Los Angeles Times: Faith-based colleges say anti-discrimination bill would infringe on their religious freedom

“These universities essentially have a license to discriminate, and students have absolutely no recourse,” Lara said Tuesday in a hearing before the Assembly Higher Education Committee approved the bill. “Universities are supposed to be a place where students feel safe and can learn without fear of discrimination or harassment.”

Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell) cited standards of conduct at some schools that prohibit same-sex relationships and cross-dressing. Lara said enforcement of such policies could be challenged in court under his proposal.

Some 32 private universities could be affected by the bill, according to Kristen F. Soares, president of the Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities, which has been representing many campuses. [...]

The universities most affected are those that get government funds or enroll students who receive state financial aid, including Biola, Fresno Pacific University, Simpson University and Jessup.

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Quartz: If you want to be a better person, find something to do outside of work

Our hobbies tell a great deal about us and our world: about how we choose to present our lives to others; about the burdensome, expectation-freighted nature of free time; about our slippery relationship with the exigencies of productivity in late-capitalist society. Hobbies are a corner of our existence over which we have the impression of control, a sphere in which we feel we can achieve a kind of mastery usually denied to us in our wider personal and professional lives. In All the Names, José Saramago says that hobbyists act out of “metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world.” [...]

This seriousness seems central to understanding the function of our hobbies. We bring to bear upon the objects of our obsession energy, time, and money, often to the exclusion of other more pressing demands. If we think of Baudrillard’s division of collectors into the young and the old, we might account for the seriousness of the older collector by noting that often the nostalgia involved in a hobby is to do with the wish to reanimate an earlier incarnation of the hobbyist. I’m aware of this with my birdwatching (and might, by-the-by, note that ornithology is a form of collecting: we collect and file our avian encounters). I am always in touch, when I am birdwatching, with the figure of myself in short-trousers, aged eight or nine, lying in a field on the South Downs and staring wonderstruck into a swallow-strewn sky. [...]

There’s a different interpretation of hobbies, though. We’re increasingly recognizing that Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs got it wrong when it relegated hobbies to a distant corner of “self-actualization” (the fifth and least important of the needs.) Hobbies are of central importance to our psychological well-being. A recent study by Kevin Eschelman at San Francisco State University found that workers recovered more quickly from the demands of their working lives if allowed to indulge in hobbies in their free time. Similarly, Google discovered that its 20% rule–allowing employees to spend 20% of their work time pursuing projects of their own choosing–led to more focused, productive employees.

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The Guardian view on Italy: running cities could take the shine off Five Star

Five Star stands out among other European anti-establishment movements in that it can not easily be characterised as either left or right. It openly says it is neither. Its programme mixes privatisation with universal income for the poor, as well as a promise to hold a referendum on the euro. It promotes direct, online democracy and criticises all mainstream parties as a single, corrupt entity. There are clear parallels with Podemos in Spain – whose prospects will be measured in this Sunday’s general election – as well as with earlier versions of Syriza, in Greece. But one important contrast is that, although it is anti-globalisation, Five Star rejects references to radical left ideology. A further, deeper difference is that Beppe Grillo’s antics have included inflammatory remarks about immigrants “swamping Rome”, and recently, a racist, pathetic joke about London’s mayor Sadiq Khan. In the European parliament, Five Star representatives sit alongside Ukip’s.

Nor is the spectacular success of Five Star on Sunday entirely disconnected from the old revolving-door politics of Italian politics. Its victory in Rome and especially Turin was helped by the fact that all the rightwing parties, including the extremist Northern League, officially rallied behind Five Star candidates to destabilise Mr Renzi. Despite the much-delayed return of economic growth in Italy, many citizens appear to have become weary of a prime minister whose optimistic tweets – “this time it’s working” or “Italy is back” – can grate. The gulf with grim day-to-day experience of the transport system or rubbish collection has taken a toll. Mr Renzi will no doubt attempt to fight back in the summer months, pointing out that the easy populist slogans of even the more sincere Five Star candidates won’t do much for the country’s grittiest problems. Taking the shine off Five Star is a precondition for Italy beginning to devise more serious solutions.

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The Guardian: Europhobia: a very British problem

"It could not consent to the introduction into our national life of a device so alien to all our traditions as the referendum,” Clement Attlee said, “which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and fascism.” In the spring of 1945 Winston Churchill was still prime minister, leading the wartime coalition, and Attlee, the Labour leader, was his deputy. A general election was overdue, after the parliament, elected 10 years earlier, had artificially prolonged its own life. Now Churchill suggested prolonging it still further, and putting this proposal to the electorate in a then-unheard-of referendum. That brisk rebuff from Attlee settled the matter. In the summer, parliament was dissolved, a general election was held, Labour won in a landslide, and Attlee replaced Churchill at No 10. But his words were not forgotten. [...]

Something far deeper is at stake in this week’s vote. A wave of resentment against the elites is sweeping Europe, and in Britain this summer, as John Harris has written, we have seen a working-class revolt. The referendum is a form of displacement activity. It’s about something other – or much more – than what it is supposed to be about.

Those forces, for which Euroscepticism is a wholly inadequate word, range from crude racism and nativist dislike of immigrants, to humble patriotism and yearning for a maybe imaginary lost age. The referendum turns not so much on the national interest as on a national idea. [...]

Today, since the empire has gone, we no longer fight great wars, and we have ceased to be a Protestant country, one might expect the Britons described by Colley and their Britishness to have dwindled away. To some extent this has happened, as the political fracturing of the United Kingdom demonstrates. But Deutsch’s two conditions for constructing the idea of nationhood were amply fulfilled in the 20th century, when two great wars gave the British fresh opportunity to hate their neighbours and to misunderstand their own history.

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Reuters: Italians shifted billions abroad last year to avoid tax - economy minister

Pier Carlo Padoan said authorities had documented 444 separate cases in which 30 billion euros ($33.7 billion) were moved out of Italy last year.

Of that, 21 billion euros came from Italian individuals and firms setting up false foreign residencies, looking to pay lower taxes in other countries, including offshore tax havens.

During the first five months of this year, another 220 cases of fake foreign residences and transfers abroad "in particular to areas known for the lack of transparency of their financial systems" were discovered, finance police said in a statement. [...]

Padoan, speaking at a commemoration ceremony for the finance police, put a spotlight on the sums that continue to be shifted out of the country after Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said last month that a "voluntary disclosure" tax amnesty scheme implemented last year might be adopted again to raise revenue.

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The Guardian: We've never had so many refugees – nor been so unwelcoming to them

The United Nations reported this week that in 2015, 65.3 million people were refugees or forcibly displaced in their own countries by war and persecution. This is the largest number ever recorded – and a testament to massive failures of both the international community and the United States in dealing with this crisis. [...]

Compounding this is the fact that most rich countries are failing to do their share to alleviate suffering. Most of those who have crossed borders are being accommodated in neighboring countries lacking substantial economic resources – such as the Somalis in Kenya and the Syrians and Iraqis in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. A few well-to-do countries, including Sweden, Germany and Canada, have acted generously. Others, among them Britain, Australia and the US, which distinguished themselves at other times by welcoming refugees, have now all but closed their doors.

My own country, the US, is the worst offender on both counts. It led the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without a legitimate casus belli. It set in motion the events that produced immense forcible displacement in the region. Also, it had the capacity to establish a protected zone in Syria, like the one it established for the Iraqi Kurds to protect them against Saddam Hussein following the Gulf war. It declined to do so, a failure that was publicly criticized by state department dissenters a few days ago.

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Time: Pro-Choice Catholics Are Praying SCOTUS Will Protect Abortion Rights

But these laws have made it much harder for poor women, women of color and residents of rural areas to get access to abortions. Women who need these services often face more hurdles when seeking a timely appointment with one of the few clinics left open in their state. With clinic closures come longer driving distances, which require reliable transportation and money for gas or fares. In states with waiting periods, patients must make multiple trips to the clinic, often over several days, before they are able to get the care they seek. These burdens are onerous enough before factoring in the need to take time off work and find dependable childcare. With the clock ticking from the moment a woman discovers she is pregnant until the day she can no longer obtain a first trimester abortion, each delay can be stressful. [...]

I am far from the only one. Only 10% of U.S. Catholics agree with the Vatican’s position that abortion should be illegal in every case, and Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as other women: according to a 2010 Guttmacher survey, 28% of women who had an abortion self-identified as Catholic, compared to the 27% of all women of reproductive age who have had an abortion. Catholic bishops who collude with anti-abortion groups to promote these restrictive laws are betraying their own flock and leaving poor women—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—floundering in a stormy and inhospitable sea.

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The Atlantic: The Growing Risk of a War in Space

When China shot down one of its own weather satellites in January 2007, the event was, among other things, a clear demonstration to the United States that China could wage war beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. In the decade since, both China and the United States have continued to pursue space-based armaments and defensive systems. A November 2015 “Report to Congress,” for example, filed by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (PDF), specifically singles out China’s “Counterspace Program” as a subject of needed study. China’s astral arsenal, the report explains, most likely includes “direct-ascent” missiles, directed-energy weapons, and also what are known as “co-orbital antisatellite systems.” [...]

One of the most ominous implications of co-orbital antisatellite warfare is the difficulty of determining what is—or is not—a weapon. Indeed, as military journalist David Axe has written, “It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit … With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless.” This raises the prospect of long-duration sleeper weapons already in orbit, their actual military purpose yet to be revealed. They are weapons-in-waiting. [...]

Existing international treaties and conventions do not provide much guidance. Aside from prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons and other “weapons of mass destruction” in space, there is very little to hold back future development of offworld armaments. Even the tungsten rod program, because it does not entail actual explosives, falls outside this already scant regulation.

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Jakub Marian: Military expenditures per capita and as % of GDP in Europe

The following two maps show how much European countries spent on their military in 2015, per capita and as a percentage of GDP. The maps are based on a database by SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). Note that I used my own population data, so there may be tiny differences between their per capita figures and mine.

The following map shows the amount of money every person (including children) in a given country spent on the military (in the form of taxes) converted to USD at the market exchange rate, without taking purchasing power into account.

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The Guardian: Should you trust the pollsters or the bookies on the EU referendum?

According to the opinion polls, Thursday night’s referendum will be tight: surveys generally showed the Leave camp ahead until late last week, when the Remain camp clawed back some ground.

But bookmakers, who have already taken in record volumes of bets on this vote, see things very differently. Across the leading purveyors of political betting, average odds currently hover at around 1/4 implying an 80% probability that remain will win. So who should you trust? [...]

In a report last week, a London School of Economics professor of political science says that between 20% and 30% of voters do not make up their minds until the final week of an election campaign. Long-term polling data in fact shows a steady decline in voters’ certainty, or a steady increase in their openness to persuasion. Since 1983, Ipsos Mori has been asking respondents who declare their voting intention whether that intention is certain or if they might change their mind.

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