The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to issue an injunction sought by Students for Fair Admissions, the group behind a successful Supreme Court challenge to race-conscious collegiate admissions policies.

That group, founded by affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, had been seeking an injunction pending its appeal of a federal judge’s Jan. 3 ruling rejecting its bid to halt West Point from considering race as an admissions factor.

With time running out before the current application deadline of Jan. 31, Students for Fair Admissions on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to likewise block West Point’s admissions policy while it pursues appeals.

It did so before the 2nd Circuit had ruled. But Blum’s group in a filing on Sunday asked the 2nd Circuit to rule, saying it would withdraw its Supreme Court appeal if the 2nd Circuit ruled in its favor.

West Point is a prestigious military service academy in New York state that educates cadets for commissioning into the U.S. Army. The U.S. Justice Department in court filings has said that West Point is a “vital pipeline to the officer corps” and that its race-conscious admissions practices help the Army achieve its “mission critical” goal of having officers as diverse as its enlisted military personnel.

Blum declined to comment on Monday, citing the pending Supreme Court appeal. President Joe Biden’s administration has until Tuesday to respond to the group’s Supreme Court appeal.

Blum’s group sued West Point in September with the goal of ending what was essentially an exemption for military academies included in the Supreme Court’s ruling on college admissions in June 2023 that allowed these institutions to continue to consider race in admissions.

In the ruling powered by its 6-3 conservative majority, the Supreme Court rejected policies long used by American colleges and universities to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses.

In invalidating admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court did not address race in admissions at military academies, which Chief Justice John Roberts in a footnote said had “potentially distinct interests.”

Blum’s group accused West Point of using admissions practices that discriminated against white applicants and violated the principle of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution.

The Biden administration has argued that senior military leaders long have recognized that a scarcity of minority officers can create distrust within the armed forces.

Although Black people make up 20.2% of the Army’s active duty enlisted personnel, only 11% of officers are Black, the Justice Department said. Hispanic people constitute 18% of active personnel but only 9% of officers, it added. White people constitute 51.7% of the Army active duty enlisted corps and 68% of its officers, the Justice Department said.

Source: US News

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A new policy about personal hygiene at a public library in Montreal is raising a lot of eyebrows.

Beginning in the New Year, if someone’s hygiene is not up to standard, they might be asked to leave.

People who work with the homeless population are not pleased with the new changes to the library policy, which have to be adopted by the borough councils before they can be enforced.

The city says it’s going to review the wording being used to make sure it’s inclusive and doesn’t discriminate.

According to the changes tabled at the last Ville-Marie borough council meeting, a person would not be allowed to sleep in the library and employees would have the right to ask someone to leave if their personal hygiene inconveniences visitors or staff.

They could also be subject to fines up to $1,000 for a first offence.

James Hughes, President and CEO of the Old Brewery Mission, worries these kinds of rules are really just meant to target the homeless.

“To be part of the library ecosystem with everything it offers — computers, books, connectivity with other people — and this new rule that comes into place puts into question whether or not they’re also welcome in those environments,” he said in an interview.

“This is another example of the problems of cohabitation in the City of Montreal. Using our parks, using our metros, [and] now using our libraries. Who’s welcome and who’s not?”

Hughes has other questions about the policy, including who would determine someone’s public hygiene is offensive and who would be tasked with asking people to leave the library?

In a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante wrote that the city is going to change the wording of the proposed regulation to make sure it reflects the city’s desire for inclusion in all spaces.

“It must be recognized, however, that library staff are faced with delicate and complex situations, which need to be better managed. We will provide managers with a guide to help them apply the appropriate regulations in a humane, sensitive and respectful manner at all times,” she wrote in the publication.

“Montreal libraries, like all public places in the metropolis, will always be inclusive, safe and welcoming places for everyone.”

Source : CTV News

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As yet another United Nations climate summit approaches in the shape of COP28, which kicks off in Dubai this week, signs of public exasperation with the failure of climate policymaking are plain to see. After three decades of negotiations, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising and time is running out to stop global heating from reaching catastrophic levels. In response, people around the world are trying to work out how best to get their voices heard.

September, for example, saw protests across more than 65 countries. Demonstrators demanded “less talk, more action” outside the first Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya — a nation where climate change has already exacerbated insecurities in water and food supplies. In Libya, where flooding killed thousands of people after dams burst, protesters demanded accountability. Worldwide, more than 600,000 people took part in actions linked to the Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels, including 75,000 people marching in New York City.

Protest and activism have the potential to motivate the type of “rapid, disruptive and transformative changes” that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for to address climate change. Social movements will play an important part in achieving a sustainable future for people and nature. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to think of historical examples of transformative progressive change that did not involve activism.

But how does a movement best effect change and convert citizens’ concerns into policies that address the problem? To answer that in the case of climate activism requires further research in three key areas: what motivates some people to join protests while others do not? What are the pros and cons of the tactics that protesters use? And what can researchers do to understand and counter the increasingly repressive measures being used against climate activists in many parts of the world?

What drives people to become climate protesters?

Research has revealed many, often overlapping, reasons why individuals demonstrate and join social movements: attempting to voice a political message, expressing anxiety or concern about a situation, seeking to build a movement aimed at deeper societal transformation or asserting their group identity. Such diversity was tangible, for example, among the people who joined the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City on 17 September — the largest climate-focused protest in the United States in years, where one of us (D.R.F.) spent the day in the crowd talking to participants.

In the march, clusters of young people were interspersed with groups of older activists, who related how the climate crisis had brought them back on to the streets for the first time since the Vietnam war protests in the 1970s. Young members of the Sunrise Movement — a US group calling for political action to achieve a Green New Deal — marched through the crowd chanting with a megaphone: “they try to stop us, but we keep coming back.”

But what factors determine who takes to the streets over climate change? Studies show that individuals who experience psychological distress about the climate crisis are more likely than others to take action (see go.nature.com/3syscj7). At the New York City march, D.R.F’s survey of 170 randomly sampled participants provided more evidence. A majority reported strongly or very strongly experiencing sadness (81%) or anger (75%) in relation to climate change. For many, those emotions were associated with their lived experience in the previous six months: 87% reported having personally experienced extreme heat, 85% had been affected by wildfires or smoke from wildfires, and 60% by frequent and powerful storms (for a summary, see go.nature.com/3unvs9d).

Researchers know much less about the thresholds for mobilization. What are the tipping points that transform individuals from sympathizers of a movement to activists within it? For example, what parts do people in social networks or personal connections to civic and environmental organizations play? How does emotion affect the tactics an activist chooses? Barriers to joining movements also need to be examined; for example, whether they are largely systemic (reflecting a lack of time or capacity among people who are genuinely concerned) or psychological (individuals being reluctant to identify as an activist because of negative stereotypes).

What tactics should activists choose?

Protesters have a broad choice of tactics. Political scientist Gene Sharp listed 198 methods of non-violent direct action, and climate activists have drawn on many of them. Not only do protesters march in the streets and sit in public squares, but they also march slowly, throw food or paint and block roads or access to buildings and pipeline projects. They might also disrupt sporting and cultural events, disrobe in public, block the distribution of newspapers and even engage in hunger strikes and self-immolation.

It is rare for any of these tactics to influence public policy directly, however. Successful examples include the global wave of protests in 2011 that challenged the inevitability of economic austerity, which led to stronger institutional contestation of austerity in countries and municipalities across Europe, and the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was murdered in 2020, which led to changes in the ways cities and states police the public.

Protesters cannot tell people what to think, but they might be able to influence what people are thinking about. Moreover, protests can set news agendas. When a UK poll in June 2019 found that the environment appeared in the public’s top three issues for the first time, the pollsters YouGov concluded that the “sudden surge in concern is undoubtedly boosted by the publicity raised for the environmental cause by Extinction Rebellion” — an activist group that had occupied prominent central London sites for two weeks around that time (see go.nature.com/3uaprq5). A similar effect was seen in the months after protests by Insulate Britain, a campaign group advocating government action to improve home insulation and save energy, began in September 2021: the number of mentions of the word ‘insulation’ (but, notably, not ‘insulate’) in the UK print media doubled (see go.nature.com/47g6twr). People took notice of the issue, if not the specific climate group.

However, rallies and marches alone — even those with high attendance — are generally not seen as newsworthy. News media are more likely to report on protests that include some sort of disruption or shocking action, such as defacing a building, a fountain or a work of art. As a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion put it: “Only through disruption, the breaking of laws, do you get the attention you need.”

The shift to confrontational tactics is a common trajectory for a social movement. When some participants perceive that they do not have enough access to power to make change through the legal and political systems, they decide to get more disruptive and form a ‘radical flank’. The women’s movement and the US civil-rights movement are well documented to have included radical elements that co-existed alongside moderate ones working to effect social change.

Yet confrontational tactics are also often unpopular. Opinion polls show that only 10–20% of a sample of the British and German populations hold a positive opinion of climate groups, such as Just Stop Oil and Letzte Generation, that have used disruptive protests over the past two years (for polling data, see https://osf.io/r2qhn). Less is known about how different types of activist tactic affect public attitudes.

The unpopularity of confrontational protest stems not just from its illegality, but also from its often unclear logic. Blocking oil terminals is easy to explain — the means and ends are congruent. Soup-throwing and road-blocking, by contrast, are performative — they are stunts designed to attract the media, but are not directly connected to the goals of the protesters and come across as incongruent.

Some scholars argue that groups face an ‘activist’s dilemma’, in which they must make a conscious choice between their desire to attract media attention and their popularity. But the importance of popularity is often exaggerated and in itself is not an aim for protesters: they are, after all, not running for election. The public might see confrontational activism as a nuisance, but it is wrong to assume that unpopular actions turn people away from the cause. Experiments show that people’s attitudes to an issue and to a group’s demands are distinct from, and not determined by, how they feel about the group and its tactics.

YouGov polling across Europe documents that there has been little shift in public opinions around climate change since the large 2019 protests raised awareness (see go.nature.com/3sg8sgg). Thus, so far, confrontational climate activism has neither deterred nor encouraged the general public. The real dilemma is that it is difficult to recruit large numbers to join risky and unpopular disruptive protests, and the increased publicity does not necessarily translate into greater public concern. There is reason to think that both large numbers and disruptive actions are necessary components for more direct outcomes from climate protest, although more research is needed in this area.

Researchers therefore need to explore in more detail the specific impacts of particular protest tactics. Are some more effective than others in provoking behavioural change, and in what contexts? What are the pros and cons of narrow or broad demands?

For example, Insulate Britain made a clear, narrow demand aimed at reducing emissions by insulating social housing. By contrast, Extinction Rebellion has avoided making specific policy demands, preferring to advocate much broader changes in democratic governance, notably through the use of citizens’ assemblies to decide on policy questions. Narrow demands are easier to convey and achieving success can attract more activists. But they might not be as effective in communicating a positive vision of a future in which the worst impacts of the climate crisis are avoided.

What motivates repression of protests?

The natural trajectory of a social movement that has not yet achieved its goals is to lose popularity (the issue goes away or public interest wanes) or to become increasingly confrontational until its demands are met. There are numerous historical examples. Decades into the struggle for women’s suffrage, which started in the nineteenth century, for instance, the suffragettes were undertaking, on average, 20 bombings and arson attacks per month in 1913¹⁶.

By comparison, contemporary climate activism seems rather mild. Yet that could change as more people become personally affected by climate impacts and as political demands remain unmet.

Meanwhile, the political climate for such activism is becoming increasingly hostile, to the point at which some governments seem more concerned with criminalizing non-violent protesters than acting on climate. In the past two years, for example, the United Kingdom has increased maximum sentences as well as police and government powers to declare protests illegal. And globally, there is a wave of similar anti-protest legislation, with more draconian sentencing and laws to curb protests. Such moves have been called out by UN secretary-general António Guterres. In April 2022, he declared that “the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels”.

There is growing evidence that this wave of legislation is not driven by public opinion. Two of us (C.J.D. and O.B.) have run polls in the United Kingdom and Germany showing that less than one-third of people surveyed want to see non-violent protesters imprisoned (for polling data, see https://osf.io/r2qhn). Researchers need to explore what is driving this policy trend, including the actors involved and the role of the fossil-fuel lobby. Such pressures are likely to grow as more people are affected by climate change, and as vested interests that benefit from fossil-fuel expansion operate inside and outside political systems to stop protesters drawing negative attention to their work.

In 2021, 400 academics working in climate-related fields pointed out in an open letter that combating the criminalization of protest is an essential part of the fight for a habitable planet. As the climate crisis worsens, climate activism and its repression will become increasingly common. Research is needed to understand how climate activism could provide a more effective conduit for channelling public concerns to policymakers and changing policies. Although we cannot predict how bad the climate crisis will get, research has the potential to provide valuable insights into how civil society and social movements can enable the transitions required to respond meaningfully to the crisis.

Source : Nature

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The story of Germany in the years after the First World War is a striking reminder of how price stability and democracy go hand in hand.

The historian Gerald Feldman famously called those troubled years “the Great Disorder”. And although the relative contributions of the hyperinflation of the 1920s and the deflation of the 1930s are still debated, there is little doubt that wild swings in prices eroded the economic foundations of democracy.

One of the ways in which price instability does this is by triggering large distributional effects, which often hurt the poorest in society the most. For example, ECB analysis finds that the spike in inflation over the last 18 months has disproportionately affected low-income households as they spend more of their income on necessities like energy and food, which saw surging prices.

These are fundamental reasons why, in most liberal democracies, central banks have been entrusted with mandates to preserve price stability. And at the ECB, we will never compromise on our mandate. That is why, in response to rising inflation, we raised interest rates at the fastest pace in our history, by 450 basis points in just over a year. And we will return inflation to our medium-term target in a timely manner.

However, having made such a large and fast adjustment, we are in a phase of our policy cycle which I would characterise as being “attentive and focused”.

We need to be attentive to the different forces affecting inflation: the unwinding of past energy shocks, the strength of monetary policy transmission, the dynamics of wages and the evolution of inflation expectations. And we need to remain focused on bringing inflation back to our target, and not rush to premature conclusions based on short-term developments.

The forces pushing down inflation

There are two main forces pushing down inflation today.

First, the energy and supply chain shocks which played a substantial role in last year’s inflation surge are now unwinding.

At its peak, energy and food accounted for more than two-thirds of headline inflation in the euro area, despite representing less than one-third of the consumption basket. And together with supply chain disruptions, this also had a sizeable effect on core inflation – inflation excluding food and energy – as input costs rose for firms across the economy.

So, it is not surprising that as supply chains heal and energy prices fall, we are seeing the reverse effect, and both headline and core inflation are coming down.

We expect headline inflation to rise again slightly in the coming months, mainly owing to some base effects. This reflects the sizeable drops in energy costs observed around the turn of last year, and the reversal of some of the fiscal measures that were put in place to fight the energy crisis. But we should see a further weakening of overall inflationary pressures.

The second force is the impact of our monetary policy tightening.

We had to tighten monetary policy forcefully to bring demand into line with supply and keep inflation expectations anchored while inflation surged. And this policy adjustment has fed quickly into financing conditions. But its peak impact on inflation will only materialise with a lag – and given the unprecedented scale and speed of our tightening, there is some uncertainty about how strong this effect will be.

So, we need to be attentive to how these forces are working through the economy. But given the scale of our policy adjustment, we can now allow some time for them to unfold.

That is why, at our last meeting, we held interest rates at their present levels. And based on our current assessment, we consider that the key ECB interest rates are at levels that, maintained for a sufficiently long duration, will make a substantial contribution to returning inflation to our medium-term target in a timely manner.

Avoiding persistent inflation

But this is not the time to start declaring victory. The nature of the inflation process in the euro area means that we will need to remain attentive to the risks of persistent inflation as well.

As wage-setting in the euro area is multi-annual and staggered, the high inflation rates that are now behind us are still having a significant influence on wage agreements today. For example, the annual growth rate of compensation per employee was 5.6% in the second quarter of 2023, a 1.2 percentage point increase compared with the average for 2022.

And the ability of workers to obtain higher wages is being supported by a tight labour market and strong demand for labour, which has proven surprisingly resilient to a slowing economy since the end of 2022.

For now, our assessment is that strong wage growth mainly reflects “catch-up” effects related to past inflation, rather than a self-fulfilling dynamic where people expect higher inflation in the future. But to assess how wages are evolving and whether they pose a risk to price stability, we will be closely monitoring a number of developments.

First, whether firms absorb rising wages in their profit margins, which would allow real wages to recover some of their past losses without the increase being fully passed through to inflation.

Second, whether there is some easing of labour market tightness, which would prevent excess demand for labour from becoming a driver of persistently high wage demands.

And third, that inflation expectations remain anchored, which ensures that, when the current shock passes, wage and price-setting will be guided by our 2% inflation target.

In other words, we will need to remain attentive until we have firm evidence that the conditions are in place for inflation to return sustainably to our goal.

That is why we have said our future decisions will ensure that our policy rates will be set at sufficiently restrictive levels for as long as necessary. And we have made those future decisions conditional on the incoming data, meaning that we can act again if we see rising risks of missing our inflation target.

Source : ECB

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On World Mental Health Day, October 10^th, the American Heart Association, a global force for healthier lives for all, shares new survey findings that may help employers reduce burnout and improve workforce well-being by up to 40%.

The World Health Organization defines burnout as a workplace mental health phenomenon resulting from chronic, unmanaged workplace stress that is characterized by feelings of exhaustion, disengagement and negativity related to one’s job, and reduced professional performance.^[1]

“Chronic exposure to stress can increase your lifetime risk of conditions like heart disease and stroke and is also linked to anxiety disorders and major depression. With burnout rates continuing to rise, we must acknowledge that this is not a passing problem, but a serious and ongoing workforce mental health challenge,” shared Eduardo J. Sanchez, M.D., M.P.H., FAHA, chief medical officer for prevention at the American Heart Association. “This survey gives a reassuring glance at how employers can make a positive impact on the mental health and well-being of their workforce with a few intentional changes.”

Employees are not the only ones paying the price for burnout. Excessive workplace stress can result in up to an estimated $190 billion in health care costs each year and is linked with higher absenteeism and job dissatisfaction.^[2], ^[3] Research shows that employers can help mitigate these costs and support better business outcomes by championing employee well-being. A 2019 study found that the stock prices of organizations that prioritized employee health and safety appreciated by 115% over four years, outperforming the S&P 500 (+69%) and companies with lower reported internal health support (+44%).^[4]

The survey of 5,055 U.S. working adults was conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Heart Association, with the aim of understanding how employees are impacted by nine evidence-based best practices to combat burnout and promote employee mental health. Despite positive measures of workforce well-being, more than three quarters (82%) of respondents reported experiencing burnout at least sometimes, with parents, frontline or essential workers, women, younger workers (Generation Z and millennials) and LGBTQIA+ workers particularly likely to report feeling burned out often or always.

What can employers do to help?

All nine policies analyzed in the survey were found to be associated with increased workplace well-being as reported by employees, and seven were also associated with decreased burnout:

• Assess alignment between skillset and job tasks
• Establish clear roles and responsibilities
• Regularly assess workloads
• Design job roles with employee input
• Establish a training path to develop employee skills
• Assess if employees feel supported to lead a healthy life
• Promote overall employee well-being
• Discourage work-related technology use after hours
• Promote employee support (resource) groups

In companies with none of these policies in place, only 51% of employees reported positive workplace well-being, as compared to 91% of employees in companies with all nine policies in place. Notably, even the implementation of one of these policies made employees more likely to be satisfied with their benefits, have positive feelings about their current role and job responsibilities, and report feeling supported by their manager.

The American Heart Association’s Workforce Well-being Scorecard offers employers a comprehensive assessment of their culture of health and well-being based on leading best practices, including policies to support mental health and combat burnout. Visit heart.org/workforce to view the full survey report and complete the Scorecard.

Survey Methodology

The research was conducted online in the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Heart Association among 5,055 US adults aged 18+ who are employed full time or part time. The survey was conducted between April 13 and May 10, 2023. Data are weighted separately by race/ethnicity and where necessary by education, age by sex, region, household income, size of household, marital status, work status, and propensity to be online to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population. The groups were then combined into a proportional total by race/ethnicity.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the sample data is accurate to within + 1.9 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest. All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to other multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including, but not limited to coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments.

Source : News Room

The post 9 Policies Companies Should Implement to Reduce Burnout, According to Employees appeared first on Policy Print.

Five years ago, when leaders of the two Koreas exchanged a historic handshake in Pyongyang, the Korean people looked on with hope, wishing that this masterpiece of diplomacy may finally put an official end to the seven-decade-long war on the peninsula. 

But as time surges forward, the once-celebrated inter-Korean agreement stands vulnerable, overshadowed by North Korea’s escalating nuclear threats, and its leader, Kim Jong Un reinforcing ties with his fellow authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin of Russia. Now, South Korea grapples with a growing divide on whether to uphold that deal.

The debate is set to intensify on the back of  former South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s  attendance of the commemorative event of the fifth anniversary of the September 19 Pyongyang Joint Declaration in Seoul on Tuesday.  

“The [current] government and the ruling party have expressed their intentions to reconsider or possibly scrap the military agreement,” Moon said at the event. “However, it’s crucial to note that the inter-Korean military agreement has been instrumental in preventing military confrontations between the two Koreas.”

Moon’s comments are largely seen as a warning against the administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol for its hardline policy on North Korea.

“It would be irresponsible to remove the last safety pin in place,” Moon added. “As relations between the two Koreas deteriorate and military tensions escalate, it’s imperative for both sides to uphold the agreement.”

His remarks may potentially improve  public opinion of South Korea’s progressives before the general election in April. Should that happen, it would conversely work against Yoon’s hardline policy on Pyongyang. 

Under the 2018 inter-Korean military deal, the two Koreas agreed to “end hostility” and to “take substantial steps to make the Korean Peninsula a permanent peace zone.” 

“Military accords should be honored and respected to the fullest extent to ensure dialogue continues and to prevent dire consequences,” Moon said. 

The former president was supported by key officials from his administration – his foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha and unification minister Kim Yeon-chul at the event.

South Korea’s progressives see consistent engagement with North Korea as a potential catalyst for altering Pyongyang’s hostile behavior and its actions of violating human rights. They believe that integrating North Korea into the international stage would foster transparency, open avenues for dialogue, and gradually shift the North’s stance towards global norms and values.

Conservatives, on the other hand, have long protested against what it defined as far-fetched engagement, saying that excessive aid to North Korea despite its continued provocations would only foster its nuclear ambitions. The conversative Yoon administration is thus adopting a hawkish policy on North Korea, aimed at pressing Pyongyang to forfeit its nuclear weapons.

The ongoing debate is set to gain its momentum, as Yoon’s Defense Minister nominee Shin Won-sik has opined about his inclination to scrap the inter-Korean military deal last week.

Some analysts consider the deal invalid, with North Korea returning to its brinkmanship diplomacy after its high-stakes summit with the United States collapsed in Hanoi February 2019. For instance, in November 2019, North Korea fired coastal artillery near the maritime buffer around the border island of Changlin-do. 

In May 2020, North Korea fired gunshots towards a South Korean guard post at the inter-Korean border, and in September 2020, a South Korean civilian was shot dead at the maritime border by the North and subsequently incinerated.

Further complicating matters is North Korea’s amplified nuclear and missile threats. The threats are expected to further intensify with Putin vowing to aid North Korea in developing its satellite technology. 

Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the UN bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch. 

South Korea’s internal disagreement surrounding its North North Korea policy could potentially undermine that of the allies. The lack of a unified stance – be it hardline or dovish policy – risks disabling Seoul and Washington to form a coherent strategy that could be implemented in the long-term.

Experts, however, noted that the main reason for this policy inconsistency is due to Kim Jong Un’s altered stance on his diplomacy after the fallout in Hanoi in 2019. 

“North Korean inconsistency is what leads to South Korea having to change its policy. If Pyongyang had continued to engage post-Hanoi summit, I think that both, Moon first, and Yoon now would have probably sought to try to accommodate this. Alas, this hasn’t been the case,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Professor of International Relations at King’s College London and the KF-VUB Korea Chair at the Brussels School of Governance of Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

“Likewise, I think that it was domestic instability in North Korea in the late 2000s, due to Kim Jong Il’s health condition, and then the transition process to Kim Jong Un, [being] the main reason behind the end of the inter-Korean engagement. So liberals and conservatives may not fully agree on how to approach North Korea, but I actually think that Pyongyang is the main reason why Seoul changes its policy.”

Source : Rfa

The post South Korea Presidents Clash Over North Korea Policy appeared first on Policy Print.

Indonesia might seem like a natural fit to join an expanded BRICS, the group of emerging economies made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The Southeast Asian nation of more than 270 million people is a major emerging economy that by some estimates could rank among the world’s top five economies by the middle of the century.

But when South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa announced the expanded BRICS membership in Johannesburg last week, Indonesia was not on the list, which includes Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Indonesia’s decision to stay out of BRICS despite its similarities with other emerging economies reflects longstanding wariness of being entangled in geopolitical alliances as well as uncertainty about the economic benefits membership would bring, analysts say.

“It is not really surprising, since many analysts and former diplomats had already warned against joining BRICS and the economic benefits are not clear and apparent, while the political and economic cost due to the backlash from the West are quite certain,” Radityo Dharmaputra, a lecturer at the Department of International Relations at Universitas Airlangga, told Al Jazeera.

‘Bebas-aktif’

Ahead of the BRICS summit in South Africa last week, some 40 countries had apparently expressed interest in joining the grouping, including Indonesia.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said, after attending the gathering in Johannesburg on Thursday, that he was considering membership but did not want to “rush into it”.

Speaking of Indonesia’s membership, Anil Sookal, South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, said Jakarta had asked for a delay to consult with its Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) counterparts about the move.

Universitas Airlangga’s Dharmaputra said that one of Indonesia’s concerns could be the optics of entering into a grouping with countries such as China and Russia.

“The image of Indonesia being seen as part of the China-Russia world would be a problem,” he said.

“Especially since Indonesia really emphasises its independent and active foreign policy. How can you sell that to the other countries, while being in the same group with China and Russia?”

Indonesia was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War and for decades has held to a “bebas-aktif”, or independent and active, approach to foreign policy, including taking a role in brokering peace around the world, such as when Widodo visited Russia and Ukraine in June last year.

Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer in international relations at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani in Bandung, said there was “no benefit” for Indonesia to join BRICS.

“We have yet to see any real results from BRICS other than as a grouping to counter the United States and there doesn’t seem to be any concrete progress being made,” he told Al Jazeera.

While BRICS has fashioned itself as a bloc to champion the Global South – establishing the New Development Bank (NBD) as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and even floating the possibility of a new currency – perceptions that the grouping is a burgeoning anti-Western alliance could complicate Indonesia’s ties with the United States.

Last week, the Indonesian government and US aircraft maker Boeing agreed to finalise the sale of 24 F-15EX fighter jets to Jakarta following a visit by Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto to Washington, DC.

Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani’s Sulaiman said that it made more sense for Indonesia to be part of groups like ASEAN with its neighbours, instead of arbitrary groupings of countries with which Indonesia has few historical or trade links.

“Indonesia already has ties with China, and Russia is now the subject of an international boycott, so there is no benefit there,” he said. “South Africa is facing a financial crisis and we can also work directly with other countries like India.”

Under Widodo’s presidency, Indonesia has set ambitious development targets, including relocating its capital city to Eastern Borneo and building capacity to process commodities into finished products at home, which is a cornerstone of Jakarta’s efforts to reach $25,000 gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 2045.

Dharmaputra said that Indonesia has its sights on other global groupings that offer more obvious benefits in areas such as trade, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has 38 member countries.

“Indonesia wants to join the OECD and joining BRICS would be seen as an obstacle to this,” he said.

Sulaiman said efforts by BRICS to challenge the dominance of the US dollar would also likely be seen as unattractive to Indonesia.

“This was a highly rational decision,” he said. “Things would be the same whether we joined or not.”

Source: Aljazeera

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Amanda Pritchard also raises concerns over children and adults being “bombarded” with gambling adverts as she announced the health service was increasing its support for people with gambling problems as a result of soaring demand.

The boss of NHS England has warned about the dangers of “touch of a button” bets after a record number of people sought help for gambling addiction in England.

Amanda Pritchard also raised concerns over children and adults being “bombarded” with gambling adverts as she announced the health service is increasing its support for people with gambling problems as a result of soaring demand.

A record 1,389 patients were referred for help last year, compared with 1,013 in the previous 12 months and 775 two years ago.

As a result, the NHS is launching seven more specialist gambling clinics to support those who are struggling.

The announcement comes two days after a coroner ruled a gambling disorder contributed to the death of a father of two.

Luke Ashton had lost thousands of pounds gambling on Betfair’s exchange before he died by suicide aged 40 on 22 April 2021, and had previously racked up debts of £18,000.

At the conclusion of a three-day inquest into his death at Leicester Coroner’s Court on Thursday, area coroner Ivan Cartwright said the betting company could have done more to help him before he took his own life.

The new NHS clinics will be set up in Milton Keynes, Thurrock, Bristol, Derby, Liverpool, Blackpool and Sheffield.

They will operate in addition to clinics already running in London, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Telford – as well as a national clinic in London, which treats both gambling and gaming addiction in children and young people.

The NHS plans to treat up to 3,000 patients a year across the 15 clinics.

Patients with serious addiction will be helped through cognitive behavioural therapy, family therapy, support groups and aftercare.

Psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, mental health nurses and peer support workers will staff the clinics, offering support to patients as well as their family members, partners and carers.

‘Now people can gamble at the touch of a button’

“Ahead of the NHS’s 75th birthday on Wednesday, this expansion shows the NHS once again adapting to the new healthcare needs that have emerged over the last 75 years,” Ms Pritchard said.

“In 1948 when the NHS was founded, you had to go to a bookies to place a bet, but now people can gamble on their phone at the touch of a button and everyone, young and old, is bombarded with adverts encouraging them to take part.

“Record numbers of people are coming to the NHS for help to treat their gambling addiction, a cruel disease which has the power to destroy people’s lives, with referrals up by more than a third compared to last year.

“As it has done since 1948, the NHS is responding at speed and rolling out seven new gambling harms clinics across England, so that even more people can be supported by the NHS in their time of need.”

Source: Sky News

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Delhi News Highlights:  The India Meteorological Department has issued a yellow alert for Delhi on July 5 and gave a warning that moderate rain could flood low-lying areas and disrupt the flow of traffic on key roads on Wednesday. The maximum and minimum temperatures are likely to hover between 33 degrees Celsius and 37 degrees Celsius tomorrow. The weather department further stated that cloudy weather and intermittent showers can be expected in the national capital over the next six to seven days.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a plea moved by the Delhi government relating to the appointment of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) chairperson on July 11. In the meantime, the apex court orally said that the oath-taking of  chairperson-designate Justice (Retd) Umesh Kumar is to be deferred.

The wife of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, Seema, has been admitted to hospital yet again. AAP sources said this was the third time that she had been hospitalised in recent weeks. The health of Seema, 49, a Multiple Sclerosis patient, deteriorated late on Monday evening following which she had to be hospitalised. Party sources said being alone at home—with Manish Sisodia in jail for his alleged role in the now scrapped excise policy case and the couple’s son studying abroad—had worsened matters in this regard.

Source: Indian Express

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As the United States marks its 247th birthday Tuesday, questions about how many more the nation will celebrate in its current form have become ominously relevant.

Possibly not since the two decades before the Civil War has America faced as much pressure on its fundamental cohesion. The greatest risk probably isn’t a repeat of the outright secession that triggered the Civil War, though even that no longer seems entirely impossible in the most extreme scenarios. More plausible is the prospect that the nation will continue its drift into two irreconcilable blocs of red and blue states uneasily trying to occupy the same geographic space.

“I can’t recall a time when we’ve had such fundamental friction between the states on such important issues,” says Donald Kettl, former dean and professor emeritus of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and author of the 2020 book, “The Divided States of America.”

The strains on America’s basic unity are broad and diverse. They include a widening divergence in the basic rules of life between red and blue states on everything from the availability of abortion and guns to what teachers can say in the classroom; sharpening conflicts not only between the states, but among the urban and rural regions within them; a growing tendency of voters in each political coalition to view the other party not only as a political rival but as an “enemy” that threatens their core conception of America; the increasing inability of almost any institution – from the media to federal law enforcement to even consumer products – to retain comparable credibility on both sides of the red-blue divide; more common threats of political violence, predominantly from the right, against local and national officials; and the endurance of Donald Trump as the first leader of a truly mass-scale American political movement who has demonstrated a willingness to subvert small-d democracy to achieve his goals.

Behind almost all of these individual challenges is the same larger force: the mounting tension between those who welcome the propulsive demographic and cultural changes reshaping 21st century America and those who fear or resent those changes. It’s the collision between what I’ve called the Democrats’ “coalition of transformation” and the Republican “coalition of restoration.” As the US evolves toward a future, sometime after 2040, when people of color will constitute a majority of the population, political scientists point out that the country is trying to build something without exact modern precedent: a true multi-racial democracy that provides a voice to all its citizens.

The urgent demands for greater opportunity and inclusion from traditionally marginalized groups (from Black to LGBTQ people) and the ferocious backlash against those demands that Trump has mobilized in his “Make America Great Again” movement demonstrate how fraught that passage has become.

“To expect we are going to be as unified as we [have been] trying to negotiate these fundamental transformations of American demography is wholly unrealistic,” says Daniel Cox, a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “There is going to be real differences and divisions on these things and, unfortunately, some people are weaponizing them in a way that is unhelpful.”

The ideal of national unity celebrated on July Fourth has almost always been overstated: the country from its founding has been riven by sectional, racial, class and gender conflicts. Large groups of people living within our borders have always felt excluded from any proclaimed national consensus: American Indians who were brutally displaced for decades, Black people who faced generations of legal slavery and then decades of state-sponsored segregation, women denied the vote until the 20th century.

But today’s proliferating and intersecting pressures have reached a height that is forcing experts to contemplate questions few Americans have seriously considered since the Civil War era: can the United States continue to function as a single unified entity, and if so, in what form?

In the late 1990s, Alan Wolfe, a Boston University political scientist, wrote a book called “One Nation, After All” based on in-depth interviews with hundreds of Americans around the country. His book was one of several published in the era that concluded the broad American public was not nearly as divided as its leaders and that average Americans, however much their views differed on issues, recognized the importance of finding common ground with others of opposing views.

Now, Wolfe told me in an interview, he considers the current situation much more worrying. “I was so optimistic with the title of ‘One Nation, After All,’ but I couldn’t say that now,” Wolfe, a professor emeritus, said. “I think the book was right for its time. I think the sociology of it was right. That’s what I found. But I’m sure I wouldn’t find it now.”

To Wolfe, the US is now trapped in a “vicious cycle” of rising partisan and ideological hostility in which political leaders, particularly on the right, see a “benefit in fueling the rage even more.” While President Joe Biden, Wolfe says, has struck traditional presidential notes of emphasizing the value of national unity, Trump – currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination – has built his political strategy on widening the nation’s divides in ways that may be difficult to reverse any time soon. “I don’t know if [Trump’s] a political genius or just instinctively knows something, but he sure has exacerbated the shocks, and I don’t know how we are going to recover from him,” Wolfe says.

Experts may be the least concerned about the most often discussed scenario for a future American unraveling. That’s the prospect the nation will fully split apart into separate entities, as it did when the South seceded to create the Confederate States of America after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican from Georgia who has become a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, has called for “a national divorce” in which Republican- and Democratic-leaning states would go their separate ways, presumably peacefully. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government,” Greene said in a tweet on President’s Day this year.

Susan Stokes, a political scientist and director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago, said that prospect could receive growing discussion in coming years, particularly on the right, “if we continue to go in this direction and we continue to view each other as threats and as anathema, immoral, and a threat to each other’s existence.”

But the practical barriers to any formal national divorce, she says, are likely to limit such discussion to the fringes. Unlike the Civil War, which had a clear geographical boundary, the nation’s current political divide has created a checkerboard – with Democrats strongest in coastal and upper Midwest states, as well as parts of the Southwest, while Republicans hold the edge in most Heartland states, particularly those in the South and Great Plains. Plus, Stokes notes, the red-blue line runs not only between but within the states, with the urban areas of every state leaning relatively more toward Democrats than their rural neighbors. In some future national divorce, “What do you do with upstate New York? What do you do with Memphis or Austin?” she asked.

For those reasons, none of the experts I spoke to worry much about full-scale national separation through any intermediate time frame, though most no longer consider it inconceivable either. (Polls don’t show extensive interest among the public, with one national CBS/YouGov survey last year finding a quarter of Americans favoring the idea.) One wild card is what might happen if Trump wins in 2024 and moves to implement some of the policies he’s proposed that amount to mobilizing federal power against blue institutions and individuals – including a massive deportation program of undocumented immigrants and the deployment of the National Guard into high-crime cities. Blue state governors, legislatures and mayors might respond to such an offensive in forceful ways difficult to predict today.

The nation’s greater challenge may be the continuing incremental separation between the red and blue blocs – the political equivalent of continental drift. Polls show that voters in each coalition hold darkening views of the other. In that 2022 CBS/YouGov survey, about half of the voters for both Trump and Biden said they considered the other party not just “political opposition” but “enemies, that is, if they win, your life or your entire way of life may be threatened.”

More tangibly, red and blue states are hurtling apart. The most aggressive moves have come from red states shifting social policy sharply to the right on a broad array of issues, from retrenching abortion and LGBTQ rights, to censoring classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation, expanding access to guns while limiting access to books that provoke conservative objections, and restricting access to voting. With red states exploring various ways to discourage their residents from traveling to blue states for banned activities (such as abortions or gender-affirming care for transgender minors), and blue states passing laws to inhibit such red state enforcement, the nation is facing open conflict over the cross-border application of state law reminiscent of the bitter disputes between free and slave states over the Fugitive Slave Act.

No single issue separates the red and blue states today as profoundly as the gulf between those with and without legal segregation during the Jim Crow era, or that between states with and without slavery before the Civil War. But, as experts point out, the current divergence involves more issues in more states than those earlier conflicts, with nearly half the country joining the red state drive to create what I’ve called “a nation within a nation” operating by its own rules and values.

“I really feel like we are becoming two different countries, if not that it has already happened,” says Wolfe. “I don’t like it, but I don’t see what we have in common anymore. I really don’t.”

To some students of government, allowing states to set their own course on these divisive issues may relieve pressure and help hold the nation together. “In some ways, you can say how this is terrible, how can we remain a unified country and address global concerns” when states are separating this fundamentally, says Cox. “But by the same token, there’s something that is positive about these ‘laboratories of democracy’ where one party is given free rein to put forward their ideas and legislate and the public can see how they do and react to that.”

Yet allowing states to diverge this comprehensively may do more to heighten than relieve national tensions. Cox acknowledges one reason: severe gerrymandering in many states’ legislative districts means most politicians are unlikely to suffer consequences even if the public doesn’t like the agenda they have advanced.

A second problem is this experimentation is unlikely to proceed on an even track. The Republican-appointed majority on the US Supreme Court has encouraged the red state social offensive with decisions that stripped away national rights – most prominently on abortion and voting. Many legal experts believe that conservative majority is unlikely to block many of the new red state social laws that critics (including, in many cases, the Biden administration) are challenging in federal courts. On the other hand, the six GOP-appointed justices have shown no hesitation about overturning blue state initiatives, such as gun control measures that conflict with their reading of the 2nd Amendment, or LGBTQ protections they argue infringe on religious liberty or free speech. “Given the make-up of the courts, it’s difficult for blue states to be hopeful about this,” says Kettl.

The biggest challenge created by the widening distance among the states is where to draw the line between local leeway and preserving a baseline floor of nationally guaranteed rights in every state. Racial segregation, after all, was justified for 70 years on the ground of respecting “local traditions.”

From both Congress and the Supreme Court, the general trend in American life from the 1950s through the 2010s was to nationalize more rights and to restrict the ability of states to curtail those rights. Now, though, the red states are engaged in the most concerted effort over that long arc to roll back the “rights revolution” and restore a system in which people’s basic civil rights vary much more depending on where they live.

“It is certainly good to have a chance to have a contest over basic values, and that’s one of the great strengths of the American republic,” says Kettl, co-author of the new book “Bridgebuilders: How Government Can Transcend Boundaries to Solve Big Problems.” He continued: “But there is also a basic question of the fundamental rights of individuals and whether the balance of power in deciding them ought to lie” with states or the nation as a whole.

The chasm between the civil rights and liberties available in blue and red states has widened to the point where it will be highly explosive for either side to attempt to impose its social regime on the other. If Democrats win unified control of the White House and Congress in 2024 and pass legislation to restore a national floor of abortion or voting rights, red state leaders would likely sue to block them (even though abortion rights are popular in several of them). This Supreme Court majority could prove receptive to such challenges. Conversely, the fear that Republicans will seek to pass national legislation imposing the red state rules on blue and purple states, particularly on abortion and guns, may be the best Democratic asset in the 2024 presidential race in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Michael Podhorzer, the former long-time political director for the AFL-CIO, has argued that the wave of restrictive red state social laws has simply made more apparent something that has long been true: that the red and blue parts of the country are so divergent in their values, priorities and even economic structures that they are more accurately described as separate nations than separate regions. In his mind, what’s changed isn’t that these different regions – or different nations – have divergent approaches on both social and economic issues, but that the Trump-aligned MAGA movement ascendant in the red states is now pursuing such an extreme and even anti-democratic (small d) agenda.

Eric Liu, co-founder of Citizen University, a non-partisan organization that trains people to work together on local problems across ideological, racial and other boundaries, agrees that Trump and much of his movement represent a unique threat to the future of American democracy. The nation, Liu says, now faces the challenge of doing two things at once: countering and isolating that threat to democracy, while building a bigger coalition for cooperation and consensus-building among what he calls (borrowing from Richard Nixon’s phrase) the “silent majority” of Americans who want to coexist.

Liu counsels that lowering the temperature does not require an artificial level of agreement between people of differing views: “It’s OK to argue it out. It’s necessary to argue it out because America is an argument.” But it does, he believes, require both sides to commit to respecting the democratic process and staying engaged with the other when that process produces decisions they don’t support. “That means to recognize that politics is not a one-and-done, winner-take-all, wipe-the-other-side-off-the-face-of-the-earth, scorched earth endeavor,” he says.

Even more important, strengthening the nation’s bonds, he believes, requires people on both sides of the political divide to see the other “as three-dimensional, complicated, sometimes contradictory human beings.” The best way to achieve that, he says, is to work together to solve local problems. Liu’s group tries to facilitate that through programs like Civic Saturdays that promotes collaborative local actions, or initiatives that bring together rural and urban residents around shared concerns.

Such interactions, Liu believes, can nudge the US toward the national unity it celebrates on July Fourth. But he acknowledges there’s no assurance this patient nurturing of civic connection can overcome all the forces in politics, the media and communications technology blowing toward separation. Even the most carefully cultivated garden, after all, may not survive a gale-force wind.

“It is totally not a given that we get through this,” Liu told me. “The United States does not get to assume that it lasts forever.”

Source: Cable News Network

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