The Intercept: Obama Worries Future Presidents Will Wage Perpetual, Covert Drone War

But the one existing transparency measure Obama touts as an example in the interview — the administration’s release of its tally on civilian casualties from drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia — was viewed by many in the human rights community as a farce, largely because it pointed to a death toll far lower than outside observer tallies.

The release, made public on the Friday afternoon of Fourth of July weekend, reported that between 64 and 116 civilians were killed during Obama’s two terms. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, by comparison, has estimated that between 492 and 1,077 civilians have been killed by drone strikes during the eight years of Obama’s presidency.

And critical questions about those operations remain unanswered, such as the circumstances that led to the death of Momina Bibi, a 68-year-old Pakistani grandmother killed in an October 2012 airstrike; or the reason for the attack that took the life of Salim bin Ahmed Ali Jaber, an anti-al Qaeda imam in Yemen a month earlier; or the full story of how American forces came to target a wedding convoy, also in Yemen, a year later, killing 12 people.

Those questions remain unanswered, in part because when the administration released the civilian casualty report, it did so without detailing a single specific incident in which the deaths of civilians were confirmed — thus foreclosing any possibility for follow up or public accountability for those operations. (See The Intercept’s series The Drone Papers describing the secret military documents that exposed the inner workings of Obama’s drone wars.)

What’s more, the alarming changes that Obama describes as over the horizon are already here.

“What’s so interesting is that President Obama acknowledges this problem — that future presidents will be empowered to kill globally, and in secret. What he doesn’t acknowledge is how much of a role his administration had in making that a bizarre normal,” Naureen Shah, director of national security and human rights at Amnesty International, told The Intercept. [...]

Obama’s critique of Congress — that it doesn’t seem to care enough to rein in the drone program — is both on point and ironic, coming from him. Far from encouraging Congress to weigh in, the Obama administration has actively fought Congress’s attempts to even get basic information about drone strikes. The White House, for instance, refused to show the legal memos authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki to Congress until 2014, when Obama nominated the memos’ author to become a federal judge, and a group of senators threatened to hold up the confirmation until they could read the memos.

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Jacobin Magazine: Why Kibbutzism Isn’t Socialism

As envisioned by its founders, the kibbutz (or gathering, in Hebrew) was to be a utopian rural community, fusing egalitarian and communal ideals with those of Zionism and Jewish nationalism. In this voluntary collective community, Jewish newcomers would enjoy joint ownership of property, economic equality, and cooperation in production, and the maxim “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” would reign supreme. [...]

What they built, however, was a negation of socialism. Just as with Labor Zionism (the driving force behind the kibbutz movement in pre-state Israel), the experiment’s nationalism quickly won out over its egalitarian ideals. What began as an attempt to build a socialist utopia ended up yielding an oppressive form of ethnic nationalism. [...]

Syrkin argued that Jewish liberation could only be won through the creation of a socialist Jewish state in Palestine. He was also clear on the means: attract Jews from Europe, and expel the indigenous Arab population. Syrkin, whose treatise “The Jewish Question and the Socialist State” (1898) is clearly fashioned after Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem, was arguably the first to define Socialist Zionism’s mission as fostering mass immigration to, and collective settlement in, Palestine.

Otherwise Orthodox Marxists like Ber Borochov agreed. In “The National Question and the Class Struggle” and “Our Platform” (1906), Borochov insisted that the establishment of a socialist Jewish state in Palestine, backed by Europe’s imperial powers, would necessarily wipe out the native Arab population. [...]

Ethnic separatism, not class-based egalitarianism or socialist internationalism, guided the founding of the modern kibbutz. Rather than forging class solidarity across ethnic lines, Labor Zionists reinforced social hierarchies, ethnic hegemony, and religious oppression.

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Atlas Obscura: The Secret Egyptian Chapel Hidden Inside a Chicago Break Room

It’s a normal office break room—fluorescent lighting, coat rack, microwave. But it’s in a museum, so of course there’s something a little quirky about it. In this case, it’s the 4,300-year-old Egyptian chapel sealed up behind the wall.

Chicago’s Field Museum is home to 30 million objects, most of which are behind the scenes. But while the vast majority of those collections are stored in collection drawers where they can be pulled out and used in scientific research, the chapel stands out. It’s a holdover from an old exhibit about ancient Egypt, purchased over a century ago during the “Indiana Jones” years of archaeology, and now it’s just chilling by the water cooler. [...]

The most striking thing about the chapel (other than the fact that it’s sitting in an office break room) is the traces of colorful paint that aren’t not quite faded from the walls, still gleaming deep ochre, goldenrod, jade, and cerulean after four millennia. “We think of classical art as being plain, since we’re used to seeing it with all the paint worn off, but the ancient Egyptians were crazy about color,” explains James Phillips, the Field Museum’s curator of Egyptology. [...]

But these days, even evil spirits can’t get into the chapel—only a few Field Museum staff members have a key. And while the museum has long-term plans to reincorporate the chapel into a public display, doing so will take time. “The space is too narrow for a person in a wheelchair to comfortably turn around. It needs a lot of work and funding before it’s ready to be back on display,” says Phillips.

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Vox: Why we need loneliness

Some people are alone most of the day or live alone somewhere out in the desert, and they might be okay with this. Being alone is not the same as feeling lonely. Loneliness is feeling one has fewer meaningful social connections than one might like to have.

For some people, this might mean they have one meaningful connection and they are fine. For others, it might mean they need 10. It’s really different from person to person. [...]

We depend on others to feel secure. When we feel lonely, we feel like there’s a permanent threat. It might not be a real threat, but we perceive things as threatening.

So what this amounts to when we’re in a normal, neutral social situation, we’re more likely to interpret the other person as being threatening. Someone might look at us in a neutral way, and the lonely person will think, "This person doesn’t like me." [...]

What’s interesting is that before old age, we found differences over adulthood.

Around 30, there are elevated levels of loneliness, and then again at age 50. Or, to frame it another way, there’s a dip in loneliness around age 40, and then again around age 65 to 70. [...]

The pattern seems to be specific to Western countries. We’re doing some analyses with American data, and we find a pretty similar pattern. We find that in old age, loneliness goes way up, but there are also elevated levels earlier in life. Those results tell us probably it’s generalizable. (But this is not even submitted for publication yet.)

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The Atlantic: ‘I’m British—I Don’t Understand This’: A Journalist Grapples With U.S. Gun Culture

In 2003, the British journalist Gary Younge moved from a country with roughly seven firearms per 100 people to a country with around 101 firearms per 100 people, from a country with an annual rate of .04 gun homicides per 100,000 people to a country with an annual rate of 3.43 gun homicides per 100,000 people, and from a country with strict gun laws and unarmed police to a country with neither. Younge, who writes for The Guardian, had relocated to the United States. There, he was as likely to be killed by agricultural machinery as he was to die from gun violence back home in the United Kingdom. [...]

I knew there was a lethal element to social violence [in the United States] in a way there isn’t in Britain. I think Britain’s more violent. I think in Britain you’re more likely to be beaten up. If you go to many towns on a Friday or Saturday night, when the pubs close, they can be quite violent. I’ve just always felt like in America I’m more likely to get killed. [...]

I went to my first [National Rifle Association] convention in 2012 in St. Louis. I would say, “I’m British. I don’t understand this (which was true). Explain it to me.” The first thing they would say is, “Are you married? Do you have children? Imagine someone broke into your house. What are you going to do? You’re going to just sit there and wait for the police?” It was this brazen appeal to masculinity. It wasn’t anti-government, but [the notion was] you wouldn’t want to rely on your government for that. [It was an] almost vigilantist appeal. [...]

Something else that has intrigued me—and this is less an observation than a political point—is that the NRA people who talk about tyranny, [are paradoxically not] insisting on the mass armament of the black community to protect themselves against the tyranny of the police. I know the police aren’t the federal government, but the notion of gun ownership as invoked to me was to protect your individual rights against the state and others. So here’s the state killing people in cold blood—sometimes undeniably. How does that rationalization of gun rights stand in that moment if you’re not calling for the mass armament of black communities? Which I’m not. But one would have thought [gun-rights activists] would have been rather by [black communities’] side. That to me is an illustration that the case that they’re making for gun rights isn’t quite as complete as they think it is. [Their] vision of America doesn’t really include everybody.

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Politico: New EU prosecutors will crack down on cross-border fraud

A new European public prosecutors’ office with powers to investigate fraud against EU funds and VAT cheats will get the approval of member countries this week and could be in operation by 2018, according to officials in Brussels.

The European Public Prosecutors’ Office (EPPO) will be able to prosecute the misuse of EU funds, which cost the bloc an estimated €638 million last year, and take action against VAT fraud, which currently costs EU governments at least €50 billion a year in lost revenues. [...]

The Commission needs the backing of all EU governments — except the U.K., Ireland and Denmark, which have opted out — to take the 136-page proposal further. Failing that, a group of at least nine countries can proceed via so-called “enhanced cooperation” procedure. The actual remit of the EU prosecutors — such as definitions of the crimes involved and sentencing guidelines — will need the approval of MEPs and governments before it becomes law. [...]

Only 40 percent of fraud cases investigated by OLAF are ever taken up by national prosecutors, who are often not equipped to deal with cross-border criminal activity, said one Commission official. The hope is that the EPPO can act faster on such crimes by having specific expertise and being able to bypass national criminal justice systems.

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The Guardian: Is casual sex bad for your wellbeing?

Casual sex, hookups or one-night stands: whatever you call it, more than half of us will have sex with someone we barely know or don’t expect to date in the future. We’re most likely to do this at university, where up to 80% of undergraduates have hookups. Sex within relationships is said to improve cardiovascular health, reduce depression and boost immunity, but social science research has often linked casual encounters to feelings of sexual regret, low self-esteem and psychological distress, especially among women. Studies show that while men regret the sexual opportunities they missed, women often regret some of the casual sex they did have.

A Canadian study of 138 female and 62 male students who had casual sex found that men selected physical reasons for regret – such as their partner being insufficiently attractive. Women’s regrets focused on shame and self-blame. But the evidence as to whether casual sex, when done with protection against sexually transmitted diseases, is actually bad for anyone is unclear. The studies are overwhelmingly on heterosexual American university students and have varying definitions of hookups – from knowing someone for less than 24 hours, to sex in a “friends with benefits” relationship. Some show both men and women feel depressed, used and lonely after hookups; others find casual sex promotes more positive emotions than negative ones. In a study of 832 university students, only 26% of women compared with half of men felt positive after a hookup. Nearly half of women and 26% of men felt negatively about the experience.

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Vox: Stop canceling school for Columbus Day

Set aside, for a moment, the controversy over whether Christopher Columbus's journey to the Americas should be celebrated at all. The holiday is, as it stands, a logistical headache. Fewer than half of states celebrate it, and almost no other offices do. Just 15 percent of private business close, the smallest proportion for any federal holiday. So if you're a parent in a Columbus Day-celebrating state  — the ones in blue below — you're probably scrambling to find something for kids to do on Monday. [...]

Here's a better way to use Columbus Day: Make kids go to school that day, as they already do in 27 states. Celebrate Columbus Day by encouraging teachers to talk about the complicated legacy of Columbus in American history (including the day's significance for Italian Americans, who still faced discrimination themselves when it was established in 1937). Going to class on Columbus Day and talking about history makes the day a reason to explore America's past, not just an excuse for mattress sales. As it is now, it's not just a logistical headache for parents — it's a missed opportunity for real learning. [...]

We could make Columbus Day actually about history, and Veterans Day actually about service. In the meantime, if we really want to give everybody a day off in October or November, what about creating a holiday for Election Day?

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Reuters: After May's Brexit pledge, Europeans close ranks

Statements from German, French and EU leaders show they have been working on maintaining a united front in anticipation of British attempts to play the other 27 members off against each other and have agreed some broad negotiating lines.

Their firmly articulated, central aim is to nip in the bud British demands for free trade without open immigration - once pithily summed up by Brexit leader and now foreign minister Boris Johnson as "having cake and eating it".

Less audibly, cracks have appeared in the EU refusal to discuss options before May triggers a formal process that will launch Britain out the door in two years, with some diplomats suggesting such talks could mean a less radical split. [...]

British officials and politicians also talk of using economic muscle to secure concessions from other Europeans -- whether poor eastern states which might put British offers of cash to help maintain EU subsidies before the migration rights of their citizens, or German carmakers keen to keep a market.

That, argue EU diplomats and officials, may be to mistake the resolve of European leaders not just to defend their own economic interests but to prevent Britain securing a sweetheart deal that might encourage eurosceptic populism at home.

"Many Brexiters claim that the toughness of the 27 is merely an opening stance, and that, when talks commence, economic self-interest will push them to soften," wrote Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform. "But that may be wishful thinking."

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