So much in our culture emphasises long-term love; it may be time to hear a word or two in praise of the short-term approach.
30 June 2016
Slate: It Can’t Happen Here
These numbers suggest that anti-immigration sentiment drove support for the referendum but wasn’t enough to pass it. On the most generous interpretation, 81 percent of leavers were driven by migration concerns. That translates to 42 percent of the electorate. If you define the anti-immigration vote more narrowly, it was about 30 percent to 45 percent of leavers, which works out to 16 percent to 23 percent of the electorate. You could argue that people who expressed concern about “sovereignty,” “Britain’s ability to make its own laws,” and “Britain’s right to act independently” were really just anti-immigration voters. But that slights their legitimate grievances about the British–EU relationship—an arrangement for which there’s no clear parallel in the United States. And even if you include these people, they don’t boost the anti-immigration “Leave” vote above 40 percent. [...]
These numbers don’t mollify some of Trump’s critics. They worry that pundits have consistently underestimated Trump and that his victory in the Republican primaries, followed by the Brexit vote, shows broad support for his nativist agenda. Brexit suggests that “victory is possible” when “hostility to migrants” is coupled with anti-intellectualism, writes Jonathan Freedland in the New York Review of Books. “There are lessons here aplenty for Americans contemplating their own appointment with nationalist, nativist populism in November.”
That’s true. Brexit is a warning, and we did underestimate Trump before primary season. But in the American electorate as a whole, as opposed to the GOP, there’s no majority for Trump’s views on immigration or ethnicity. [...]
The poll’s GOP respondents broadly support Trump’s agenda. Seventy-three percent say immigration from predominantly Muslim countries is too high or shouldn’t be allowed at all. Sixty-eight percent say the same about immigration from the Middle East. Sixty-six percent want a wall on the Mexican border, 66 percent want a ban on Syrian refugees, 64 percent want a temporary halt to entry by foreign Muslims, and 60 percent favor “a serious effort to deport all illegal immigrants.”
IFLScience: Cracking The Mystery Of The ‘Worldwide Hum’
Deming began by describing the standard history: The Hum was first documented in the late 1960s, around Bristol, England. It first appeared in the United States in the late 1980s, in Taos, New Mexico.
He then examined the competing hypotheses for the source of the Hum. Many have pointed to the electric grid or cellphone towers. But this theory is dismissed on two grounds: cellphones didn’t exist in the 1960s, and the frequency emitted by both cell towers and the electric grid can be easily blocked by metal enclosures.
He wondered whether mass hysteria was to blame, a psychological phenomenon in which rumor and “collective delusions” lead to the appearance of physical ailments for which there’s no medical explanation. The fact that so many people have researched the Hum on their own, using a search engine – rather than hearing about it from some other person – moves the conversation away from delusion and hysteria spread by word of mouth. [...]
The latest update of the Hum Map, from June 6, presents roughly 10,000 map and data points, and we’ve already made some notable findings.
For example, we’ve found that the mean and median age of Hum hearers is 40.5 years, and 55 percent of hearers are men. This goes against the widely repeated theory that the Hum mainly affects middle-aged and older women.
Interestingly, there are eight times as many ambidextrous people among hearers as there are in the general population. As more data are collected from Hum hearers, I hope that specialists in demographics and inferential statistics will be able to generate more detailed result.
Vox: Europe needs a real opposition party
o save itself, the European Union is going to need a real opposition political party: one that can formulate a coherent alternate policy agenda and give dissatisfied voters the opportunity to “throw the bums out” without tearing down the entire institutional edifice they inhabit. [...]
The notion of a “loyal opposition” is in many ways the key innovation in the institutionalization of democracy. The idea is that an organized political movement may object stridently to the agenda of the current governing regime without being seen as disloyal to the state or the nation. This means that incumbent rulers face meaningful electoral accountability. If voters are displeased with their performance, a rival team waits in the wings ready and eager to take over.
Traditionally we think of a loyal opposition as being absent because of repression by the rulers. But the European Union suffers essentially from the opposite problem — too much consensus. [...]
In institutional terms, developing a real opposition party would also require entrenching the idea that the European Commission should be accountable to the European Parliament in the way that a normal national cabinet is accountable to the national parliament.
The Atlantic: The Psychology of Voting to Leave the EU
These feelings help explain why immigration was such a controversial issue during the Brexit campaign, just as it is currently in the U.S. No doubt, xenophobia and racism were motivators for a minority of voters. Jo Cox, a member of Parliament and Remain advocate, was horrifically killed by an avowed racist during the campaign, and attacks on immigrants and minorities spiked 57 percent in the days after the vote. But for the majority of Leave voters, the immigration issue was perceived as one of reciprocity and a loss of control. Rightly or wrongly, many voters felt immigrants have been getting a better deal in terms of jobs, benefits, and public services than they were. They felt immigrants were unfairly “jumping the queue.” And they felt the country had lost control of its borders.
The reason the Remain camp lost was that they didn’t understand the game they were playing. They thought they were playing a rational game, appealing to people’s pocketbooks and sense of security. They fought their campaign with facts and figures and by highlighting the risks of Brexit. But the voters were playing the Ultimatum Game. Leave understood this and fought with promises to “take back control.” Like the Remain campaign, Hillary Clinton is also playing the rational game, appealing to voters’ economic and security self-interest. Donald Trump is the weapon of the altruistic punishers. Clinton needs to recognize that voters are not playing the same game she is. She needs to convince voters that she hears them and will restore the fundamental promises of capitalism and democracy. If she doesn’t, November 11 might be as shocking a day as June 23.
The Guardian: Turkey paying a price for Erdoğan's wilful blindness to Isis threat
The basic problem is that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, believes indigenous Kurds in those areas and in south-east Turkey pose a bigger threat than does Isis. This perceived ambivalence has led to numerous accusations of tacit Turkish support for or, worse still, complicity in Isis’s activities since the group swept to prominence in 2014 – all flatly denied by Erdoğan and his ministers.
The mostly unproven accusations, listed in a research paper published by New York’s Columbia University, include claims that predominantly Sunni Muslim Turkey has covertly supplied, trained, financed and assisted the recruitment of Isis’s Sunni fighters in their battles with the Kurds, with Iraq’s Shia-led government, and with the Syrian government, which Turkey opposes. [...]
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, leader of the main Turkish opposition Republican People’s party (CHP), produced documents and transcripts in 2014 purporting to show that Turkey supplied weapons to terror groups inside Syria. It was suggested the arms went to ethnic Turkmen fighters opposed to Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, not Isis.
Erdoğan’s government has also been accused of supporting – by what means is unclear – an al-Qaida-affiliated Syrian rebel force, Jabhat al-Nusra, which is said to be backed by Turkey’s ally Saudi Arabia but which is proscribed as a terrorist outfit by the US and Britain, also Ankara’s allies.
The Guardian: Brexit: ‘A frenzy of hatred’: how to understand Brexit racism
True Vision, a police-funded hate-crime-reporting website, has seen a 57% increase in reporting between Thursday and Sunday, compared with the same period last month. This is not a definitive national figure – reports are also made directly to police stations and community groups – but Stop Hate UK, a reporting charity, has also seen an increase, while Tell Mama, an organisation tackling Islamophobia, which usually deals with 40-45 reports a month, received 33 within 48-72 hours.
In Great Yarmouth, Colin Goffin, who is vice-principal of an educational trust, was told about taunts and jeers being directed at eastern European workers by 10am on Friday morning – just hours after the results of the referendum had been announced. Goffin went to see a Kosovan-born friend, the manager of a car wash, to discuss the vote. In the Norfolk coastal town, 72% had voted to leave. [...]
Reports of xenophobia and racism have piled up in the media: the firebombing of a halal butchers in Walsall, graffiti on a Polish community centre in London and laminated cards reading: “No more Polish vermin” apparently posted through letterboxes in Huntingdon. Asked about the rise in hate crimes during PMQs on Wednesday, David Cameron said the government would be publishing a hate-crime action plan. [...]
Stop Hate UK’s Rose Simkin cautions that about 80-99% of hate crimes go unreported, making their prevalence hard to estimate. Woolley thinks this could be “because they want to cleanse themselves of the experience and forget that it happened”. Bagguley is confident that after a spike in incidents, things will calm down. Yet he also warns that if these attacks go unchallenged, the damage to our social fabric could be lasting, making attacks more frequent in the future. “It is the residue that is the problem. If people get away with [racist attacks], then the next time there is a reason to have a go, they will.”
AP: Trump's 'America First' echoes old isolationist rallying cry
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump boils down his foreign policy agenda to two words: "America First."
For students of U.S. history, that slogan harkens back to the tumultuous presidential election of 1940, when hundreds of thousands of Americans joined the anti-war America First Committee. That isolationist group's primary goal was to keep the United States from joining Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany, which by then had overrun nearly all of Europe. But the committee is also remembered for the unvarnished anti-Semitism of some of its most prominent members and praise for the economic policies of Adolf Hitler. [...]
Historians told The Associated Press there are some ideological parallels between Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail and the positions taken 75 years ago by members of the American First Committee. Then as now, an economic downturn fanned popular resentment toward immigration, especially by those who were not perceived as traditional Americans.
"Building a wall is about the illusion that there can be a physical safeguard to prevent intrusion from alien forces," said Bruce Miroff, a professor who teaches on American politics and the presidency at the State University of New York at Albany. "America First was tapping into suspicion of an ominous other who threatened the American way of life. At that time, it was about Jews. With Trump, it's Muslims and fear of terrorism."
Independent: Spanish PM opposes EU talks with Scotland
The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said he will oppose any attempts to hold talks with Scotland over its EU membership in the wake of Brexit.
Speaking as Nicola Sturgeon arrived on the second day of an emergency summit in Brussels, Mr Rajoy said that "if the UK goes, Scotland goes too".
Mr Rajoy, who is the acting prime minister after Spain's inconclusive election results at the weekend, said he was "extremely against" the idea of taking Scotland as an independent party. [...]
Ms Sturgeon was due to meet Mr Juncker on Wednesday evening after conversations with the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz.
And after that meeting Mr Schulz told reporters she was "at an early stage of this process".
"I have set out Scotland’s desire to protect our relationship with the European Union, I don’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead for us in seeking to find a path," she said.
Reuters: Supreme Court refuses to hear gay-sex ban challenge
A number of well-known lesbian, gay and bisexual Indians had argued that Section 377 of India's penal code, which prohibits "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal", undermined their fundamental rights by failing to protect their sexual preferences.
"The Supreme Court refused to hear the matter and asked the petitioners to approach the Chief Justice of India," Arvind Dattar, a lawyer for one of the petitioners, told Reuters.
India's chief justice is already hearing a separate case to strike down the ban, and the top court has previously argued that only parliament has the power to change Section 377.
AP: EU to Britain: No access to single market without migration
Tusk convened a special EU summit on Sept. 16 in Slovakia's capital Bratislava to work out a plan to keep the EU united. There's a widespread sense that the post-war project to foster peace via trade has become too bureaucratic and undemocratic with not enough meaning for its 500 million citizens. The initial EU founding nations in the west lean toward a tighter, closer union, while newer nations in the east want to keep more control with national governments — notably of their borders. [...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the lesson from Britain's departure isn't necessarily either deeper integration or returning more powers to national governments. She said Wednesday: "this is not about more or less Europe as a principle, but about achieving better results." She said that combating youth unemployment, for example, could involve both scrapping EU directives and deepening European cooperation. [...]
Vodafone, one of Britain's biggest companies, will consider moving its group headquarters because of the vote. The company, which says a majority of its customers are in other EU countries, said in a statement Wednesday that EU membership had been an important factor in its growth, and that free movement of people, goods and capital were integral to any pan-European business.
Salon: The pope’s moral confusion: He should be applauded for his pro-LBGT remarks — but he didn’t go far enough
It’s nice to hear the pope say this, and he ought to be commended for it, but let’s not shower him with praise just yet. First, his distinction between the Church and its members is misleading, and obscures the role of dogmas. The Church is a constellation of the people and the institutions that make it up. It’s individuals who decide and act. It wasn’t “the Church” that used indulgences to pick the pockets of believers, it was Catholics. It wasn’t “the Church” that burned heretics at the stake, it was Catholics. It wasn’t “the Church” that supported fascism in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia, it was Catholics. And it’s not “the Church” that preaches the sinfulness of condom use in AIDS-ravaged Africa, it’s Catholics, including Pope Francis. But the church is culpable for these crimes insofar as it perpetuates the beliefs that motivate them.
The pope is a good man doing his best to turn an archaic institution around, but there’s no avoiding an ugly truth: Christians condemn gay people not because of what they do but because of who they are, and they do so for purely theological reasons. Millions of Christians offer solidarity and love to LGBT people, but that’s an ethical intuition they bring to their faith from outside it. They do what most decent religious people do: pirouette around the parts of the Bible they find violent or regressive. [...]
The Church’s position on homosexuality illustrates why it’s so important to link ethical claims to the reality of human suffering. Religious people often confuse doctrinal obedience with ethical responsibility, but these are different things. There is no ethical reason to judge a gay person on account of his or her homosexuality. And yet religion gives good people bad reasons to do just that. When Francis said gay people need pastoral care, what he means is that they’re fallen and need spiritual guidance. But that assumes they’re broken or defective. What gay people need is what all people need: love. What Francis offered was judgment masquerading as compassion.
The Guardian: UK voted for Brexit – but is there a way back?
The British government has not yet said how parliament should implement the decision to leave. It is not clear, for instance, if and what laws would have to be passed to put the referendum decision to leave the EU into effect.
At present, there is not a majority for Britain to leave the EU in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords. Indeed, given a free vote, the unelected Lords would probably reject Brexit by a margin of six to one. [...]
More plausibly, the Commons might set conditions on the renegotiation, including access to the single market, membership of the European Free Trade Association or the preservation of the union with Scotland. The opportunities to filibuster and delay are innumerable. It is, for instance, disputed whether triggering article 50 requires the authority of parliament. Most legal opinion suggests not, but political necessity may require the endorsement of parliament. [...]
All these scenarios, however, are inherently speculative – and require an accumulator bet coming good – but if you think it is not being discussed in Whitehall and Westminster, you are mistaken.
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