The Times of Israel: In Tel Aviv, thousands protest Israel’s ‘fascist’ incoming defense minister

An estimated 2,000 people poured into central Tel Aviv on Saturday night to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick of Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman as Israel’s new defense minister in last week’s coalition shakeup. [...]

The rally, organized by the Joint (Arab) List, the left-wing Meretz party, and the left-wing Peace Now organization, was held under the headline “Building the opposition: A new way for Israel.” [...]

The marchers were joined by leftist members of the Knesset, including Meretz leader Zehava Galon and Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh. [...]

In an effort to allay concerns over his appointment, Liberman has promised to act in a “responsible” manner while in office. During a joint press conference Wednesday with Netanyahu, the new defense minister pledged his commitment to “peace and to a final status agreement, and to understanding between us and our neighbors.”

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The Guardian view on disappearing Christianity: suppose it’s gone for ever? Editorial

This decline in self-identification probably has very little to do with belief. The people in the pews have always been heretics with only the vaguest notion of what official doctrines are, and still less of an allegiance to them. The difference is now that they are outside the pews, even if they still hold the same vague convictions about a life spirit or a benevolent purpose to the universe. [...]

Over the last 50 years “religion” has come to stand for the opposite of freedom and fairness. This is partly an outcome of the sexual revolution and of the long and ultimately futile resistance to it mounted by mainstream denominations. “The religious” now appear to young people as obscurantist bigots whose main purpose is to police sexuality, especially female sexuality, in the service of incomprehensible doctrines. Institutional resistance to the rights of women and of gay people was an exceptionally stupid strategy for institutions that depends on the labour of both. But the Church of England was so much a part of the old imperial state that life in post-imperial Britain was never going to be easy. [...]

Such an enormous change is bound to have implications for the rest of us. A post-Christian Europe will of course have a morality but it won’t be Christian morality. It will likely be less universalist. The idea that people have some rights just because they are human, and entirely irrespective of merit, certainly isn’t derived from observation of the world. It arose out of Christianity, no matter how much Christians have in practice resisted it. Although human rights have become embedded in our institutions at the same time as religious observance has been in decline, they could become vulnerable in an entirely post-Christian environment where the collective memory slips from the old moorings inherited from Christian ethics

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Independent: Super-rich Swiss village opts for £200,000 fine instead of accepting 10 refugees

The residents of Switzerland’s alpine resort Oberwil-Lieli, where there are 300 millionaires among a population of 2,200, voted “no” in a referendum over whether to accept just 10 refugees.

Swiss government proposals had outlined a quota across its 26 counties in order deliver on promise to take 50,000 asylum seekers across the country, but Oberwil-Lieli voted by 52 per cent to 48 to reject the refugees. [...]

One resident of the village told MailOnline: “We do not want them here it is as simple as that.

“We have worked hard all our lives and have a lovely village that we do not want it spoiled. We are not suited to take in refugees. They would not fit in here.”

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Business Insider: Why some countries don't smile

He found that in countries like Germany, Switzerland, China, and Malaysia, smiling faces were rated as significantly more intelligent than non-smiling people. But in Japan, India, Iran, South Korea, and—you guessed it—Russia, the smiling faces were considered significantly less intelligent. Even after controlling for other factors, like the economy, there was a strong correlation between how unpredictable a society was and the likelihood they would consider smiling unintelligent. [...]

That’s certainly a satisfying explanation. But it’s worth noting that other studies have found there might be other factors, like how hierarchical or masculine a culture is, that play a greater role in emotional expression—which smiling is certainly a part of. And there’s evidence that some cultures don’t value happiness very highly, which would affect how often people there force themselves to break into a grin.

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