College of Europe: The risky game of Yulia Tymoshenko

Two years after Maidan the post-revolutionary consensus in Ukrainian politics has all but vanished. While Petro Poroshenko and his bloc still hold a firm grip on power, this year the President has had to face a government crisis and increasingly declining approval rates [1]. In this scenario, Yulia Tymoshenko and her party Batkivshchyna are strengthening their position by channeling popular frustration against institutions – and so far their efforts are paying off [2]. However, if Tymoshenko were to win next elections her inability to deliver on her promises risks undermining the public’s trust in the credibility of the political class and in the feasibility of reforms even further. [...]

Yulia Tymoshenko is a political heavyweight – a household name for Ukrainians and foreigners with top government experience. Yet, what foreigners may fail to appreciate is how controversial her political figure is among her compatriots. Together with Yushchenko, she was the face of the Orange Revolution in 2004, but she was also responsible for the ensuing failure to strengthen the reform process. Her detention between 2011 and 2014 had a major impact in spoiling relations between Yanukovich and the West, but Maidan developed independently from her and from political parties. To most Ukrainians Tymoshenko merely represents the old system that failed to implement reforms and to prevent the rise of Yanukovich. After Maidan, she was even abandoned by former party allies, such as Yatsenyuk, who did not want to continue to act in her shadow and left Batkivshchyna to create the People’s Front. [...]

All the same, Batkivshchyna seems focused on playing its game: populist rhetoric in exchange for immediate electoral benefits. However, this strategy has evident drawbacks. Firstly, making proposals that cannot be delivered once in power is a dangerous practice in a country which already has a low regard of politicians. Secondly, the party’s attention to gas prices suggests that Tymoshenko is more focused on attacking unpopular yet necessary reforms in order to gain the sympathies of pensioners – a key electoral constituency – than addressing the actual shortcomings of the reform process. Therefore, an electoral victory of Batkivshchyna would not represent a real change but would probably coincide with another season of popular disillusion in Ukrainian politicians and in their ability to live up to their promises of reform.

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Salon: Say bye to the 40-year-old virgin: Why sex just gets better with age

Aging is generally associated with improvements in our quality of life: We become more proficient in our work, learn how to manage our finances better and our bonds with loved ones deepen. With time and practice, most of the core domains of our lives improve as we develop skills and strategies to manage our lives with more mastery. An exception to this pattern is the quality of our sex lives, which has consistently been reported to deteriorate with age.

While this fits with the messages we receive from popular culture, which tell us that sex is a young person’s domain, it is somewhat at odds with the fact that older adults continue to explore and enjoy sexuality well into old age. The majority of men and women over 60 in the United States are sexually active, most at least two to three times per month (more often than many younger adults). They also rate sex as an important part of life. [...]

Together these findings suggest that as we age, our sexual priorities change and we develop knowledge, skills and preferences that protect against aging-related declines in sexual quality of life. Since wisdom is “the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment,” our study suggests that life experience is fostering sexual wisdom.

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Broadly: When Mental Illness Is Mistaken for Demonic Possession

Whether it's shamans from Ecuador to Russia or Christian religious leaders from the US, various regions and religions across the globe use faith healers. Religious healers may have little to no psychology or medical related background, and earn their living by performing religious rituals and healing people from supernatural issues such as possession. According to one Stanford University researcher, "The concept and practice of exorcism crosses cultural and historical boundaries."

Muslim communities in the Middle East use faith healers, too: According to the Pew Research Center, approximately half of the population in Iraq (47 percent), Egypt (44 percent), the United Arab Emirates (45 percent) and Jordan (42 percent) use traditional Islamic healers. "Popular beliefs in Middle Eastern cultures," states a report in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, "have traditionally viewed mental illness as a punishment from God, the result of possession by evil spirits (Jinn), the effects of the 'evil eye' or the effects of evil in objects that are transferred into the individual."

Abdul Majeed Ali Hasan, an imam in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs for the UAE government, stated in an interview that the majority of "possession" cases are in fact psychological illness "wrongly assumed to be possession." He also revealed that people's superstition often causes them to think they themselves are possessed.

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The Guardian: Mexico's gay couples fight backlash against same-sex marriage

Same-sex couples have been able to marry in Mexico since 2009, when the country’s capital became the first city in Latin America to pass marriage equality laws. But in recent months, a well-organized and well-funded backlash has emerged, claiming credit for derailing a presidential proposal to entrench marriage equality in the country’s constitution. [...]

Part of the problem is that marriage equality has never been enshrined in national law and remains subject to a patchwork of overlapping state and federal legislation: it is only explicitly legal in 10 of the country’s 31 states and Mexico City.

In 2015, the supreme court ruled that any law restricting marriage to heterosexual couples was “discriminatory”, meaning that state laws prohibiting same-sex marriage can be successfully circumvented with a court injunction.

Surveys show the country split on same-sex marriage – a poll in the newspaper El Universal showed 49% opposed and 43% in favour – although there is still strong opposition to gay couples adopting children. [...]

The campaign was supported by both evangelical Christians and the Catholic church, which regularly lobbies for policy changes on “social” issues – such as abortion bans – while staying silent on other issues such as drug war violence, which has claimed nearly 200,000 lives.

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Mic: Poll: Most Republican voters believe Donald Trump won the popular vote

More than half of all Republicans wrongly believe that Donald Trump won the popular vote for president, according to a recent poll released by Qualtrics polling and the Washington Post.

Fifty-two percent of Republicans polled said they believe Trump won the popular vote, while 24% of independents say he won and just 7% of Democrats believe he did. Overall, 29% of Americans believe Trump was the overall preference of all American voters. [...]

Former congressman and conservative commentator Joe Walsh (who once suggested he would reach for a musket if Trump lost the election) was more realistic, recognizing that Clinton indeed won the popular vote. But Walsh added that she only won the popular vote if you included California — which, of course California counts because it's a state in the U.S. [...]

Another method to ending the Electoral College (not requiring a Constitutional amendment) exists in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Essentially, a number of states would need to agree to abide by the popular vote results, regardless of how their state voted, and assign all of their Electoral College electors to support the winning candidate. 

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FiveThirtyEight: Meet The 80 People Who Are As Rich As Half The World (JAN 18, 2015)

Eighty people hold the same amount of wealth as the world’s 3.6 billion poorest people, according to an analysis just released from Oxfam. The report from the global anti-poverty organization finds that since 2009, the wealth of those 80 richest has doubled in nominal terms — while the wealth of the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population has fallen.

To see how much wealth the richest 1 percent and the poorest 50 percent hold, Oxfam used research from Credit Suisse, a Swiss financial services company, and Forbes’s annual billionaires list. Oxfam then looked at how many of the world’s richest people would need to pool their resources to have as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent — and as of March 2014, it was just 80 people. [...]

Thirty-five of the 80 richest people in the world are U.S. citizens, with combined wealth of $941 billion in 2014. Together in second place are Germany and Russia, with seven mega-rich individuals apiece. The entire list is dominated by one gender, though — 70 of the 80 richest people are men. And 68 of the people on the list are 50 or older. [...]

There might be some quiet voices in the room, though, because 11 of the wealthiest people on the planet were simply born into their money (19 others inherited their wealth and then made it grow). The remaining 50 names on the list, according to Forbes, are self-made billionaires.

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CityLab: What You're Really Asking When You Ask 'Where Are You From?'

Most of the time, I get it when people detect my accent. In those cases, I’m happy to explain where it’s from. But often, I’m asked where I’m from even before I’ve said a word—often as a conversation-opener at a bar, on the street, or in an Uber. It irks me that in these situations, the question comes loaded with presumptions. Judging by the flood of responses I got when I asked people their reactions to the question on social media, I’m not the only one who finds the question daunting.

But on the other hand, I have to admit that I’ve also often asked people where they’re from, and it’s led to some really great conversations. The point is, just as with any other fragment of language, context matters. Below, I’ve unpacked some of the reasons people may be uncomfortable when asked where they’re from. [...]

When directed towards minorities, the veiled question assumes foreignness. (Trump’s phrasing is a good example.) Given that the original inhabitants of the country weren’t white, the very first “settlers” of America were Hispanic, and that Chinese were among the first immigrants to the country, the idea that somehow these ethnicities are different from the mainstream, or not as American, is grating to many. [...]

An informal poll among girlfriends confirmed that women often get asked this question at loud, crowded bars and on streets. In these cases, it’s not likely that the askers have a genuine interest in the woman’s geographical origin. For women of color, in particular, the question recalls a history of men projecting cultural stereotypes onto them. It’s along the same lines of calling someone “exotic”: it might signal interest, but it’s actually not a compliment.

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Al Jazeera: Yiwu: The Chinese city where it's Christmas every day

Around 60 percent of the world's Christmas decorations come from factories surrounding Yiwu, in Zhejiang Province, a little more than an hour from Shanghai on the country's high-speed rail.

In the Festival Arts subdivision of the Yiwu International Trade Market, every day feels like Christmas.

Here, in what is actually only a tiny corner of the world's largest wholesale market for small commodities, aisle after aisle of large cubicles display an array of holiday decorations, from Santa Claus masks to stockings, artificial Christmas trees and metallic-coloured tinsel.

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The Intercept: Google Publishes Eight Secret FBI Requests

GOOGLE REVEALED IN October it had been freed from a gag order preventing it from talking about a secret FBI request for customer data made in 2015.

The internet search company chose at the time not to publish the actual subpoena, but it is now releasing redacted versions of that letter and seven others, as well as correspondence with the FBI pertaining to their release. [...]

For a long time, companies weren’t sure whether or not they could even approach an attorney to discuss the letters, let alone challenge them in court, though the FBI explicitly mentions these rights in current letters. [...]

Yahoo published three of its national security letters in June, revealing that the FBI had been exceeding its authority by asking for more information than it was legally allowed to request — including email records, and online browsing records. The FBI maintains it acted within its rights, despite a legal opinion published by the Bush administration’s Department of Justice in 2004 arguing the exact opposite.

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