The Guardian: Jeremy Corbyn’s dismissal of Nato is a step too far

What on earth is Jeremy Corbyn on about? When asked at last night’s leadership debate in Solihull whether as prime minister he would aid a Nato ally under attack, he said no. “I would want to avoid us getting involved militarily. I want to achieve a world in which we don’t need to go to war.” The implication in this is that Corbyn wants to withdraw Britain from Nato. [...]

This is quite separate from the issue of nuclear weapons. When Corbyn was thought to oppose a British nuclear deterrent I cheered. A potential prime minister was joining most thoughtful defence analysts in deploring the retention of these archaic and unusable weapons. Maintaining a nuclear deterrent is obscene and wildly extravagant. Nuclear bombs are toys for boys and lolly for lobbyists. A sensible opposition should ask instead what sort of defence Britain really needs in the 21st century. [...]

Corbyn could sensibly have questioned Nato’s current purpose, not least its inexcusable support for America’s retaliatory war in Afghanistan. He could have warned against giving defensive assurances to non-Nato states along Russia’s borders. He could even have questioned the whole purpose of an alliance forged in the cold war, perhaps one that is no longer fit for purpose.

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Al Jazeera: Racism on the rise in UK after Brexit vote: Watchdog

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said in its latest report on Thursday that race was the motive in 82 percent of hate crimes recorded in England and Wales with the two nations witnessing an "unprecedented spike" since Britain voted to leave the European Union on 23 June. [...]

The report highlighted a 49 percent increase in long-term unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds from ethnic minority communities since 2011, compared with a fall of 2 percent for young white people.

Black people remained much more likely to be victims of crime, including murder, and to be more harshly treated in the criminal justice system. [...]

While the UN committee's review found that Britain has some of the world's strongest anti-discrimination legislation, it also "showed the gap between that legislation and the reality of continuing racial inequality in the UK", Khan said.

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Los Angeles Times: Have Jews abandoned their committment to social justice?

A coalition of groups active in the Black Lives Matter movement recently published a platform filled with demands. Most were important, like an end to mass incarceration. A few were silly, like low-interest loans to promote food co-ops. And one included a passage seemingly designed to enrage Jews. By way of discussing foreign aid, it claims that Israel is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” [...]

But the major issue I see is that many Jews who will use this platform as an excuse to reject Black Lives Matter aren’t much interested in African American issues, anyway. Despite our history of social action—including vocal participation in the 1960s civil rights movement—Jews have become increasingly detached from the needs of oppressed people, of all races. [...]

For most of Jewish history, we were relatively poor. But in the United States today, only ethnic Indians rival Jews for household income or education levels. With rising affluence, Jews left urban centers, where they knew people of many ethnicities, for suburbs. Our synagogues followed, and every major American city has a synagogue — often many synagogues — that abandoned an old, downtown building for a new suburban campus. [...]

ut in general, we write checks from our affluent enclaves, vote Democratic, and call it a day. We worry about the safety of Israel, and Jews in anti-Semitic Europe, but have basically given up creating structural change in America. That doesn’t excuse ugly anti-Semitism in Black Lives Matter, but it makes us poor messengers for a better way.

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Vox: Americans should eat less meat, but they’re eating more and more

For most of the past decade, meat consumption in the United States was falling. In 2014, Americans ate 18 percent less beef, 10 percent less pork, and 1.4 percent less chicken than they did in 2005, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

For environmental, health, and animal welfare advocates, this was great news. Surely it meant that efforts to raise awareness about the disturbing impacts of meat production were inspiring people to cut back on hamburgers and bacon. As Paul Shapiro, vice president of Farm Animal Protection for the Humane Society of the United States, wrote in 2012, "The pressure is being felt all over, and for the first time in decades, our overconsumption of meat is beginning to get reined in." [...]

According to a recent analysis from Rabobank, a Dutch bank, consumption of meat in the United States rose by 5 percent in 2015 — the biggest increase in 40 years. And, the author notes, in the coming years per-person meat eating is expected to reach highs not seen in more than a decade. [...]

We now know that the de facto industrial model of raising livestock has had all kinds of negative impacts: It’s a major contributor to climate change, antibiotic resistance, water pollution, and air pollution. The people who raise and kill the animals often work in unjust, unhealthy conditions. Feeding the billions of animals we raise for meat with corn and soy takes up precious land and puts pressure on wildlife. And we have good evidence that high meat consumption is linked to risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some forms of cancer, and premature death. [...]

As food historian Rachel Laudan has argued, eating meat is the expression of being modern, progressive, and civilized: "Here’s the challenge of meat for those who want to persuade people to eat less. ... For many in the United States and for many, many more around the world, meat eating is not just matter of taste or the environment, it’s a foothold, it’s a stake in the rich, modern world. It’s a sign that they too can leave behind the hierarchical societies of the past and be full citizens and enjoy what we already enjoy in the United States."

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Al Jazeera: Tote bag designers: Idea came from our reality as Arabs

Two Palestinian graphic designers saw one of their tote bag designs go viral after it was photographed on a train in Germany's capital, Berlin.

In simple bold Arabic script, the text on the bag translates to "This text has no meaning except to scare people who don't understand it". [...]

It came from our reality because we are Arabs - Palestinians living in Israel. There's sort of a common fear or misunderstanding of the Arabic language here. So it was an in-your-face message to make fun of people who are scared of the Arabic language ... and are afraid of it. Because people who don't think much connect it directly to, you know what [terrorism].  [...]

In Europe now there are bad conditions with the fear of Arabs and terrorism, and Arabic is obviously connected to that in their eyes. So it's kind of the same thing  Arabic language is being victimised and the whole Arab nation is being victimised and automatically related to terrorism, which is wrong.

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Jacobin Magazine: Why They Invaded

I became ambassador to Uzbekistan shortly after the invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. The British government had a policy of collaboration with the Uzbek dictatorship, which provided an airbase for the Americans to operate into Afghanistan.

However, I discovered that this policy of collaboration not only included downplaying the terrible human rights abuses of that dictatorship, but also intelligence collaboration, by which I mean that our government was knowingly getting intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers, very often from the torture of dissidents who had no connection with terrorism whatsoever. [...]

For example, when I was on the Foreign Office South Africa desk during apartheid, everyone knew that Thatcher was very supportive of the existing regime. The official government line at that time was that Mandela was a terrorist and he should be in prison.

There would have absolutely no point in me drafting minutes saying “he is a good man and we should be campaigning to get him out,” because they wouldn’t get anywhere.

So I drafted minutes explaining that it was in the British “business interest” to secure his release, arguing that it would be best not to annoy the black community in South Africa, because one day they might be in power and we would have to deal with them to make money. That’s the only kind of argument that would get anywhere with the government. [...]

That was part of our attempt to push back against Mi6 and the government. There was a lot of that kind of resistance. And around 120 former ambassadors also signed a letter opposing the Iraq War, which was also the view of the serving ambassadors.

But one of the fascinating things about all of this was the unwillingness of people to push things to the point of losing their job. [...]

Motivation is something we all wondered about at the time. It seemed to me to be primarily a matter of Tony Blair’s huge desire for Britain to be seen as a great power and important in the world, and the way to do that was to be indispensably connected to the United States. I don’t think it was much more detailed than that.

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The Atlantic: Donald Trump Isn't Relying on Faith Alone

Typically, a religious outreach director for the Republican presidential nominee has a fairly easy job. In past elections, evangelical Protestants and Mormons have been a shoo-in. Conservative Catholics have often supported Republican candidates, as have some of their more progressive counterparts. All that staffer has had to do is host a few events and slip some religiously coded language into the candidate’s speeches and the job is done.

But Trump is turning out to be a little more complicated nominee when it comes to religious voters. Trump currently has more support from white evangelicals than Mitt Romney did four years ago, but some conservative Christian leaders vocally oppose him and are encouraging their constituents to follow suit. He has less support from Catholic voters and Mormons than Romney did in 2012, and his struggles with the latter group means that even Utah may now be in play.

Trump hasn’t exactly helped matters with his religious blunders on the campaign trail: placing money in a church communion plate, being unable to cite his favorite Bible verse, admitting he’s never asked God for forgiveness, and committing his now-infamous “Two Corinthians” gaffe. It didn’t help that he picked a fight with the pope, either.

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Deutsche Welle: Russian mufti: Carry out genital mutilation on 'all women'

"All women should be cut, so that there is no depravity on Earth," Ismail Berdiyev (pictured above), mufti of Russia's North Caucasus Muslim Coordination Center, said according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The agency added that he went on to say: "It is necessary to reduce a woman's sexuality, and it would be good if this [female genital mutilation] were done to all women. God created women so that they can have children and bring them up. This [female genital mutilation] has nothing to do with that; women do not stop giving birth after having this done." [...]

He received support, however, from a senior priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, Vsevolod Chaplin, who wrote on his Facebook page: "My sympathies for the mufti. I hope he doesn't retreat from his position because of the howls and hysterics which will start now."

He also said the mufti had simply "talked about his time-honored traditions, recognized by the majority of women living under this tradition," before adding that "feminism is a 20th century lie" and that it is not necessary to practice FGM on Orthodox women because "they are not debauched anyway." [...]

The Russian Ministry of Health has said FGM is a "crippling" practice, but although it is against various sections of Russian law, there is no specific legislation forbidding it. One of the co-authors of the report, Yulia Antonova, told DW that "the law needs to be strengthened because otherwise there will not be any prosecutions at all."

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Salon: Milwaukee’s violent protests are no surprise: Even by American standards, the city has long mistreated its black community

To wit: the city of Milwaukee is the most racially segregated city in the United States and has been described as a “living hell for black people.” The neighborhood of Sherman Park is one of the poorest in the state of Wisconsin. In 2014, the median income for blacks in Milwaukee was $25,600, as compared to $62,600 for whites. Milwaukee is among the worst five cities in the United States on measures of racial equality. As detailed by reports from the Department of Justice on Baltimore and Ferguson, the black denizens of Milwaukee, like most other black and brown folks who live in similar communities, often see their rights and liberties violated by police and are treated as second-class citizens in their own country. [...]

Racism and class prejudice intersect in many ways in communities such as Milwaukee. Because of the enormous gap in wealth and income across the color line in the United States, racially segregated housing creates disparate outcomes in the quality of public schools, access to health care and public services such as mass transit. Racially segregated housing also increases poverty and violence by concentrating it in one community. It also limits intergenerational upward class mobility by creating social networks that are homogeneous by race and class. Consequently, racially segregated housing limits access to social capital and access to job opportunities that could enable poor and working-class people to improve their life circumstances. [...]

As was seen in the aftermath of the Ferguson and Baltimore rebellions, the corporate news media (especially the right-wing echo chamber) would rather generate a sensational and exaggerated narrative about the recent unrest in Milwaukee than engage in a substantive discussion of the structural and institutional factors that nurtured it. There are many reasons for this. Most Americans are socialized from birth to believe in the twin myths of meritocracy and individualism. This makes systemic or systematic thinking about how social institutions and power interact to determine a given person’s life outcomes and life chances very challenging. In the post-Civil Rights era, a regime of “colorblind racism” deems that racism is narrowly defined as either something extreme and obvious (the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis) or alternatively as words, actions and intentions rather than outcomes and social structures.

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