The Atlantic: The Republican Party in Exile

Chief among the many disturbances to the Republican psyche prompted by Trump is the realization on the part of many of the party’s erstwhile mavens that their voters were not nearly as interested in their agenda as they previously believed. The party based proved, in this year’s primaries, not only willing to go along with a candidate who called many of its dogmas into question, but perhaps actively supportive of his heretical ideas. “So much of what you read, what’s in the political agenda, is just so wrong,” Cochrane sputtered, exasperated. “It’s really frustrating. Immigration is good, and trade is good!”

But Republicans don’t have anything they agree on anymore, as the conservative columnist Matt Continetti recently noted. There are Republicans who favor more foreign adventurism and those who favor less of it; those who would drastically shrink the government and those who would consider raising taxes; those who favor gay marriage and those who oppose it. (President Hoover’s great-granddaughter, Margaret Hoover, is a pro-gay-marriage activist.) Nonpartisan analyses of Trump’s tax proposals say it would explode the deficit, something of great concern to budget hawks like Cogan. “But, judging by the candidates’ proposals, I’m not sure there’s agreement that a problem exists,” he said mournfully. [...]

But in other quarters, there are heretical whispers. What if Trump has exposed something fundamental—the hollowness of the party’s old agenda, the troubling priorities of its most reliable voters? What if nobody wants the old-time religion of supply-side economics, or the neoconservatism that produced the Iraq war? Can there be any going back once that realization sets in?

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The Guardian: Russian MP seeks to decriminalise domestic violence

Ultra-conservative Russian MP Yelena Mizulina, best known for successfully introducing for the law banning so-called gay propaganda, introduced a new bill to the State Duma in July proposing the decriminalisation of violence within families.

“Battery carried out toward family members should be an administrative offence,” said Mizulina, who is chair of the Duma committee on family, women and children’s affairs and is now a senator in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament. “You don’t want people to be imprisoned for two years and labelled a criminal for the rest of their lives for a slap.”

Yet according to official Russian government statistics, 40% of all violent crimes are committed within the family. This amounts to 36,000 women being assaulted by their partners every day and 26,000 children being beaten by their parents every year. [...]

The UN has criticised Russia’s record on women’s rights, recommending the adoption of new legislation on domestic violence, the establishment of shelters and other support for women victims of violence.

But campaigners say that the new criminal code amendment does not go far enough. One of the few countries still to adopt a specific domestic violence law, Russia hasn’t signed or ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence which came into force in August 2014.

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Independent: Flood destroys home of Christian lobbyist who preaches God sends natural disasters to punish gays

Mr Perkins has a long and well-documented history of disparaging gay people.

Writing on the FRC website, he said: “While activists like to claim that pedophilia [sic] is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”

He has also claimed homosexuality is incompatible with evolution and has likened it to a drug or alcohol addiction.  [...]

In 2012, a group of Muslim clerics joined some Christian preachers in attributing the superstorm Sandy which devastated areas of America, Haiti and Cuba on the wrath of God.

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The Atlantic: What Do Women Leaders Have in Common?

But despite the vastly different cultural and political contexts that these women arose in—and the roughly 20 other female heads-of-state around the world—is there something deeper that they share?  Answering that question could reveal not the fundamental, essential nature of female leadership, but how women in leadership are perceived around the world, and perhaps more importantly, the obstacles women continue to face in their quest for equal representation. [...]

“Every single one of them talked about finding their voices and their confidence at dinner-table conversations with their families. Their parents talked about politics, about what was happening in the community, and when the women had something to say, their parents didn’t hush them,” Madsen said. In the UAE, where men and women were often separated, women that Madsen interviewed pointed to the role of their fathers in encouraging them to speak up. “Every woman I spoke to said her father would bring home books for her to read when he traveled, which most other people didn’t have.” [...]

Another conclusion from Madsen’s work is that women’s leadership development doesn’t look like men’s. “Men are more strategic and [tend to follow] a more linear path to becoming a leader. Women’s paths are much more emergent. They tend to not necessarily look ahead and think, ‘I want to be on top.’ Women would point to a number of experiences—motherhood, or working with a non-profit, or sitting on a board, as shaping their path to becoming leaders,” she said. Madsen likens this to a “patchwork quilt” of experiences—an aggregate that is more clear and cohesive together than as distinct parts. [...]

Another reason that women leaders may have some similarities is that they tend to be held to higher standards than their male counterparts, perhaps even more so in countries where there is dramatic gender inequality. Jalalzai has found this in her research. “We have to acknowledge that men are not faced with the suspicion that they can’t be good leaders simply because they are men,” she explained. “Tomorrow someone might say President Barack Obama was a complete failure, but no one is going to conclude from that that all men are bad leaders. So there’s a certain type of privilege that your success or failure is not going to reflect on your entire sex.”

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Quartz: The Netherlands is considering a ban on selling gas-powered cars in the next 10 years

The Dutch government is debating the possibility of banning new gas and diesel cars from 2025. The initial proposal, which was brought forward by the Labor Party, called for an outright ban of all petrol and diesel cars, but was eventually modified so the ban only affected the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. Traditional cars already in use will still run on the streets.

The proposal has since passed in the lower house of the Netherlands’ parliament. It now needs to pass through the Dutch senate. [...]

The Netherlands already has one of the lowest levels of CO2 emissions from new cars in the European Union. The country has seen a recent surge in electric car sales, which reached an all-time high last December.

The Netherlands isn’t the only country mulling over drastic measures to cut down air pollution. In June, Norway’s main political parties debated a similar plan to stop selling gasoline-powered cars by 2025. Unsurprisingly, Tesla founder Elon Musk was ecstatic about the proposed ban.

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Al Jazeera: Hungary: Unearthing Suleiman the Magnificent's tomb

Hungarian and Turkish researchers working here believe that they have found the tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent, the greatest ruler of the Ottoman Empire, who died at Szigetvar in early September 1566 - almost 450 years ago. [...]

The victory was pyrrhic, however: So heavy were the Ottoman losses that they abandoned their bid to take Vienna, an outcome that later prompted French diplomat Cardinal Richelieu to call Szigetvar "the battle that saved civilization".

Fearing the reaction of troops to the death of a sultan, who had ruled for four decades, Suleiman's aides kept his demise secret and smuggled his corpse back to Constantinople for burial at the Suleymaniye Mosque that he had commissioned.

But the weather was hot and the road home was long, so Suleiman's heart and other organs were removed here and, as legend has it, interred in a golden coffin beneath his last encampment. [...]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who has been dubbed a "neo-Ottoman" due to his reverence for the nation's imperial past and desire to extend its geopolitical influence - plans to attend a commemoration in Szigetvar on September 7.

He will join Hungarian and Croatian leaders - the Habsburg forces who defended Szigetvar to the end were mostly Croats - for the climax of the 450th-anniversary events that are both thrilling and daunting for the town of 10,000 people.

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