be filling in as "Flippy-Flop the Acrobatic Clown" while undercover here. And so, the undercover work begins by integrating themselves with the circusfolk around a bonfire that night. While Artemis is charmed by Nightwing, Jason instead encourages Bizarro to pursue a circus performer playing the violin. Artemis is more interested in Nightwing's shared backstory with Jason, though, but Bizarro hits it off with Angelique, who reveals herself to be a bearded woman. Bizarro sees nothing wrong with this, and she finds him very sweet for that.

Another circus worker expresses a notion of gratitude towards Jason, as Angelique is his daughter and he's clearly sent someone kind her way. Since he's been kind to his daughter, he decides to let them in on his secret: he can help them get extra work, work that doesn't involve the big top. He'll let Jason in on it if he comes to see him during their friend's performance. And speaking of friends, Nightwing exposits some backstory to Artemis, mostly involving how he joined the Bat-team. Their first real meeting comes when Jason returns one night from being Robin, collapses into bed--only to find Nightwing already in it. Apparently after Nightwing moved out, Alfred just gave his old room to Jason. Apparently he neglected to tell him someone else was using it now when he came back home to visit~

Artemis is deeply amused by the stories, though she thinks perhaps things could have gone differently and led to friends instead. She tells Nightwing not to let the past define him, and Nightwing thinks Jason's lucky to have her watching his back. They part amicably, and everyone goes to bed. We open the next day, already midway into Nightwing's act as Flippy-Flop. Fortunately, despite the terrible clown outfit, he's not wearing a wig or makeup or even a red rubber nose. In other words, the least horrifying clown ever made. So, while that's going on, the Outlaws instead go down with Jason's new friend, who shows them a mysterious pool in the middle of the circus. Diving down, they find a cavern off to the side, wherein a whole load of explosives are being stored. And who's down there taking inventory on all the munitions? Why, our previously foreshadowed friend KGBeast~

Apparently this whole thing ties back to events in Detective Comics Rebirth, which I didn't read. The long and short of it is, a military group was formed to destroy the Batman, but they lost. This seems to be one of their weapons caches, which I'm not sure does them a lot of good hidden in Russia and not Gotham, but what do I know~? The guns in this thing are energy weapons strong enough to push back Bizarro, so it might be a little overkill for Batman. Fortunately, Artemis always brings an axe to a gunfight, and she cleaves his new toy apart. Jason leaps at KGBeast, and both begin exchanging point-blank gunfire. They both must have really good body armour. Jason's are non-lethal, though, given that promise he made to Batman at the beginning of the series--which he even states out loud--but KGBeast is under no such obligation. I guess he's just a terrible shot~

Artemis, instead, chooses to fight him more hand-to-hand, and indeed chops off his wrist-mounted gun. That's KGBeast's thing, if you didn't know: he's missing a hand, so he has an elaborate gun instead. KGBeast encourages them to drop their loyalty to any particular nationstate and be their own person, which might be inspiring if it wasn't coming from a crazed gunman. He's growing a bit tired of the fight, and comments that he's seen through their ruse. Their "Outlaws" thing is just an excuse to get crime out of Gotham. And apparently they've been in Gotham the whole time, it's just the circus that's Russian. Sorry, the context was ambiguous. There really was no "Meanwhile, in Gotham" sort of label to establish any of these scenes. We need those, guys!

KGBeast prepares to give the Outlaws a quick death, but Nightwing suddenly jumps on him from behind. KGBeast attempts to throw him off, but Nightwing just uses Bizarro as a set of parallel bars and rebounds. He and Jason team up and both punch KGBeast in the face. This is then followed by Artemis and Bizarro doing the same, and they're much stronger, so KGBeast is knocked out. And so the comic wraps up with Nightwing putting in with his contacts at ARGUS to arrest the other criminals at the circus, while he and Jason share an amicable handshake, with Nightwing basically saying that he's proud of the work Jason's doing as an Outlaw now. Artemis is a little bummed that she wasn't given an equal goodbye, but Bizarro's really pleased he got to kiss the pretty bearded lady. He even made sure to get her number: eight. Jason sighs and leads Bizarro inside to explain a few things~

So, other than me getting confused about the location for half the comic, this issue was not too bad. They say “before the events of issue 12″, but probably before that whole storyline works better. It’s nice to see Nightwing and Jason actually respect each other, though the idea that perennial street orphan Jason Todd happened to visit the circus and see a young Dick Grayson (age 12) perform is a bit contrived if you ask me. Otherwise, it’s just kind of a fun romp with a classic Batman villain like KGBeast. He’s going by just “the Beast” now, given also his new declaration of not allying himself with a particular nation, but I’d rather not confuse him with Hank McCoy of X-Men fame, you know~? Plus Bizarro’s just kind of a delight, like always~

[cargopantsman]

On the Topic of Tribes, Part II

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So in covering Tacitus' naming of the three major tribes, or at least geographic groupings; the Ingaevones, Istaevones, and Herminones, I have better generalized grasp of the distribution of the Germans that Rome was primarily concerned with in the first century BCE. Exploring the mentioned names of the Gambrivii and the Marsi turned into a bit of a disappointment since the Gambrivii appear to have gained no major notority and the Marsi were brutally exterminated in their sleep by Germanicus Caesar around 15 CE.

In his listing of tribes descended from Mannus, he does mention the Vandali, which should seem familiar to most due to their famous sacking of Rome itself in 455 CE (granted they took the long way around both geographically and temporally to do it).

Pliny the Elder includes the Vandali (or Vandili) as one of five main groups of the Germans. "There are five German races; the Vandili, parts of whom are the Burgundiones, the Varini, the Carini, and the Gutones ... [Ingaevones, Irminones, and Istaevones] ... the fifth race is that of the Peucini, who are also the Basternæ, adjoining the Daci previously mentioned." Natural History (4.28)

Now granted, this is the same Pliny the Elder that claims "Male corpses float on their backs but female corpses float on their faces as though nature were preserving their modesty even in death." Natural History (7.77)

Aaaaaanyway. Including the Vandals as a major subgroup of the Germanic peoples is sensible enough because it allows me to nicely fill in a big empty spot on my map. 

The Vandals contribute to an important linguistic division among Germanic peoples in that Scandinavia and the Ingaevones will branch into the North Germanic languages, the Istaevones and Herminones the West Germanic, and the Vandali the East Germanic/Gothic languages. The Vandalic/Gothic migration hit the shores of Northern Europe between the Oder and Vistula rivers prior to 200 BCE and had settlements in Silesia (the southern end of the Oder) by 120 BCE.

As concerns Rome, the Vandals were relatively quiet until the 2nd century CE. A footnote aptly summarizes their eventful future history: 22 [ The Vandals are said to have derived their name from the German word wendeln, "to wander." They began to be troublesome to the Romans A.D. 160, in the reigns of Aurelius and Verus. In A.D. 410 they made themselves masters of Spain in conjunction with the Alans and Suevi, and received for their share what from them was termed Vandalusia (Andalusia). In A.D. 429 they crossed into Africa under Genseric, who not only made himself master of Byzacium, Gaetulia, and part of Numidia, but also crossed over into Italy, A.D. 455, and plundered Rome. After the death of Genseric the Vandal power declined.]

As early as 200 BCE though, the Basternae enter the Greco-Roman historical record in the Balkans. Conflict followed in the first century BCE when the Basternae and other Sarmatian tribes resisted a Roman campaign to subjugate the Dardani and Moesi tribes north of Macedonia around 75 BCE. Gaius Scribonius Curio became the first Roman general to reach the river Danube with his army. Resistance from the Dacian area tribes persisted for decades under the command of Burebista, a Thracian king. Julius Caesar had plans set to fight on this eastern front, but was repeatedly punctured and was unable to attend. The Dacian/Thracian front collapsed anyway in that same year (44 BCE) upon the overthrow and death of Burebista. The Basternae, or Peucini, are debated to be of Germanic, Sarmatian, or Celtic origin, if not a mixture of all. Taking it on faith (read as: adding to my library list), Roger Batty in "Rome and the Nomads: the Pontic-Danubian region in Antiquity" argues that assigning an "ethnicity" to the Bastarnae is meaningless, as in the context of the Iron Age Pontic-Danubian region, with its multiple overlapping peoples and languages, ethnicity was a very fluid concept: it could and did change rapidly and frequently, according to socio-political vicissitudes. This was especially true of the Bastarnae, who are attested over a relatively vast area.

Tacitus relates "46. I am in doubt whether to reckon the Peucini, Venedi, and Fenni among the Germans or Sarmatians; although the Peucini, who are by some called Bastarnae, agree with the Germans in language, apparel, and habitations. All of them live in filth and laziness. The intermarriages of their chiefs with the Sarmatians have debased them by a mixture of the manners of that people." In this it clear that Tacitus would disagree with Pliny on the Basternae/Peucini counting as a fifth "race" of Germanic people due to this inter-nationality intermingling. The important point to draw from his mentioning of them at all is to highlight the extent of Germanic migration throughout central Europe. Not just along the Rhine border as stressed in the Gallic Wars and later Romano-Germanic skirmishes in the west, but also along the Roman provinces of Rhaetia, Noricum and Pannonia in the south and plunging deep into the eastern Black Sea regions where so many diverse ancient cultures collided.

All that remains to parse out of Tacitus' one line list of introductory tribes are the Suevi. . .

Let me tell you, this was, and still is a bit of a rabbit hole.

The Suevi, or Suebi, are mentioned often, to the extent that I'm not even sure what anyone is referring to. Julius Caesar describes them as "by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans." (Gallic War, 4.1) Strabo writes: "The country next the whole [eastern] bank [of the Rhine] is inhabited by the Suevi, who are also named Germans, but are superior both in power and number to the others, whom they drove out, and who have now taken refuge on this [western] side the Rhine." (Strabo, Geographica 4.3)

Later on within "Germania," Tacitus relates that "38. We have now to speak of the Suevi; who do not compose a single state, like the Catti or Tencteri, but occupy the greatest part of Germany, and are still distributed into different names and nations, although all hearing the common appellation of Suevi." A footnote for this paragraph continues; "207 [ The Suevi possessed that extensive tract of country lying between the Elbe, the Vistula, the Baltic Sea, and the Danube. They formerly had spread still further, reaching even to the Rhine. ...]"

The Suebi appear to take up the whole of Germania. To a point where Suebi might well be synonymous with German in its vague definition. At most it is handy to consider that mention of Suevi will encompass events in the south-west of Germania.

Beyond the expanse of space that the Suebi claim, there is a vast expanse of time between Caesar noting them during the Gallic wars up at least until the Third Council of Toledo, Spain where the Visigoth Kingdom of Toledo converted officially from Arianism to Catholicism, king Reccared I stated in its minutes that also "an infinite number of Suebi have converted" in 589 CE. It is from this "tribe" that we get the modern name of a region in Germany "Swabia."

Within the constraints of Latin, Suēbī is the nominative plural of Suēbus. According to the "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854) William Smith, LLD, Ed." "SUE´BUS (Σούηβος), {is} a river on the north coast of Germany, between the Albis {Elbe} and Viadus {Oder}, which flows into the Baltic at a distance of 850 stadia to the west of the mouth of the Viadus, and which, according to Ptolemy (2.11.1), divided at its mouth into several branches. Notwithstanding these explicit statements, it is extremely difficult to identify the river, whence some regard it as the Peene, others as the Warne, and others again as the Viadus or Oder itself, or rather the central branch of it, which is called the Swine or Schweene {Świna in modern Poland}."

Within Germanic language considerations, the name Suebi stems from the Proto-Germanic *swēbaz. The Proto-Indo-European root *swé is a reflexive pronoun "self" leading *swēbaz to form "our own" as a sort of cultural identifier. This leads me to think that the use of Suebi might well be the formation of a larger cultural identity to delineate themselves from their Celtic/Gallic and Roman neighbors.

Tacitus later names a "Suevic Sea" in paragraph 45 that is equated with the modern Baltic Sea into which the Suebus river flows. This is as much evidence as I have at the moment for the claims that the Suevi originated in the Baltic region and migrated southwest. But to take a moment to hop north of the Baltic into Swe-den, where we see the PIE root *swé again shifting into Proto-Norse *Swihoniz, Proto-Germanic *Sweoniz and, as Tacitus calls them in Latin, Suiones.

Short of losing myself in a whirlwind of linguistics at this point I think I will settle on chalking Suebi to be a name brought about by a particular migration from Sweden to the mouth of the Oder/Suebus river and spreading westwards and south while arbitrarily considering the eastward migrating tribes will be the forerunners of our future Goths. (Yes, subsequent migrations from Scandivania will follow and displace the Gotlandic pioneers, but let's keep this simple for now.)

[spanlish-blog]

Why the Trump-Putin Bromance Could Be in Serious Trouble

Donald Trump, the same president so often referred to by liberal bloggers as "Putin's puppet," is expected to sign a new batch of sanctions targeting Russia any day now. And with the Pentagon mulling the possibility of providing arms to anti-separatist forces in Ukraine—something Barack Obama opposed—it's increasingly hard to make a simplistic case that Trump is prioritizing Moscow's interests.

Just in case, the sanctions bill recently passed by Congress features language that makes it almost impossible for Trump, whose inner circle remains under federal investigation for possible collusion with the Kremlin, to withdraw the measures. This president normally broadcasts his emotions to any Twitter user who wants to read them but has been mostly quiet about the bill. That may be because he's effectively powerless to push back: The sanctions passed by such an overwhelming, bipartisan majority that if Trump vetoed them, Congress would almost certainly override him and pass them into law anyway.

Vice President Mike Pence, for his part, spoke supportively of the bill on Tuesday in Tbilisi, Georgia, arguing that if Russia wants reconciliation, it "has to change its behavior."

Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin isn't hiding the fact that he's furious. On Friday, his government announced plans to seize two pieces of US diplomatic property in and near Moscow. And on Sunday, the former KGB agent personally announced US diplomatic employees working in Russia will need to find new jobs. "Over 1,000 employees—diplomats and technical workers—worked and continue to work today in Russia; 755 will have to stop this activity," Putin told local media. (Russia had telegraphed that it was considering these actions back in mid-July.)

That might not be the full extent of Moscow's retaliation, either. In the lead-up to the White House announcement that Trump would sign the sanctions, Konstantin Kosachev, the Russian lawmaker who heads the country's Foreign Affairs Committee, warned the US that "the future degradation of bilateral cooperation is becoming inevitable." He added that Russia plans to come back with a response that won't "symmetrical" but instead "one that is painful for the Americans."

We tried Putin's favorite form of martial arts:

For a sense of why these pending sanctions are making the Russians blow their collective lid so completely, and to learn a little bit about what other kinds of trouble may be on the horizon, I got in touch with Eugene Chausovsky, senior Eurasia analyst at the military intelligence firm Stratfor. He explained what, exactly, the sanctions do, and helped me try to forecast how this saga will play out.

VICE: Are these sanctions—which mostly go after Russia but also target Iran and North Korea—going to hurt Putin directly, or really dent Russian economic power? Or is Putin just mad because he doesn't like being messed with? Eugene Chausovsky: Well, as far as hurting Putin, they'll certainly tighten the restrictions that the US already had in place against Russia, particularly in the energy sphere. When you're dealing with things like offshore, deep-water, or shale projects, that's going to be significantly restricted in terms of US persons or companies operating within these kinds of projects.

What does sanctioning Russia's energy and oil sector mean? Is that like stopping those projects from being financed, or stopping Russia from physically getting the oil? It's actually both. There are the financial sanctions on certain energy companies that will certainly limit US personnel or companies from dealing in certain maturities of debt issued. That has been changed to all debt with a maturity of over 60 days [making it harder for sanctioned companies and people to obtain short-term loans]. Then, as far as the [restrictions on] participation [by energy companies], that refers to operations in any new offshore deep-water or shale projects globally, where Russian companies have either a controlling stake or a substantial minority stake of 33 percent or higher.

Does any of this have a negative impact on average, workaday Russians? These sanctions are not completely new. They're tightening sanctions that are already in place, particularly targeting the energy sector. Certainly the average Russian has been hurting in recent years, but I would argue that that's more in line with Russia's economic weakness as a result of low oil prices than from the sanctions. So the answer, I guess, is, yes, it certainly doesn't help. But I don't think it has as dramatic of an impact on the Russian economy—and on individual Russians—as the broader macroeconomic conditions in Russia.

You mentioned these sanctions aren't entirely new. What parts are novel? It's basically just ratcheting up the economic sanctions that were already put in place [under the Obama administration]. Some of these are optional, for example the sanctions on firms that help develop Russian energy export pipelines. That's where the Nord Stream 2 controversy comes in. But that's optional [Trump has to decide whether or not to apply this measure].

I hear Germany's pissed off about that part. What's going on there? [Nord Stream 2] isn't about increasing Germany's imports of Russian gas. It would basically be giving them another avenue [through] which to import Russian gas, [rather] than going around to more risky mainland European pipelines—which go through countries like Ukraine, for example. So the reason Germany is opposed to this is because they don't want the US to have a say in their own pipeline projects, whereas other countries, like the Baltic countries, are less worried. And actually that's what's going to prevent EU unity from overriding or really challenging the US on this.

So the EU is divided here? When you're talking about upsetting the "EU," you have to keep in mind that the EU is a group of 20 member states, so it's not acting in one monolithic manner. That's actually something Russia tries to exploit by manipulating and trying to create divisions between the EU member states. Nord Stream 2 is the perfect example of this, because Germany certainly has commercial interests in a pipeline like this. [Then] you have countries that aren't thinking only in a commercial perspective—they're also speaking in geopolitical terms.

Which countries are we talking about here? The borderland countries in between Germany and Russia, the Baltic States, and also Poland. These are the kinds of energy projects that Russia uses to try to manipulate divisions within Europe—that's why the projects have been so controversial. But this is also the reason why it's not going to be possible to get complete unanimity from this from within the EU.

So Russia has already retaliated by seizing US diplomatic property, and demanding the firing of staffers who had been working in those places. What do you think is next? I think what we should be watching for in terms of the Russian response is [a] quote-unquote "asymmetrical response." That's something Russia has referenced before, and something they've used before. Basically, they respond to what they consider Western aggression in different theaters that don't have direct correlation but are nonetheless intended to wear on the US, or the show the US that it [Moscow] has areas where it can bring the pain.

Where can Russia bring the pain? One [place] is Ukraine. In the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, the negotiations there haven't really produced any significant movement from a political perspective. So I think it's an area where Russia can look to sort of ratchet up tensions. Now that sanctions have not only been extended but increased, that's one area where Russia can try to ramp up—perhaps in a limited but still painful way—against the Ukrainian forces and [in favor of] the separatists that it influences.

Russia also tends to defy the US in North Korea and Syria. and the sanctions passed by Congress have implications for the Middle East and Asia, as well. Can Russia do anything to interfere on those fronts even more? Since Russia has a seat on the UN Security Council, they can look to any sanctions or moves by the US, and veto. They can build up relations they have with the North Korean regime, and try to play a spoiler role there. And [with] Syria, between the US and Russia there was recently the ceasefire agreement in southwestern Syria, that's something Russia can either pull out of, or look to other areas where it can play that spoiler role.

How big of a nuisance will Putin have to be to make his voice heard here? I don't think [Russia's response is] going to be hugely disruptive in terms of affecting the world's order. I just mean, these are irritants essentially that Russia can use on the US. The goal is essentially to get the US back into that negotiating position—back into a conciliatory or compromising position. Right now the opposite is happening.

The New York Times wrote about these sanctions as evidence that Putin's apparent plan to get Trump elected has backfired. Is that your interpretation? There's a couple different ways to look at it. Certainly, what Russia was hoping for was a new US administration that would be more willing to work with them, and have a less confrontational relationship than under the previous administration. Trump, during the election campaign, seemed like he was the candidate more willing to do that. [So] in that sense, you could argue that it has backfired. But [Putin] is a pretty strategic thinker, [and] I think realistically, he knew there would be major constraints, and that it wouldn't be easy for Trump to change all the engrained policies toward Russia.

Barring this dramatic turnaround, what Russia is interested in, if it can't get the policies it wants from the US, then at the very least Trump presents them with someone who can foster their "chaos campaign." It's like, OK, let's at least try to exacerbate the internal divisions within the US, which I would argue we have been seeing to an extent. [In] a certain sense, you could argue it has backfired, but Russia's playing a long game. Putin's not just looking at the next few weeks and months, but also where things are going in the next months or years, so time will tell on that.

If these sanctions resemble current and recent ones so closely, it seems worth asking if those recent sanctions actually worked. Have they? The US is trying to get Russia to implement the Minsk Protocol, an agreement about the future of Ukraine. And we haven't seen any of that happen in terms of Russia pulling back its support for the separatists, Russia stopping its military actions in and around that territory. So the sanctions, if we're looking at them from [a standpoint] of trying to get Russia to be more compliant, so far they have not been effective. But if the goal is to weaken Russia over time, that remains to be seen.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Source: Why the Trump-Putin Bromance Could Be in Serious Trouble Source: Why the Trump-Putin Bromance Could Be in Serious Trouble

[muzaffar1969]

http://ift.tt/2ricfeA

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Last week was interesting for me. I spent about half my time getting up to speed with the latest happenings in the crypto-coin world, and got really excited about a lot of what I saw. In fact, this was the first time I became totally consumed by the space in several years, going back to when I first investigated and started becoming involved with Bitcoin.

What really caught my attention is the booming ICO market, and while it’ll invariably produce its fair share of total scams, I find it nonetheless captivating. I’m attracted to its dynamic wild west spirit, as well as its capacity to function as an alternative funding mechanism for startup projects utilizing a wider participatory structure consisting of anyone with a bit of crypto currency and a high-risk tolerance. It’s an entirely new experimental ecosystem funded by crypto currencies (mostly ethereum, but also bitcoin). It’s pretty mesmerizing (for more see: A New Financial System is Being Born).

Spending so much time on this esoteric world kept me away from following U.S. politics as closely as I typically do, which was a great thing.

The level of discourse from nearly all sides of the political spectrum has turned so toxic, divisive, hysterical and counterproductive, leaving that environment for several days made me feel great, as if I had taken a vacation from idiot island. As such, today I once again decided to spend some time reading up on the crypto-coin space and getting further up to speed on ICOs and how they work. That said, I realize I still need to pay attention to the crazy happenings in the wider world around me, so I thought I’d share an interview with a rarity in today’s political discourse, a voice of reason.

What follows are excerpts from a Slate  interview with Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton:

Stephen F. Cohen has long been one of the leading scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote a biography of the Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin and is a contributing editor at the Nation, which his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, edits and publishes. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as a more ideologically dexterous figure, ripping those he thinks are pursuing a “new Cold War” with Russia and calling for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to form “an alliance against international terrorism.” Cohen has gone so far as to describe the investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia “the No. 1 threat to the United States today.”

Cohen has been criticized by many people, myself included, for his defenses of Putin. (He once said the Ukraine crisis had been “imposed on [Putin] and he had no choice but to react.”) He scolded President Barack Obama for sending retired gay athletes to Sochi and recently went on Fox News to speak up for Trump’s war against leakers.

I spoke by phone with Cohen, who is also a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton and the author of Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed why Cohen won’t concede that the Democratic National Committee was hacked, whether it’s fair to call Putin a murderer, and why we may be entering an era much more dangerous than the Cold War.

  I heard you recently on Fox News. You said that the “assault” on President Trump “was the No. 1 threat to the United States today.” What did you mean by that?

  Threat. OK. Threat. That’s a good word. We’re in a moment when we need an American president and a Kremlin leader to act at the highest level of statesmanship. Whether they meet in summit or not is not of great importance, but we need intense negotiations to tamp down this new Cold War, particularly in Syria, but not only. Trump is being crippled by these charges, for which I can find no facts whatsoever.

  Wait, which charges are we talking about?

  That he is somehow in the thrall or complicity or control, under the influence of the Kremlin.

  I think it would help if he would admit what his own intelligence agencies are telling him, that Russia played some role in …

  No, I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that at all, not for one minute.

  People in the Trump administration admit this too.

  Well they’re not the brightest lights.

  And the president is?

  No. You didn’t ask me that. You asked me, you said, some of the president’s people. You’re referring to that intel report of January, correct? The one that was produced that said Putin directed the attack on the DNC?

  I was referring to that and many news accounts that Russia was behind the hacking, yes.

  The news accounts are of no value to us. I mean you and I both know …

  No value? None?

  No. No value. Not on face value. Just because the New York Times says that I don’t know, Carter Page or [Paul] Manafort or [Michael] Flynn did something wrong, I don’t accept that. I need to see the evidence.

  OK, let’s just go back to what you were saying about Trump being hamstrung.

  You need Trump because he’s in the White House. I didn’t put him there. I didn’t vote for him. Putin’s in the Kremlin. I didn’t put him in the Kremlin either, but we have what we have, and these guys must have a serious dialog about tamping down these cold wars, which means cooperating on various fronts. The obvious one—and they already are secretly, but it’s getting torpedoed—is Syria.

  So we come now with this so-called Russiagate. You know what that means. It’s our shorthand, right? And Trump, even if he was the most wonderfully qualified president, he is utterly crippled in his ability to do diplomacy with the Kremlin. So let me give you the counterfactual example.

  Imagine that Kennedy had been accused of somehow being, they used to accuse him of being an agent of the Vatican, but let’s say he had been accused widely of being an agent of the Kremlin. The only way he could have ended the Cuban Missile Crisis would have been to prove his loyalty by going to nuclear war with Russia. That’s the situation we’re in today. I mean Trump is not free to take wise advice and use whatever smarts he has to negotiate down this new and dangerous Cold War, so this assault on Trump, for which as yet there are zero facts, has become a grave threat to American national security. That’s what I meant. That’s what I believe.

  To use your Kennedy example, there was no evidence that Kennedy was an agent of either the Vatican or the Kremlin—

  No, but Isaac you’re not old enough to remember, but during the campaign, because he was the first Catholic, they all went on about he’s an agent of the Vatican.

  I know that. I’m old enough to have read “news accounts” of it. Anyway, there was a hacking of the DNC and—

  Wait actually no, Isaac stop. Stop. Now, I mean we don’t know that for a fact.

  That there was a hacking of the DNC?

  Yeah we do not know that for a fact.

  What do we think happened?

  Well …

  So you’re really going to argue with me that the DNC wasn’t hacked?

  I’m saying I don’t know that to be the case.

OK.

  I will refer you to an alternative report and you can decide yourself.

  Can we agree on this much at least: that Trump said there was a hack, refused to say who he thought did it, encouraged the hackers to keep doing it, at the same time that he was getting intelligence reports that it was the Russians, and that he continued to talk very positively about Putin after he was told this?

  You’ve given me too many facts to process, but if Trump said he knew it was a hack, he was not fully informed. We just don’t know it for a fact, Isaac.

  So we don’t have any forensic evidence that there was a hack. There might have been. If there was a hack, we have no evidence it was the Russians, and we have an alternative explanation that it was actually a leak, that somebody inside did a Snowden, just stuck a thumb drive in and walked out with this stuff. We don’t know. And when you don’t know, you don’t go to war.

  Let’s turn to Putin and America. Why do you think we have entered a new Cold War?

  My view is that this Cold War is even more dangerous. As we talk today, and this was not the case in the preceding Cold War, there are three new fronts that are fraught with hot war. You know them as well as I do. The NATO military build-up is going on in the Baltic regions, particularly in the three small Baltic countries, Poland, and if we include missile defense, Romania. That’s right on Russia’s border, and in Ukraine. You know that story. That’s a proxy civil war right on Russia’s border, and then of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft and Syrian aircraft are flying over the same airspace.

  And there is the utter demonization of Putin in this country. It is just beyond anything that the American political elite ever said about Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and the rest. If you demonize the other side, it makes negotiating harder.

In 2017, being a voice of reason has become a revolutionary act.

May 31, 2017 at 09:15AM http://ift.tt/2qzlia1 from Tyler Durden http://ift.tt/2qzlia1

[pat78701]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella L��vin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[repwinpril9y0a1]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[repwincoml4a0a5]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[rtawngs20815]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[grgedoors02142]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[porchenclose10019]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[chpatdoorsl3z0a1]

How Sweden's Feminist Foreign Minister Is Dealing With The Age Of Trump

WASHINGTON ― Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström is used to her strong convictions making her job harder.

After she announced that Sweden would become the first Western European power to recognize Palestine as a state, Wallström faced condemnations from Jerusalem and Washington. When she criticized Saudi Arabia’s draconian restrictions on women and flogging of an imprisoned blogger, she earned the ire of Swedish business leaders worried about their country’s lucrative trade with the kingdom. Israeli officials continue to snub her, and it took an intervention from Sweden’s prime minister and its king to defuse tensions with the Saudis.

Still, the minister has remained firm in her views, proudly championing a foreign policy that puts a high value on principles ― particularly gender equality ― not just pragmatism.

President Donald Trump poses the greatest challenge yet to this principled diplomacy. With the U.S. now run by a man who sees foreign affairs as a game of transactions, narrowly defined national interest and wall-building, figures like Wallström must decide how to protect their vision while maintaining good relations with Washington. As the U.S. and U.K. grow more isolationist, the future of international cooperation increasingly relies on small but determined countries such as Sweden.

“We have seen so much of populism, polarization, protectionism and all of these isms ... that lead our world, as I see it, in a wrong direction and will not help us to create more jobs and more wealth and everything that we want,” Wallström said in an interview with HuffPost last week, during her first trip to Washington since Trump took office.

“And more peace!” she added. 

Without direct condemnations of the president, Wallström offered a broad defense of the internationalist worldview Trump and his allies in Europe call obsolete.

“We see countries turning inward, thinking they can just look after their own interests, but there are few problems or challenges that one country can solve on its own,” she said. “I don’t think that there is a way back to something that existed. We have to live in this world. And I think our children and grandchildren will not forgive us if we cannot come together.” 

Sweden wants to work with Trump on issues like fighting the so-called Islamic State, European security and humanitarian crises. Wallström was in town to attend a meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS.

But there’s no denying the disconnect between Stockholm and Washington. Wallström’s left-wing, avowedly feminist government is already subtly highlighting it: Its ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, criticized Trump’s depiction of the U.N. in January, as Sweden took up an influential position on the Security Council; the following month, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin posted a tweet apparently mocking Trump’s all-male photoshoots. Three weeks ago, Sweden pledged $22 million to the global health organizations Trump has targeted with his ban on U.S. support for groups that even discuss abortion.

Powerful men in elected office “often start by taking decisions that restrict the movement of women or how women dress or violence against women, so that is also something they seem to have in common, and that worries me a lot,” Wallström said, in an indirect reference to Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently decriminalized some forms of domestic violence.

As the face of Sweden abroad, Wallström bears the greatest responsibility for her country’s relationship with the new U.S. administration. And the biggest Trump-Sweden moment so far was a reminder that stability is far from assured. On Feb. 18, the president told a Florida rally that Sweden proved his point about the danger of accepting refugees: “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

It was quintessential Trump: It turned out there was no incident, and he was referring to a Fox News report in which an expert misled viewers about an increase in crime since Sweden began accepting refugees.

After declining to comment in the immediate aftermath, Wallström now says she wants to use the news peg the president provided.

“We are trying to use [it] to just give a more balanced picture of Sweden,” Wallström told HuffPost. “It’s maybe difficult [to integrate refugees] in some places, but it is not out of control. ... I don’t know where they got that from.”

Sweden has introduced new border controls in the wake of the refugee crisis and participated in a controversial deal with Turkey to reduce the flow of people moving into Europe. But it continues to accept large numbers of asylum-seekers ― 29,000 in 2016 and up to 45,000 this year ― and offer them generous social support.

“We just have to get the numbers down so that we can manage,” Wallström said, noting that Sweden had received an exceptionally high number of young refugees, who require greater state care. “But we are not changing our rules or laws on exactly what you can get. We want to continue to be able to take care of all the refugees and asylum-seekers in a decent and dignified way and to have them fully integrated.”  

For some on the anti-immigrant right, like Breitbart and pro-Russian news outlets that frequently spread untruths about refugees to stir up tension in Europe, Sweden’s border control could be seen as a vindication. But Wallström doesn’t buy that. Whereas right-wing politicians say European centralization is one source of the crisis ― preventing countries from rejecting migrants wholesale ― Wallström says the trouble is too little European coordination.

“This would not have been a problem at all if we had together in the European Union shared responsibility,” Wallström said. Ultra-nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have been stridently anti-refugee, increasing the burden on others like Sweden and Germany. 

There’s now a government-wide challenge to false portrayals of the situation. In Washington, Sweden’s high-profile embassy is running events with the tagline “Safe And Sound” to argue that societies don’t have to sacrifice openness, diversity and liberalism for the sake of security. The campaign’s first event was the launch of a major exhibit on how refugee integration works in Sweden ― featuring a high-ranking U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Asked at the opening about language in Trump’s Muslim bans that presents anti-refugee measures as important to protect women, Åsa Regnér, the minister for gender equality, noted that levels of violence against women in Sweden have remained relatively constant in recent years. 

To experts like her, this scapegoating of immigrants is a clear misrepresentation: Misogyny does take specific and troubling forms in migrant communities, but it’s deceptive to pretend that closing the borders will lead to equality. “We know that there is violence in the [ethnically Swedish] majority, and there is also violence among the first and second generation of immigrants, and we have to really understand those and take targeted measures,” Regnér said. “I feel we have to speak of both things.” 

The refugee policy is only one part of how Sweden’s approach veers from Trump’s policies.

Wallström’s government proudly funds efforts to include more women at the U.N. peace talks on Syria, and she doesn’t buy Trump-style suggestions that the West embrace strongman Bashar Assad. “It ought to be for the people of Syria to decide who should be their leader ... but the confidence will be affected by the fact that so many war crimes have been committed,” she said. Sweden recently used its temporary U.N. Security Council seat to try to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons.

With Russia boosting its presence in the Baltic Sea and violating Swedish airspace, Wallström’s government has reaffirmed its commitment to Sweden’s traditional nonalignment. At the same time, it wants Putin to respect the international norm of territorial sovereignty ― in Ukraine and in Sweden’s neighborhood. Stockholm has boosted its defenses, including by reintroducing conscription. “We have to be very clear about our policy toward Russia: When you do things like the illegal annexation of Crimea or the aggression in eastern Ukraine, then we will adopt a policy that includes sanctions,” Wallström said.

This kind of commitment to principles entails costs ― to prestige and to delicate, important relationships. Wallström acknowledged reports that the anti-ISIS coalition has killed hundreds of civilians since Trump took office, urging accountability for those who have potentially committed war crimes. And she slammed Turkey, the key to the E.U.’s refugee plans, for its crackdown on civil society and increasingly heated rhetoric about European governments.

A Social Democrat, the minister thinks the global left can still recapture popular support despite the rise of groups ― like the Front National in France and the far right in the U.S. ― who successfully pitch a mix of ultra-nationalism and popular, traditionally left-wing state spending.

“We lost our vision more than anything else. We have not been able to describe the tasks in front of us,” Wallström said. She wants greater focus on the state’s role in tackling wealth gaps, climate change and future sustainable development.

Without that focus, voters see globalization as necessarily causing the growing inequality economists like Thomas Piketty have warned about, Wallström said. “It’s ironic, of course, that it’s the very wealthy people who seem to be elected.”

As the interview concluded, the minister prepared to head to the big anti-ISIS summit. After all the talk of principle, Wallström made a little show of Trump-era pragmatism ― her press secretary offered a printout of information about Sweden’s success. First topic: the ease of doing business there.

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from DIYS http://ift.tt/2o64jhu

[newstfionline]

Russia’s City of Rebels

By Christian Neef in St. Petersburg, Der Spiegel, Feb. 3, 2017

The address is Prospect of the Five-Year Plan, House 1, a name reminiscent of the Soviet era, when this city was called Leningrad. Even the metro station across the street is still called Prospekt Bolshevikov.

Otherwise, however, the building has no connection to the past: It looks like a large glass bowl sandwiched between grey apartment blocks. The arena was built for the 2000 Ice Hockey World Championships, but today a sold-out concert is being held here, with 15,000 people in the audience.

By 8 p.m., the crowd starts getting excited. Sergey Shnurov--nicknamed “Shnur,” or “Cord”--and his band, Leningrad, are about to perform. Shnurov, 43, rock singer, actor and composer, is Russia’s biggest star. The upscale print magazine Snob has written that he is like the poet Sergey Yesenin, singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysovtsky and musical performer Alla Pugacheva all in one. “One day they will study the Putin era on the basis of songs and clips by Leningrad.” Perhaps the only Russian to eclipse Shnurov’s popularity today is President Vladimir Putin.

The fans are jumping up and down in the arena to stay warm, and the stage in the center is surrounded by Shnurov fans. “No Shnur, No Party,” some T-shirts read.

And then he finally appears, wearing a white shirt and cutoff blue jeans, a gold chain around his neck and a three-day beard. He starts strumming his guitar and kicks off the concert with the song his St. Petersburg audience wants to hear: “Totshka.ru.” It essentially means dot.com and is the theme song for St. Petersburg: “I forgot when I moved here. I must have been drunk at the time. I have no registration and no street address. My address is www.leningrad.saintpetersburg.totshka.ru.”

St. Petersburg, the brainchild of Peter the Great, was the capital of Russia for 200 years, and it was renamed three times in the last century. The czars ruled from St. Petersburg. It was also where Lenin overthrew the Kerensky cabinet and launched his bloody revolution. But when the government moved to Moscow in 1918, St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad descended into provincialism.

Even though it was given back its old name of St. Petersburg in 1991, the city is still stuck in that provincial mold. But it is a place of superlatives: the world’s northernmost city with a population of more than a million and Russia’s most important Baltic Sea port. It is as glistening a place as Venice: The city has 342 bridges, nine of which are opened for ships every night, and the virtually untouched historic center contains 2,300 palaces, castles and other magnificent buildings. The World Travel Award jury has just recognized St. Petersburg as the world tourist capital with the most interesting cultural destinations. The city saw 6.9 million visitors in 2016.

St. Petersburg is still a government focal point. The president and prime minister are native sons of St. Petersburg, and President Vladimir Putin began his career at the KGB in the Leningrad of the 1970s. Today he receives state guests at Konstantin Palace in St. Petersburg, takes them on tours of the art collection at the Hermitage and to premieres at the Mariinsky Theater. Many of the men in his entourage were also born there.

Otherwise, there is little that connects St. Petersburg with official Russia. It lives in its own cosmos. Architecturally speaking, it began as an alternative to Moscow, which expanded into the Russian landscape like a large village. But St. Petersburg is also more aristocratic and educated. In Moscow, people address one another informally and kiss when they greet each other, but in St. Petersburg this is seen as a sign of poor taste. St. Petersburgers use completely different Russian words for common objects. And they know how to create hipness--Rubinshteyna Street, for instance, whose pubs and bars have turned it into a nightly hot spot for all of St. Petersburg.

As a city, St. Petersburg is the incarnation of an attitude toward life that can be found all over the country, exuding indifference to what happens in Moscow. Its unofficial motto: Leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. While Moscow is at the top of the power pyramid, St. Petersburg symbolizes the disconnection of the people from power.

Rock singer Shnurov expresses this feeling better than anyone else. “All the absurdity, the pointlessness and the boundless cynicism of our time are hidden in Shnurov’s melodies,” the Snob article states. Shnurov sings in the Russian vulgar language known as “Mat.” “What could be more absurd than that? Mat was banned under Putin and there is a penalty for using it,” writes Snob. “But half the country is singing Shnurov’s songs, with their obscene lyrics.”

And so they sing along in the St. Petersburg ice arena. In a song about the funeral bells over Moscow, Shnurov sings: “Yesterday I dreamed, in a wonderful dream, that Moscow had burned down completely. The fire raged across Red Square, and it consumed the former election commission. Everyone burned: Putin and Navalny. The police and Ostankino.”

Russia’s TV headquarters is located in Ostankino. “If you watch our television, you think you’re living in a land of idiots,” a perspiring Shnurov says backstage, during the intermission. “Politicians are concealing what is happening here. But everyone tries to preach some sort of moral to us. We, on the other hand, are engaged in carnival. Carnival is when the top and the bottom trade places. We sing about things that everyone understands, things that bring people together. If something is s--t, then we call it by its name. I am this city’s singer.”

Voter turnout alone shows that St. Petersburg is the place where people rebel against the despotism of Moscow’s policies. In September, when there was a vote on the new Russian parliament, less than a third of St. Petersburg residents cast ballots. And only 13 percent of eligible voters in the city voted for Putin’s government party. In Chechnya, 91 percent voted for the party.

In contrast, 15,000 St. Petersburgers took to the streets after the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow to protest against the harassment of liberals in Russia. In today’s Russia, 15,000 protestors is a huge number.

Finally, there is no other place where governors are under as much public pressure as in St. Petersburg. The current governor is already the fifth head of the city government since the end of the Soviet Union. Putin was forced to remove his predecessor from office and bring her to Moscow in response to massive protests.

Lev Lurye, St. Petersburg’s most well-known historian, journalist and screenwriter, knows all about the city’s latent subversive nature. “Putin’s military intervention in Syria or the arrest of the Russian economics minister? That’s their business, it happened in their city--that’s what we say in St. Petersburg, and we are referring to Moscow. It doesn’t concern us.”

Lurye, an economist who later worked as a tour guide in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where most of the czars are buried, runs the Lew Lurye Culture Center with a number of like-minded people. It is an unusual venue for debates, a “place of enlightenment,” as he puts it. “We talk about the things that others never talk about.” About the commonalities between Putin and the oligarchs, about why the victory in the Great Patriotic War was both a triumph and a tragedy, and--as they are discussing this evening--about the question: “Did Rasputin have to be murdered?”

It’s a timely question, because the Russian itinerant preacher--who, as a pseudo-psychotherapist, gained fatal influence over the czar and his family--was murdered in a particularly barbaric way 100 years ago. His assassination heralded the February revolution, and Nicholas II was overthrown three months later.

Lurye and a historian who published Rasputin’s diaries are sitting on the podium, arguing about how much damage Rasputin did in Russia at the time. But their dispute is riddled with contemporary messages: that Nicholas’s Russia was divided between the elites and the people, like the country today; that there was also a state party at the time that could be compared to Putin’s United Russia; and that the church was as ultranationalist as it is today.

And doesn’t the patriotic rejoicing on the palace square in St. Petersburg in the summer of 1914, when Czar Nicholas called for war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, remind us of today, Lurye asks the audience? “Isn’t that jubilation the same as the euphoria with which Crimea was brought home to Russia in 2014?”

About 100 St. Petersburg residents are sitting in the room. They’ve paid the equivalent of €12 a ticket, which is a lot of money in Russia. But they like this kind of discussion, and they also participate by occasionally shouting out corrections of certain details. It would be difficult to imagine such an audience in coarse, business-obsessed Moscow.

The nationalists used Rasputin to manipulate the czar, say the men on the stage, noting that politics was extremely non-transparent at the time. But, they add, Russia’s autocracy would also not work under the conditions of an open society, and in this respect today’s Russia resembles the country in Rasputin’s time.

The spirit of contradiction is deeply entrenched in St. Petersburg. The city was forced to bleed during the communist era, when Moscow perceived it as an intellectual and political threat. Stalin had large numbers of people executed there in the 1930s, and the repression continued after World War II. In the course of the “Leningrad affair” in 1950, the city’s entire leadership was shot to death, because it was allegedly about to launch a second communist party. Moscow reintroduced the death penalty, which had been abolished in 1947, specifically for this case. As late as the 1970s, the Kremlin was still hunting down underground groups in Leningrad that were distributing banned literature.

“We have always been different,” says Lurye. “We have relatively progressive media in the city, and there is still an opposition party in our parliament. And, of course, after the annexation of Crimea there were fewer black and orange ribbons of St. George cross--a symbol of Russian patriots--to be seen in St. Petersburg than in the rest of the country.” Perhaps, says Lurye, this is because St. Petersburg, unlike Moscow, still looks the way it did in the days of the czars, and “people here were constantly aware of the contrast between bourgeois and Soviet elements.”

Rock singer Shnurov, too, has always been part of the St. Petersburg underground. He has worked as a truck driver, a security guard in a kindergarten, a carpenter and a blacksmith, and he also studied philosophy at the theological seminary. Shnurov says there are many taboos in Russia, but that you can overcome them if you keep a sufficient distance from politics and seek a common language with the people. He also says that Russians live “pretty gruesome everyday lives.” He has even written a song on the subject, called “V Pitere pit,” or “Drinking in Petersburg.” Some condemn it as trash while others call it a hit. The video has been viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube.

His fans scream with enthusiasm when Shnurov performs the song for the 15,000 people in the ice arena. Many are familiar with the music video, which depicts five St. Petersburgers--a fired bank employee, a store clerk, a police officer, a museum guide and a taxi driver from the Caucasus who speaks broken Russian--as they roam the city, drinking vodka. There are no social barriers for us, and together we are strong--that’s the message of the song.

Shnurov jumps down from the stage and mingles with his fans, who all know the lyrics of his songs by heart. One is “Na labutenach,” his biggest hit, which he now sings. The song is about a girl and a pair of shoes by designer Christian Louboutin, which she borrows from her girlfriend for a date. The song has been viewed 100 million times.

Boris Vishnevsky’s view of St. Petersburg isn’t as playful. A mathematician, he and his colleague Mikhail Amossov, a geographer, represent the opposition Yabloko Party in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Yabloko means “Apple,” and the liberal party once had its own parliamentary group in the Russian Duma. But that was long ago, and today the liberals aren’t even represented in the Moscow city parliament, but they certainly are in St. Petersburg.

And yet this is remarkable because, even in St. Petersburg, opponents are using many tricks in efforts to drive Yabloko out of office. Vishnevsky experienced this only last summer, during elections to the Legislative Assembly.

He’s standing in his office in Mariinsky Palace, where he has a magnificent view of the gold dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. He says no advertising company was willing to put up his election posters in downtown St. Petersburg. At the same time, he says, posters appeared with his photo and the words: “I am the opposition candidate. To support me, please deposit 1,000 rubles into the following account ...”

Vishnevsky says the fake posters were made by Putin’s party, United Russia. “Doctors, teachers, customs officials, members of the military--all those who receive a government salary--were mobilized against Yabloko,” he says. Vishnevsky was denied access to schools and hospitals. Even the head of the central Russian election commission spoke of a “defiantly cynical use of government leverage” in St. Petersburg to give preference to certain candidates.

Vishnevsky’s main rival is the governor of St. Petersburg, the representative of the government’s power. He is the first governor who, like Putin, rose through the ranks of the KGB, and he purports to be deeply religious. The red flags that were once displayed at his office have now been replaced with icons. And instead of party meetings, there are now prayer breaks.

Vishnevsky says that the governor is rarely seen in public and that he’s cautious. His predecessor was brought down by St. Petersburgers after two harsh winters in which six people died. The homeless should be used to shovel snow, she had said, triggering angry protests.

St. Petersburgers are not very willing to put up with things they don’t like. They are patriotic, but mostly when it comes to their city. Thousands took to the streets when they planned to tear down the historic Hotel Angleterre, where lyrical poet Yasenin hung himself in 1925, and the plan was stopped. Such protests haven’t occurred in a long time in Moscow, where dozens of historic buildings have been leveled.

But St. Petersburg residents achieved their greatest victory in the battle against Putin’s government-owned company, Gazprom. Executives there wanted to build a business center with a 400-meter (1,312-foot) skyscraper on the edge of the old city, paid for using city funds--even though such tall buildings are banned in downtown St. Petersburg.

Boris Vishnevsky led the protest movement against the skyscraper. He wrote more than 400 articles to mobilize the public against Gazprom, and the matter was even argued before the country’s Supreme Court. After four years, there was so much pressure that Gazprom finally backed down, and the tower will now be built much farther out. Vishnevsky’s efforts prove that it is possible “to take a stand against a government that forgets all sense of proportionality,” St. Petersburg actor Alexey Devotchenko wrote.

There is no other place in Russia where activists are so successful at limiting the latitude of those in power as in St. Petersburg. This is also attributable to an achievement from the early days of democratic Russia: St. Petersburg has a professional parliament, one of only two still left in the country. The members receive a salary and are not allowed to perform any secondary jobs. This enables them to keep an eye on Putin’s governors. “In every other place, they have abolished the troublesome professional parliaments again,” says Vishnevsky. “But it isn’t possible to maintain checks and balances on the people in power in Russia in the capacity of a volunteer job.”

[politicalfilth-blog]

5 Major News Stories You Need to Know That Broke This Week

We Are Change

Article via Geopolitics Alert

While the US media has spent all week panicking about alleged ‘Russian hacking,’ there have been multiple major stories that they’ve missed.

As we come to another week’s end, here are some key major news stories that broke this week:

Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Russian Hacking

Yesterday the US senate held a hearing on the allegations by the intelligence community that Russia is responsible for the hacking of email servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton. The hearing included testimony from the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper and National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers.

While nothing was actually resolved there was a plenty of condemnation of Russia from the notorious war hawk Senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Both senators pushed the intelligence officials to say things they couldn’t confirm and agreed with each other that Russian hacking is “an act of war.”

What did come out yesterday was that the FBI wasn’t even allowed access to the DNC’s servers to fully investigate the source of the hacks. More remains unclear but a full report by multiple intelligence agencies is expected by Monday.

Leaked Audio of John Kerry and ‘Syrian Opposition’ Shows Obama’s Role in Allowing Terror in Syria

The entire contents of a recording previously leaked to the New York Times maxes it way to the internet this week detailing Obama’s role of allowing terrorism to spread in Syria.

The newly released segment of the recording includes Kerry telling the Syrian opposition leaders that he and others had initially pushed for the use of force in Syria but had “lost the argument.” Kerry also admitted to watching IS grow in an attempt to get Bashar Assad to come to the bargaining table with the US.

Kerry inadvertent admitted that Russia’s presence in Syria was legitimate due to their invitation in by the government of Bashar Assad (although of course he referred to it as the ‘regime’).

He told the opposition leaders that “The reason Russia came in was because ISIL was getting stronger, DAESH was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus, and that’s why Russia came in because they didn’t want a DAESH government and they supported Assad.. and we know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened….ahhhhh we thought however we could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.”

There were also requests by the opposition leaders for the US to attack Hezbollah and Iranian backed militias. While Kerry say he couldn’t due to them not threatening US forces directly, he assured the the opposition that they were arming the terrorist groups that were fighting them.

Kerry also stated that the US backed rebels had gotten out of their control and some had allied with IS an al-Qaeda.

With 70% of East Mosul Liberated While Devastation Grows

Iraqi forces announced this week that they have managed to retake around 70% of the eastern half of Mosul, the major Islamic State enclave just across Syria’s border.

Meanwhile, the US quietly authorized to almost double the deployment of advisers to the Iraqi military on the ground. Washington said this will make the number of US forces around Mosul around 450, although some sources argue it could actually be as high as 5,000.

While the battle for Mosul is not typically discussed by the western media, it is apparently going well and is expected to be completed by April. The western media may not want to talk about this because the devastation of Iraq is on the rise.

In November alone, it’s estimated that somewhere around 20,000 Iraqis have been killed or injured. The US is also probably under-reporting the number of civilian casualties caused by bombings and shellings inside Mosul.

Despite the challenges in Mosul, casualty figures of front line fighters remain relatively low. The Islamic State is losing ground in the city and has even stopped paying their fighters who are trapped there since the last bridge out was destroyed by a US airstrike. This also leaves many civilians hostage to IS in the city.

Out of desperation, it seems IS is returning to more familiar tools of insurgency and have claimed multiple suicide bombings across Iraq in the past week.

US Troops Deploy to Lithuania to ‘Discourage Russian Aggression’

The New York Times reported this week that US special forces have begun arriving in some of the Baltic states as agreed upon at a recent NATO summit in Warsaw. This comes after a recent tour by several US senators and officials to the region as well as Ukraine. This envoy was led by US senator John McCain and included a trip to the war ravaged Donbas with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko.

Poland is doing their own saber rattling and recently purchased US air-to-surface missiles from the US for self defense. Russia has responded to the increased troop presence by deploying several missile batteries close to their border for an ‘indefinite’ period of time.

An additional 800 to 1,200 US troops are expected to arrive in each of the other Baltic countries (Latvia and Estonia) and Poland by spring of this year.

Israeli Soldier Found Guilty For Executing Wounded Palestinian

Lots has been happening in Israel recently. Last week an investigation was opened against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for fraud and bribery.

A week prior to that, the UN passed a resolution declaring Israeli Settlements in the West Bank illegal. And now this week, Israeli Sergeant Elor Azaria was found guilty of murder after killing a wounded Palestinian execution-style.

However, there is a petition going around requesting the release and pardon of Sergeant Elor Azaria. Which is also an opinion Netanyahu has expressed himself.

This article first appeared on GeopoliticsAlert.com and was authored by Jim Carey.

The post 5 Major News Stories You Need to Know That Broke This Week appeared first on We Are Change.

from We Are Change http://wearechange.org/5-major-news-stories-need-know-broke-week/