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Following protests by thousands of Poles and threats from the European Union, Polish President Andrzej Duda unexpectedly vetoed two laws that would have dealt a serious blow to Polands increasingly-fragile democracy.

On Monday, Duda announced he would veto two of the three controversial bills passed by the Polish parliament last week that would have significantly reduced the judiciarys independence and essentially made the Supreme Court irrelevant.

"As president I don't feel this law would strengthen a sense of justice," Duda said in a statement on national TV, according to the BBC. "These laws must be amended."

Criticized as attacks on Polands democratic system of checks and balances, the bills called for the immediate dismissal of the high courts current judges, except those who had been chosen by Duda. It also would have given the ruling party the power to control who sits on the National Judiciary Council, which nominates Supreme Court judges.

The one bill that Duda did not veto gives the justice minister the right to select and dismiss judges in lower courts, according to the BBC.

Dudas decision came as a bit of a surprise given his leadership of the party that submitted the bills in the first place the right-wing, EU-skeptic, and nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS). Since gaining control of the upper and lower parliamentary houses following the 2015 election, the party has worked to dismantle Polands checks and balances.

The presidents veto has at least temporarily put the brakes on the Law and Justice Partys efforts.

The two laws will now be sent back to the parliament to be rewritten. Even though the parliament has the power to override the presidents vetoes, it requires the agreement of 60 percent of lawmakers. The ruling Law and Justice Party only has a thin majority in parliament, and its unlikely that it could get enough support.

The presidents veto came just three weeks after President Donald Trump visited Warsaw, hailed the countrys democratic values, and praised it as a defender of the West. Critics questioned the wisdom of Trumps visit given the Polish governments increasingly anti-democratic practices, which include clamping down on state media and moving to restrict the right to democratic assembly.

It also comes as thousands of demonstrators protested against the governments attempt to control the Supreme Court and undermine the countrys democracy. After the bills were passed in the parliament early Saturday morning, there were mass protests in Warsaw, Polands capital, and more than 100 cities across the country, according to CNN.

The European Union, which Poland joined in 2004, also joined the opposition. It warned that the Polish government could be sanctioned and have its voting rights suspended if it passed the Supreme Court law.

Frans Timmermans, the European Commissions first vice president, said last week that the EU was very close to triggering Article 7, a never-before-used rule that allows the EU to suspend a member countrys voting rights. It was established to ensure that all EU countries respect the common values of the EU, according to Politico.

The US State Department also criticized the bills.

We urge all sides to ensure that any judicial reform does not violate Polands constitution or international legal obligations and respects the principles of judicial independence and separation of powers, the State Department said in a statement on Friday.

Protestors have celebrated the veto as a success, but they are now pushing for the president to also veto the third reform giving the justice minister control over the lower courts.

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Poland's president may have just saved its democracy for now - Vox

Albania's new president has been sworn in during an extraordinary session of parliament.

President Ilir Meta on Monday formally took the post after swearing that he would abide by the Constitution and the laws, respect citizens' rights and freedoms, defend the independence of Albania and serve the interests of the Albanian people.

"For the new president, Albania and democracy will always be the first," he said after taking the oath.

Meta, 48, has been parliament speaker and leader of the junior governing party, the Socialist Movement for Integration, or LSI. Elected by the parliament in April, he gave up the party post to his wife, Monika Kryemadhi.

Albania's president occupies a largely ceremonial role and is limited to two five-year terms.

Meta, an economist, started his political life in 1990 as part of a student protest movement that toppled the country's communist regime. He became the country's youngest prime minister at 30 and also has served as Albania's foreign, integration and economy, trade and energy ministers.

Meta founded the LSI party in 2004. In a few years, he turned it into a kingmaker in the volatile country's politics.

The LSI joined the center-right coalition that ruled Albania from 2009 to 2013. Then it was part of the governing alliance with the Socialists from 2013 to 2017. After the June election, the party is in the opposition.

Meta pledged to promote "the spirit of consensus and dialogue."

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Albania's new president is sworn in, vows to back democracy - ABC News

Demonstrators outside Istanbuls courthouse, where 17 journalists are on trial. Cumhuriyet is a symbol of fearless journalism and its staff should be honoured, not treated as criminals. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

Putting journalists on trial for doing their job, for informing the public or conveying opinion, is never acceptable. Like the canary in the mine, journalists can serve as an early alert to the erosion of the rights of every citizen. Where media freedom is curtailed other freedoms invariably follow. This may be stating the obvious, especially to those of us who enjoy the liberty and protection of democracy. But it is not an uncontested truth.

Freedom of the press is restricted wherever governments claim its exercise might run counter to political imperatives or what they define as national security. Itis a freedom enshrined in UN texts, but it is far from universally recognised as a basic right. It might be tolerated, but only within boundaries subject to whim, in jeopardy whenever those in power feel their interests might be threatened.

Totalitarian regimes (think North Korea) make no claim to upholding media freedom they dont even bother. But semi-dictatorships do pay lip service, at least formally. Regimes that claim to be democracies, and hold elections, often also work methodically to undermine the fundamental tenets of government by the people and for the people; essential pillars, like freedom of information, are gradually dismantled. Turkey today provides a strong example of just this pattern of behaviour.

On Monday, 17 journalists and executives of the independent newspaper Cumhuriyet were put on trial in Istanbul for no other reason than having done their jobs: for writing articles, publishing pictures, using social media, or even just making phone calls. Cumhuriyet is a flagship media organisation, Turkeys oldest daily, founded in 1924 shortly after Ataturk took power. It is the same age as the Republic and it is deeply committed to its founding promise of pluralism, minority rights, peace with the Kurds and investigating corruption; and it has been a harsh critic of Turkeys slide to autocracy in recent years.

It includes some of the best known and respected names in Turkish media, such as the columnist Kadri Gursel, the editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, the cartoonist Musa Kart and the investigative reporter Ahmet Sik. On Monday they were all in court, charged with having links to various terrorist groups. They face prison sentences of up to 43 years. Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, wants to crush this newspaper, just as he is ruthlessly stamping out dissent everywhere that he suspects it exists. Since last years failed coup attempt, 160 journalists have been detained across Turkey, and more than 150 media outlets shut down. At the Hamburg G20 earlier this month, Mr Erdoan warned that journalists also committed crimes and needed to be punished. No evidence has been produced against these journalists to suggest terrorist connections. Cumhuriyet is a symbol of fearless journalism and its staff should be honoured, not treated as criminals.

Mr Erdoan may seem impervious to external pressure, but Europe could shout louder. As one of the defendants, Kadri Gursel, told the court on Monday: I am not here because I knowingly and willingly helped a terrorist organisation, but because Iam an independent, questioning and critical journalist. Its not too late for retreat, even as the country lurches ever more towards dictatorship: the journalists must be set free. The Guardian stands in solidarity withCumhuriyet.

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The Guardian view on Turkish press freedom: standing up for democracy - The Guardian

Michael Nigro/ZUMA Press/NewscomAre millennials increasingly anti-capitalist? That's the question Chicago public radio station WBEZ posed recently to me and The Nation's Sarah Leonard. (You can listen to the whole thing here.)

"The explosive popularity of Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. among younger voters revealed millennials' desire for a new economic system," states the promo for the segment on WBEZ program Worldview. "It's no wonder, as millennials are likely to be economically worse off than their parents or grandparents, especially those who became job-seeking adults after the Great Recession of 2008."

That all makes for a tidy narrative, but it's one built on the flimsiest of evidence. The main data offered during the Worldview segment was a 2016 Harvard poll, in which 51 percent of 18- to 29-year-old respondents had an unfavorable view of capitalism. But as I pointed out at the time (and on the show), the same poll showed that an even greater number of young people59 percenthad an unfavorable view of socialism.

And while 42 percent of the millennials that Harvard surveyed had a positive view of capitalism, just 33 percent had a positive view of socialism.

In an array of other surveys from the past few years, millennial support for socialist and capitalist policies varies widely based on how poll questions are asked. For instance, socialism is much more popular than a government-managed economy, and a free-market economy is more popular than capitalism. And in policy-based polls, millennial economic preferences run the gamut. Yes, many support student-loan forgiveness programs and government-managed health care, but they also express strong support for entrepreneurship, dream of owning their own small businesses, and reject hypothetical government expansions when they come with personal tax hikes. In other words...they look a lot like Americans across the age spectrum.

Polls only tell part of the story, of course, but the part they do tell is not one of an increasingly socialist youth populace. That's probably important to keep in mind as the media coalesces on the Socialist Moment plot-line. Sure, the leftist podcast Chapo Trap House has a lot of fans, and more Twitter avatars now sport red roses (long a socialist symbol). But the subset of American young people poised to notice either of those things is infinitesimally smaller than those who aren't. These are the kinds of affectations and antiheroes that the media latch onto and elevate becauselike the Pepe the Frogtweeting alt-right accounts during the electionthey're very salient in online media and activism worlds. But it's a mistake to take that salience as indicative of actual numbers or influence.

So what about Bernie? Yes, young Americans vastly preferred the socialist-lite Vermont senator to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or any of the GOP-primary candidates. But their alternatives were Clinton, Trump, and the likes of Chris Christie and Jeb Bush. They are the most establishment of The Establishment, with the exception of Trumpwho, like Sanders, benefited from people's desperation to ditch this dynastic, cronyist electoral loop we seemed caught in. That Sanders secured so much millennial support doesn't necessarily equate to a full socialist embrace by these young folks, just that he was the best of exceedingly bad options.

To their credit, more committed and long-term leftists have managed to swing some of Bernie's millennial momentum into post-election momentum for leftist policies more broadly. And young people are certainlynow and at least throughout recent historymore receptive to redistributive economic policies and strict labor regulation. Perhaps the left can capture some of these tepid socialism supporters at the right moment to convert them for good, and this same discussion will look a lot different in a few years.

But I doubt it. Sandersand Trumpseem to me the 2016 heirs of the Hope and Change phenomenon, which propelled not just Barack Obama to 2008 victory but the rise of the Ron Paul movement. At its essence is the idea the system is fundamentally broken and only bold changes can begin to fix it. And the particulars of these bold changes seem to matter less than how convincing their messenger and the movement around them.

I was amazed talking to young people last year how many had been Paul and/or Obama fans in previous election cycles yet were now professing support for Sanders or Trump. The vast political gulfs between these candidates (especially on economic issues) didn't resonate as much as the areas and ways in which they promised reform.

Older folks and the extremely party-loyal tend to take this as youthful flakiness, a side-effect of unserious passions, hastily-conceived beliefs, or a juvenile contrarian streak. But perhaps a lot of younger Americansnot yet sold on the idea that it's one's civic duty to choose the lesser of two evils at election time, nor narcotized by years of show-pony partisanship into believing in vast differences between Democrats and Republicansare reacting rationally to the options presented to them. The good news for libertarians (and socialists) is that millennials are definitely dissatisfied with the centrist Republican-Democrat status quo. But as the 2016 election made clear, there's room for this dissatisfaction to go in all sorts of different and unexpected directions.

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Millennial Socialist Moment Mostly Media Hype - Reason (blog)

Catholic World News

July 24, 2017

The fourth-ranking member of Chinas Communist party said that it is important for the leadership of the Chinese Catholic Church to be firmly in the hands of those who love the nation and the religion.

Yu Zhengsheng made his remarks in a July 19 address in Beijing to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the body by which the government seeks to control the Church.

Interpretations of the teachings and dogmas should match the needs of Chinas development and the great traditional culture, he added, and proactively fit into the Chinese characteristics of a socialist society.

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Leading Communist official says Chinese Catholicism should 'fit into' socialism - Catholic Culture