Technical pause

Unfortunately my laptop got stolen and therefore I am unable to continue to operate this blog for now. I will (hopefully) resume in the following week. Stay tuned!

The School of Life: The Poignancy of Old Pornography

People have been making pornography for a very long time. It’s been on the sides of temples in India on Greek vases in Roman bedrooms and German drawing rooms. But a decisive moment in its history came in 1839 with the French artist Louis Daguerre’s invention of the photograph, known as the daguerreotype, which transformed the availability and realism of sexual imagery. It was not long before the new technology was being put to use to explore a variety of explicit scenarios. One of the earliest, a series of lesbian encounters, was made in Paris in the spring of 1840…

Politico: The man who invented Trumpism

Wilders admires Trump and encourages the comparison, delighted to cast his campaign as part of a global populist wave if it adds momentum ahead of the March 15 vote, in which polls indicate his Freedom Party (PVV) is neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

“It’s the revenge of the rust belt,” said Tim de Beer, an opinion and policy research expert at the Dutch polling firm Kantar Public. “The Netherlands was among the first to have this revolt.”

But Trump and Wilders differ in important ways. Trump’s lack of focus is completely at odds with Wilders’ singular, dogged determination to pursue his proclaimed mission: stop Islam in the Netherlands.  And where Trump is a newcomer to politics, Wilders is one of the longest-serving lawmakers in the Dutch lower house, with a formidable command of parliamentary procedures. [...]

Wilders is mostly silent about the other side of his family tree. His mother was born in what is now Indonesia. She arrived in the Netherlands as a baby after her parents fled the collapsing Dutch colony that would later become the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. [...]

Wilders severely restricts media access to the party. Attempts to contact it, or any of its lawmakers, are typically met with a wall of silence. This is combined with carefully rationed pronouncements designed to outrage and grab headlines. Wilders specializes in coming up with insulting compound words, such as straatterroristen (“street terrorists,” or foreign-looking men hanging around); haatpaleizen (“hate palaces,” or mosques); or his infamous kopvoddentaks proposal (a “head rag tax” on headscarves). [...]

Over the course of Wilders’ life under armed protection, his views have become increasingly radical, casting Islam and the West as ancient enemies locked in a civilizational war for survival. In 2005, his manifesto allowed that not all Muslims were dangerous, noted the importance of freedom of religion, and advocated that only radical mosques should be closed. Nowadays, he claims there are no moderate Muslims, just liars, or people who haven’t read the Quran.

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Reuters: Pope suggests 'better to be atheist than hypocritical Catholic'

He said that some of these people should also say "'my life is not Christian, I don't pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, (I lead) a double life'."

"There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal," he said. "How many times have we all heard people say 'if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist'." [...]

Less than two months after his election, he said Christians should see atheists as good people if they do good.

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Motherboard: Farms Are Turning to Solar as Electricity Prices Soar

Solar energy is a growing presence in the agriculture industry, partly as a way to offset increasing energy demands from water shortages and mechanization. This makes farming and ranching a prime partner for the solar industry, solar companies told Motherboard at the World Agriculture Expo last week.

And while start-up costs of solar energy are still more expensive than fossil fuels, a combination of state incentives and increased demand means it's starting to pay off. [...]

Some agricultural pockets of the country are moving more quickly to solar than others. In California, a five-year-long drought has forced farmers to pump groundwater from increasingly deeper wells, which use a lot of electricity during the summer months. But solar has also been catching on in states where coal production was once a major economic driver, too, said said Eb Russell, president of RP Construction Services, which installs solar power projects. [...]

Solar doesn't make sense for everyone in agriculture at the moment. In some areas of the country, like Washington state, the price of electricity is so low that installing solar panels wouldn't help farms' bottom lines, Crown said. And while they could sell back some electricity into their local grid, the regulations and pricing around those are expected to fluctuate over the next few years as solar expands.

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CityLab: How Charlotte's Nasty Early 1900s Politics Paved the Way for a Century of Segregation

But what few people know is that the South wasn’t always so segregated. During a brief window of time between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, black and white people lived next to each other in Southern cities, creating what the historian Tom Hanchett describes as a “salt-and-pepper” pattern. They were not integrated in a meaningful sense: Divisions existed, but “in a lot of Southern cities, segregation hadn’t been fully imposed—there were neighborhoods where blacks and whites were living nearby,” said Eric Foner, a Columbia historian and expert on Reconstruction. Walk around in the Atlanta or the Charlotte of the late 1800s, and you might see black people in restaurants, hotels, the theater, Foner said. Two decades later, such things were not allowed. [...]

This amorphous period of race relations in the South was first described by the historian C. Vann Woodward, who wrote in his 1955 book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, that segregation in the South did not become rigid with the end of slavery, but instead, around the turn of the century. “There occurred an era of experiment and variety in race relations of the South in which segregation was not the invariable rule,” he wrote.

During that time, Foner said, black residents could could sue companies for discriminating against them—and win their lawsuits. Blacks could also legally vote in most places (disenfranchisement laws did not arrive in earnest until about 1900), and were often allied with poor whites in the voting booth. This alliance was strong enough to control states like North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia at various points throughout the late 19th century. [...]

This wasn’t the first time whites and blacks had allied politically. In Virginia in the late 1870s, black and poor white voters formed the Readjuster Party, which worked together to overcome the power of white political elites. In North Carolina; they also worked together to write the Constitution of 1868, which mandated the creation and funding of a state system of public education.

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Political Critique: Women’s Reproductive Rights are the New Black

The initial change in legislation, which was proposed by the governing Law and Justice party (PiS) on the 23rd of September 2016, sought to completely ban all abortion. This would mean that in cases of incest and rape, victims would be forced to carry the child throughout the entire pregnancy. The implementation of the new legislation could also lead to police investigations around miscarriages. In the case of admittance to hospital, following a miscarriage, the police would be informed in order to determine whether the miscarriage was due to natural causes, or as a result of an attempted ‘abortion’. Should the woman be found guilty, she could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. [...]

The first protest against the blanket ban took place on the 3rd of October, seeing as many as 30,000 people on the streets of Warsaw alone. Many women boycotted work and classes in order to attend the protest. Most were dressed in black, symbolic of ‘mourning the death of the women’s rights,’ if the legislation were to be passed. They also carried placards, bearing messages such as “My uterus, my opinion” and “Girls just wanna have FUN-damental rights”. [...]

Another protest erupted on the 24th of October, in response to a new proposal made by Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of PiS. Kaczyński said that his party wants to ensure that even pregnancies involving a child that is “certain to die or very deformed, still end in birth, so that the child can be baptised, buried, have a name”. The new proposal would mean that abortion is still permitted in cases of rape and incest, and where there is health or life in peril. It would, however, illegalise the removing of a foetus that is irreparably damaged. [...]

In wake of the controversy surrounding the school, disciplinary hearings have been issued to the female teachers who supported the protest. So far, only one teacher – Aleksandra Piotrowska – has been found innocent by the Board of Education in Katowice. During the hearing, the committee said that everyone has the right to religion and freedom of speech. However, the committee also brought to attention the fact that in the etiquette of the teaching profession, particular caution and sensitivity should be taken when voicing personal opinions.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Romanian Protests

The stated goal — to address prison overcrowding and avoid a European Union fine. The true goal — to pardon and protect a whole raft of loyal PSD politicians and public officials facing prosecution for  crimes such as corruption in office (now decriminalized for sums less than $48,000) among a host of others (pardoned for sentences less than five years). [...]

The following night, three hundred thousand rallied, and on February 5, a day after the government rescinded its decree but indicated it would seek parliamentary approval for some of its original proposals, over half a million poured onto the streets of Bucharest angrily demanding the government’s resignation. Four days later, a scapegoat, the country’s justice minister, resigned. The protests continue with fifty thousand again assembled last weekend. [...]

The PSD, the ruling Communist Party of old, is the party par excellence of this crony capitalism. It played a pivotal role managing and overseeing the transition from the statist economy of the Cold War era to the privatized, neoliberal economy of today, while ensuring financial advantage for itself and its allies. It remains a key mediator of the sometimes brazenly incestuous relations between business and bureaucracy. In short, the PSD is the principal party of the Romanian ruling class. [...]

The arguments the Left will have to employ — the need to struggle against neoliberal austerity and corruption from below, to radically redistribute Romania’s wealth, to expropriate the country’s super-rich moguls, to challenge Romania’s relationship with the European Union and the United States, to support neutrality between east and west, to advocate the idea of a Balkan federation as the best defense against imperialism and nationalism — will be tough to make, for they signal a decisive break with the asphyxiating consensus of Balkan politics of the last quarter century.

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Nautilus Magazine: 5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World

The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. In the 1940s, a chemical engineer called Benjamin Lee Whorf published a wildly popular paper in the MIT Technology Review that claimed the way languages express different concepts—like gender, time, and space—influenced the way its speakers thought about the world. For example, if a language didn’t have terms to denote specific times, speakers wouldn’t understand the concept of time flowing.

This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. But researchers later found more nuanced ways that these habits of speech can affect our thinking. Linguist Roman Jakobson described this line of investigation thus: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” In other words, the primary way language influences our minds is through what it forces us to think about—not what it prevents us from thinking about. 

These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us.

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Salon: Extremism from both sides: What does the research tell us about Islamist extremism and far-right extremism?

Our research has also identified violent Islamist extremist plots against 272 targets that were either foiled or failed between 2001 and 2014. We are in the process of compiling similar data on far-right plots. Although data collection is only about 50 percent complete, we have already identified 213 far-right targets from the same time period. [...]

The locations of violent extremist activity also differ by ideology. Our data show that between 1990 and 2014, most Islamist extremist attacks occurred in the South (56.5 percent), and most far-right extremist attacks occurred in the West (34.7 percent). Both forms of violence were least likely to occur in the Midwest, with only three incidents committed by Islamist extremists (4.8 percent) and 33 events committed by far-right extremists (13.5 percent).

Targets of violence also vary across the two ideologies. For example, 63 percent of the Islamist extremism victims were targeted for no apparent reason. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often visiting symbolic locations or crowded venues such as the World Trade Center or military installations.

In contrast, 53 percent of victims killed by far-right extremists were targeted for their actual or perceived race or ethnicity. Far-right extremists, such as neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists, often target religious, racial and ethnic, and sexual orientation and gender identity minorities. [...]

Our analyses found that compared to Islamist extremists, far-right extremists were significantly more likely to be economically deprived, have served in the military and have a higher level of commitment to their ideology. Far-right extremists were also significantly more likely to be less educated, single, young and to have participated in training by a group associated with their extremist ideology.

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The Atlantic: How Anti-Trumpism Is Hijacking the Anti-Brexit Movement

On Monday afternoon, roughly 100 protesters swathed in European Union flags and carrying signs bearing slogans like “I am not a bargaining chip,” “EU Worker Making Britain Great Again,” and “Brexit and Trump: Sound the Alarm,” gathered quietly on Parliament Square, opposite the British Houses of Parliament. Silently, they linked arms and formed a circle on the grassy lawn, holding up their placards for photographers, who had ample space to maneuver. The demonstration, part of a national day of action to support the rights of EU citizens, migrants, and asylum-seekers in a post-Brexit United Kingdom, had been in the works for months. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum vote in June, thousands marched in support of the same causes. Yet on Monday, the demonstrators dispersed after posing for photographs for about an hour, many filtering into parliament to lobby their representatives—a run-of-the-mill protest, by most measures. [...]

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, left-leaning Londoners have been asking themselves whether Trump or Brexit is worse. May is expected to trigger Article 50, which will begin Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, as early as the first week of March. The long road to Brexit, marked by murky legal proceedings, negotiations, and carefully worded government assurances, has obscured its potential ramifications, including a $58.4-billion economic contraction and a 3-percent drop in GDP by 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The economy is already showing signs of a labor shortage as EU workers consider leaving their jobs in Britain. Despite that, Brexit is almost certainly permanent: There is no legal precedent for the withdrawal of Article 50, though some lawmakers contend it can be done. [...]

May is set on her vision for making Britain a “fully independent, sovereign country,” as she has put it, by securing a “hard” Brexit—a departure from both the EU single market and freedom of movement laws—and a dramatic decrease in immigration. Protests seem unlikely to change her agenda. And despite the obvious fact that Brits have no power to oust Trump, or even to stop his state visit, the American president’s virulence makes him far easier to oppose. In Trump, Liberal Brits have found a cipher through which to vent frustrations with their own government—but by training their efforts on him, movements like the Stop Trump Coalition may have picked the wrong target.

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The Atlantic: The Facebook Algorithm Is Watching You

This matters because of what Facebook might then do with its sense of your baby-loving, Tom-Brady-hating self. It might mean that Facebook will show you more photos of babies and fewer articles about football, which in turn might affect which friends appear more frequently and prominently in your News Feed. And that might affect your perception of the world. [...]

Grosser’s latest project is an attempt to push back. He made a browser extension he’s calling Go Rando, which intercepts each time you click a reaction button on Facebook, then uses a random-number generator to select a reaction for you. “If you click ‘Like,’ you might get ‘Angry,’ or you might get ‘Haha,’ or you might get ‘Sad,’” Grosser told me. “Users can still hover and select a specific reaction if they want to—but it will randomize their reactions for them.” [...]

“I want people to think about who is reading this data,” Grosser told me. “We think of [clicking reaction buttons for the benefit of] our friends, but the primary consumers of this data are not our friends. It’s for the news feed algorithm, advertising message profiling, predictive analytics. All these different systems that are looking to mine this data, hoping to understand our hopes or fears as a way of deciding how to sell us something, as a way of deciding whether we’re dangerous, as a way of deciding whether we’re worthy of getting a loan.”

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Quartz: Want to be a better critical thinker? Here’s how to spot false narratives and “weaponized lies”

The psychologist Daniel J. Levitin, author of the new book Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era, says that our talent for critical thinking also has been weakened by the sheer amount of information coming at us each day through push notifications, cable news, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle. “We’ve become less critical in the face of information overload,” he writes over email. “We throw up our hands and say, it’s too much to think about.” According to Levitin, this sense of being overwhelmed makes us more vulnerable to unsubstantiated stories from suspect sources and “alternative facts” served up by spin doctors. [...]

That said, Bowling Green professor Browne insists that “even a fourth-grader” can master some of the basics of critical thinking. The first step is to recognize that all of us have biases that are bound to affect our judgment. Thus, we must continually question our own assumptions and beliefs. Or, as Sesno puts it, “You almost have to start by asking, What do I think I know, and how do I know it’s true?” [...]

Critical thinking also requires humility, according to Levitin. “You must be willing to admit you don’t know, or that you might be wrong about something.”

Still, it is worth the effort, Levitin argues. “Evidence-based decision-making leads to better outcomes—better health decisions, financial decisions, life choices,” he says, adding: “Research shows that your gut’s going to be wrong more than it is right.”

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Broadly: 'Keeping Up With The Kattarshians' Is Iceland's New Reality TV Show About Cats

The show's premise is simple: four kittens, all from a local animal rescue shelter, are made to live together in an oversized dollhouse rigged with hidden cameras. The kittens: Guðni, Ronja, Briet, and Stubbur have captivated an Icelandic—and global—audience. Though viewing figures aren't available yet, Inga says that the show (which is available to stream online) has already attracted the highest-ever traffic to Icelandic broadcaster Nutiminn's website. [...]

How difficult was it to create the world's first reality TV cat show in an ethical way?

It took about a year to put together, because we wanted all the animal welfare authorities to approve it. And here we are, a year later, with the first reality TV show starring kittens. All the people who were laughing then aren't laughing now. [...]

What will happen to the cats after the show ends?

All four cats now have been adopted, so we're going to be putting a new litter in here in the coming days—probably next week. We'll fix up the house, put another camera or so in there, and then have more orphan kittens ready to move in.

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Nerdwriter1: How MLK Composed 'I Have A Dream'

Politico: Does Trump herald the end of the West?

And while Trump has taken his complaint to an extreme by casting doubt on America’s pledge of collective defense, something no other president has ever even contemplated, it was Obama after all who loudly complained about “free riders,” countries who benefit from U.S. military spending and action and have sufficient resources but still don’t contribute their fair share. Most assumed Saudi Arabia and Germany were prime examples.

Beyond the question of NATO spending is the larger context of America’s willingness to act internationally and the extent to which it acts in concert with allies and partners. This part of the problem is too often ignored. The tragic truth is that it has been a long, long time since Washington has been both willing to lead internationally and willing to do so together with our Western allies. [...]

At the same event, foreign ministers from Russia, China and Iran were putting forward a more troubling premise. Each in their own way asserted that this year marked the end of the “West” and the onset of a new era for Europe and the wider world. Their analysis was surely premature and self-serving, inasmuch as those countries have been making similar points for many years now. Tragically though, unless something changes, this time they may be right.

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Motherboard: The Father of Cryonics Never Really Died

Cryonics—that is, the deep chilling of corpses with the hope that at some point in the future, they can be resurrected—is the focus of my story in VICE's Future of Technology issue. All told, an estimated 300 or more people are cryogenically frozen in the US today, including Ettinger, the movement's unlikely father, who died in 2011 and is cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan.

Like the concepts he espoused, Ettinger remains controversial. While some revere Ettinger as an optimistic pioneer ahead of his time, others have lambasted him and his views as the stuff of snake oil, noting he sought to gather funds from unsuspecting individuals with a false promise of a second life. (Representatives with the Cryonics Institute did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) [...]

After the war, Ettinger returned home to write. In 1948, he published a short story called "The Penultimate Trump," a science fiction tome that laid out some of his ideas' potential (it does not reference the 45th President of the United States). Ettinger made contact with people on the "Who's Who in America" list with his pitch for freezing. Responses were lackluster.

But instead of retreating, Ettinger went bigger. That's when  he published his cryonics magnum opus, The Prospect of Immortality.

The book is a strange paleo-future, unscientific pitch that at times bears more resemblance to an even more offbeat take on Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than a medical journal. Ettinger wrote that freezing would unhatch a world of unbridled positivity. With fetuses incubated, childbirth would become moot and through a eugenics-like lens, Ettinger proposed that those born with cerebral palsy could simply remain frozen.

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The Conversation: Netanyahu’s visit prompts Australia to rethink its relationship with Israel

Israel can count on only a handful of friends on the international stage. Australia is one of them. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared Australia – which isn’t a member of the Security Council and so didn’t get a vote – would have dissented. She said the government was opposed to “one-sided resolutions against Israel”. It is the kind of support Israel needs. [...]

On Monday, more than 60 prominent Australians, including business leaders, academics, senior legal and church figures signed a statement opposing Netanyahu’s visit and the Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians. [...]

Australian Jewry has long been described as among the most Israel-centred of global diasporas. A 2009 study by the Monash University Centre for Jewish Civilisation found that 80% of Australian Jews regarded themselves as Zionists and 76% felt a special fear if Israel was perceived to be in danger. It also found over 70% had family in Israel.

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Al Jazeera: Court rules ICC withdrawal plan unconstitutional

A South African court has ruled the government's plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was "unconstitutional and invalid", providing a boost to the embattled Hague-based institution.

The court has recently been fighting off allegations of pursuing a neo-colonial agenda in Africa, where most of its investigations have been based.

Three African states - South Africa, The Gambia and Burundi - last year signalled their intention to quit the ICC. The Gambia's President Adama Barrow, elected in December, said earlier this month it will remain in the ICC. [...]

"The cabinet decision to deliver the notice of withdrawal ... without prior parliamentary approval is unconstitutional and invalid," said judge Phineas Mojapelo in the North Gauteng High Court. [...]

The ICC, which launched in July 2002 and has 124 member states, is the first legal body with permanent international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

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Al Jazeera: Cyprus talks falter over nationalist commemoration row

Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci were scheduled to meet on Thursday at the divided island's buffer zone.

But tensions rose in recent days after a February 10 vote by Greek Cypriot MPs for public schools to honour the anniversary of a 1950 referendum for union with Greece, or "enosis" (the Greek word for union). [...]

The two sides are scheduled to be joined by Greece, Turkey and the UK, Cyprus's three post-colonial guarantor powers, in a meeting scheduled for early March in Geneva. A similar meeting in January ended without concrete progress.

The new regulation, which calls on secondary school students to learn about the enosis ideal and to commemorate the January 1950 referendum at schools, passed by 19 votes from the smaller parties in the 50 seat House of Representatives.

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The Guardian: Kim Jong-nam's body targeted in morgue break-in, say police

“We knew there were attempts by someone to break into the hospital mortuary. We had to take precautions. We will not allow anyone to tamper with the mortuary,” the Malay Mail quoted him as saying. [...]

The detained Indonesian woman has said she was duped into playing a role in the killing, believing she was part of a television comedy prank.

But Khalid disputed that on Wednesday, saying the suspects were “trained” and had even practised the attack at different public places, including a major mall in downtown Kuala Lumpur.

“Yes, the two female suspects knew that the substance they had was toxic. We don’t know what kind of chemical was used,” he said. Samples from an inconclusive autopsy were sent away for lab tests.

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ArchDaily: The Fossilized Soviet Architecture of Belarus, in Photos

As a result of heavy resistance to German invasion in WWII, much of the traditional Belarusian architecture, which included wooden houses, Baroque palaces and cathedrals, and Renaissance-inspired castles, was destroyed. [1] In 1919 the city of Minsk was chosen by the USSR as the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and as such was the site of Soviet efforts to rebuild and modernize after the wars, along with other cities such as Kiev and Smolensk. [2]

The rebuilding process of newly Soviet cities had to happen quickly, as many people had been displaced from their homes during the war. New apartment buildings and public transportation infrastructure were constructed in urban centers to facilitate industry by housing labor close to the country's production zones. The massive, concrete housing blocks that still exist in Belarus are a direct result of this urgency to house the populace, and constitute one aspect of the country's remaining Soviet Architecture. [...]

Large public squares are found in front of majestic state offices, city halls, and upscale apartment buildings that were almost always inaccessible for most citizens. The juxtaposition of elitist structures with public space provided a veneer of populism that fit with the communist ideology. [4] These buildings used a state-approved set of architectural vocabulary that drew on political histories of the time periods in which they were popular--for example, pastiches of classical styles were acceptable because of the Greek’s association with democracy. [5]

read the article and see the photos 

Jakub Marian: Special characters (diacritics) used in European languages

The “Basic Latin Alphabet”, as defined by ISO, consists of the following 26 letters and their uppercase variants (and is identical to the standard English alphabet):

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

However, English is the only modern major European language that uses the Latin alphabet without any additional letters formed by adding diacritical marks or completely new symbols. Although the letter “é” may be used in words like “café” and “fiancée”, it is usually replaced by “e”. Similarly, the diaeresis (two dots) is sometimes used, e.g. “naïve”, but such usage is rare. Such rarely used symbols are written in parentheses in the following map.

On the other hand, some basic Latin letters (e.g. W and X) are only used in recent loanwords in many European languages (these are written in square brackets in the following map).

The following map shows a list of special characters used for each national European language (minority and regional languages are not included, because they often do not have completely established orthographies and there are simply too many to fit into a map). Note that not all of the characters shown in the map are considered “letters” of the alphabet; for example, the character “á” is a separate letter in the Czech alphabet but not in the Spanish alphabet.

see the map

America Magazine: The dawning of America's imperial ambitions

The debate that followed, Stephen Kinzer writes, was “arguably even more momentous than the debate over slavery.” Leading those who believed it was America’s destiny to acquire an empire were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Theodore Roosevelt, a newly minted war hero. Intimate friends and political partners, the two advocated a global strategy of overseas markets secured by a powerful navy. Although America was at peace during the 1890s, Roosevelt wrote in 1895 that he “would welcome any war, for I think this country needs one.” Within three years, pushed by inflammatory reporting by William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, the country was consumed by war fever against Spain. The “splendid little war,” lasting only ten weeks, fulfilled the expansionists’ dreams of new colonies.

Opposed to the acquisition of colonies was the Anti-Imperialist League, led by Andrew Carnegie, William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Carl Schurz and two former presidents. The League believed that the United States should allow foreign peoples to govern themselves. Carnegie and Twain supported the war with Spain in the hope that it would liberate the Cuban people from colonial rule. Their hopes were soon dashed, however. In 1901, Congress adopted the Platt Amendment, which became the template by which the United States dominated countries that it did not formally annex, especially in Latin America. Instead of granting Cubans their independence outright, the legislation stipulated that the United States would “exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence.” The interventionists won other victories. In a political fight that lasted six years, they won every major vote in Congress, soundly defeated the League at the polls and dominated foreign policy for the rest of the 20th century. [...]

Denied independence, the Filipinos rebelled against the American military. A war that lasted 41 months killed more Filipinos than three and a half centuries of Spanish rule. Americans practiced water torture, killed civilians, burned villages and slaughtered farm animals to crush an insurgent rebellion. By the time Roosevelt won the presidency in his own right in 1904, the rebellion was crushed. [...]

The urge of the United States to intervene reflects a deep ambivalence, Kinzer believes. On the one hand, Americans believe that nations should decide their own destinies. On the other, Americans see themselves as the indispensable nation unique in its capacity to change the world for good. McKinley exemplifies this conflict. Initially opposed to war and acquisition of territory, he saw a vision, after prayer, that the United States must “uplift and civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos. Kinzer documents, however, how these best of intentions made things worse.

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Political Critique: There is No End to Decommunisation

But even these seemingly progressive voices who call for more moderate and better designed decommunisation, even those who are worried about the Institute of National Memory’s monopoly on historical truth, or encourage it to seek the approval of local communities’ over any renaming, share the belief in one very questionable claim: that decommunisation actually makes any sense. That it could change anything. [...]

Members of nationalist parties like saying that nothing will change in Ukraine until former Communist apparatchiks die out or are completely removed from the government. They say that the blame for all the problems of the Ukrainian state lies on the Soviet government and the “Soviet mentality,” which, supposedly, is completely lacking in the heads of the young generation. And anything that reminds us of the Soviet government only reproduces totalitarian discourse and prevents the country from developing. Therefore, the omnipresent Soviet symbols and toponyms hold the Ukrainian people in the trap of collectivisation and “communism,” which we, of course, have already seen before. This discourse seems to lead logically to the ‘wrong flag’ theory, according to which Ukraine will remain miserable until the yellow and the blue in its flag are swapped. [...]

But is that actually possible? The Communist Party of Ukraine, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine and other parties which, due to some weird misunderstanding, are habitually called “the left wing” of Ukrainian politics, have catered to the needs of the parties of big capital for most of Ukraine’s independent history, giving them extra votes in the parliament or nominating a convenient candidate for the presidential election. Meanwhile, in the ideological dimension, they became infinitely remote not only from Marxist ideas, but even from the Soviet experience, which they have always used as the nostalgic cornerstone of their rhetoric. These parties have finally turned into strongholds of conservatism and Orthodox Christianity without any realistic claims or prospects. And the events of recent years have demonstrated this clearly.

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Terrain: Observations on Urban Form: Architecture + Iconography

In the place of traditional elaborations of structure or decorative naturalistic motifs, the designer chose instead to celebrate the wonders of an emerging technology and its distribution to the urban populace. Every piece of the carved decoration is derived from the technical parts of an early electrical power system. The pilasters are decorated with braided wires, the archivolts with banded cables, the capitals with transformers. Moldings are made with capacitors and transformers, and light bulbs replace traditional egg and dart motifs. [...]

The modernist dictum that form follows function assumed a close permanent fit between building form and a specific use. But expecting a building’s form to articulate use can be inappropriate in two ways. First, an urban building should continue to contribute to the city long after its initial client and program have moved on. And second, buildings with a “loose fit” to their program are more durable, sustainable, and responsive to the evolution of human uses. Furthermore, great public realms are often formed from simple buildings that contribute to a harmonious street wall.

Another dictum of modernism was the removal of explicit decoration on buildings unless it expressed structure. But in adopting that ideology we have lost the ability to craft an architecture that speaks overtly and explicitly about function—or more importantly—purpose through its detail. If one assumes that architectural honesty and integrity are linked to an explicit articulation of the building’s content, then the lifespan of the building is limited to the period of its original occupation. But when a building can tell us stories about its occupants and their role in society, those stories inform the passersby about the aspirations of a moment in the history of their city. The transitional architecture of the early modern era and specifically the Works Progress Administration are among the best American examples of using iconography in architectural detail. This pre-modern example in Stockholm is remarkable for its confident ingenuity and exuberance.

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Vintage Everyday: 40 interesting Vintage Photographs That Show Everyday Life in Russia in the Early 20th Century

During the 1900s and 1910s, bad living- and working-conditions, high taxes, and land hunger gave rise to more frequent strikes and agrarian disorders. These activities prompted the bourgeoisie of various nationalities in the Russian Empire to develop a host of different parties, both liberal and conservative. These interesting photographs were taken from between 1900s and 1910s.

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Vox: Milo Yiannopoulos resurrected a dangerous old myth about gay men and pedophilia

One of the reasons Yiannopoulos’s latest comments are so abhorrent is that he, as a gay man, is tapping into a pernicious myth that has been historically used to oppose the rights of the LGBTQ community: the idea that gay men are sexual deviants who approve of all sorts of abhorrent behavior, including pedophilia and child sexual abuse. Yiannopoulos, perhaps inadvertently, played into this myth by arguing that there’s an upside to sexual molestation. [...]

The myth of a link between homosexuality and pedophilia is far from new. Retired University of California Davis professor Gregory Herek explained: “Back in 1977, when Anita Bryant campaigned successfully to repeal a Dade County (FL) ordinance prohibiting anti-gay discrimination, she named her organization ‘Save Our Children,’ and warned that ‘a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.’” [...]

Before trans people faced this myth, other minority groups were attacked on the basis of bathrooms as well. Fears of bathroom attacks were used to defend segregation — by invoking fears that black men would attack white women in bathrooms. And fears of gay men in bathrooms were constantly perpetuated to demonize gay people, such as the 1961 anti-gay PSA “Boys Beware” that warned that “public restrooms can often be a hangout for the homosexual.”

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Al Jazeera: State of the media in Zuma's South Africa

In a way, the political sideshow that now accompanies the annual state of the nation address is of the president's own making: Zuma moved the speech from its traditional Friday morning slot to 7pm - taking South African politics into prime time - in search of larger TV audiences.

However the opposition wants those audiences, too - and the EFF's penchant for co-opting the event, upstaging the president with its parliamentary antics, has now been met with an unprecedented show of security that affects the coverage in and around the houses of parliament.

"We're not used to that. Parliament has always been a parliament of the people from the era of Nelson Mandela to the presidents who came after him. And ... now the use of the soldiers - it's very intimidating when you see people with big guns ... walking around the red carpet. It's very difficult to do your job in a case like that where you can't walk around freely," says Sam Mkokeli, chairman of the South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF). [...]

Journalists there say that, during the 2014 elections, they were told that 70 percent of their coverage of the government had to be positive.

Two years later, during local elections, the use of any video of violent protests was reportedly banned - on the orders of executives loyal to Zuma's ruling African National Congress.

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Bloomberg: A Le Pen Win Would Be Dangerous for Putin and Russia’s Economy

Far-right French presidential contender Marine Le Pen’s party has received financing from a Russian bank and gets positive coverage in Russia’s state-run media. Does that mean the Kremlin actually wants to see her elected? Not necessarily: Le Pen’s promise to take France out of the euro zone — which could break up the European single currency — might well devastate Russia’s economy and financial stability. [...]

The 28-member European Union remains by far Russia’s largest commercial partner despite a contraction in trade in recent years after the longest Russian recession in two decades and sanctions imposed because of the Ukraine conflict. Russia’s exports to the euro zone ($91 billion) are almost four times what it sells to China and nearly 11 times the amount of Russian imports in the U.S. [...]

Russia appears most concerned to shore up support for former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, a pro-Kremlin figure who's been hit by a family finance scandal. His presidential rival Emmanuel Macron this week accused Russia of meddling in the French election by putting out fake news through its media outlets.

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FiveThirtyEight: Why Polls Differ On Trump’s Popularity

But beyond that, there’s a lot of seeming disagreement in the polls about exactly how unpopular Trump is — and even whether his disapproval rating exceeds his approval rating at all. Moreover, the differences between Trump’s best surveys and his worst ones span a critical range. Take one group of polls, and the country looks about evenly divided — a lot like it did during the 2016 election, when Trump narrowly lost the popular vote but nonetheless won the Electoral College. Take another group, and his electoral fortunes look much bleaker, with Trump already unpopular enough that the House of Representatives could be in play despite Republicans’ advantages from gerrymandering and the geographic distribution of their voters. [...]

Trump has a fairly poor 43 percent approval rating — and a 51 percent disapproval rating — among polls of all American adults, but he improves to a 47 percent approval rating and a 49 percent disapproval rating among polls that survey registered voters or the narrower group of likely voters. That’s a reasonably big difference. So which polls should you use? [...]

One theory about this is that the online and automated polls reveal “shy” or “hidden” Trump support, with people more willing to reveal their true feelings about the “politically incorrect” Trump in online or automated polls where they have greater anonymity. It’s a plausible theory, but I’m not sure it’s really supported by the evidence. Trump didn’t overperform his polls overall during the Republican primaries, and while he did so in the general election, the overperformance was concentrated among white voters without college degrees, not the group you’d expect if the “shy Trump” theory is right.

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The Guardian: There are reasons to be cheerful... LGBTI rights gains in unlikely countries

Nauru and Belize decriminalised homosexuality and the Seychelles parliament passed a bill ending the ban on same-sex relations. In India, the supreme court said it will review its 2013 judgement that upheld the colonial-era law criminalising “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

More reasons to be cheerful: Greece, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina enacted new statutes to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination. Same-sex marriage was legalised in Colombia, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Guernsey and the British Antarctic Territory. Italy became the 27th country in Europe to officially recognise same-sex couples, approving the law on civil unions. Similar civil unions were agreed by lawmakers in the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Meanwhile, a cross-party coalition of Guatemalan politicians began pushing for marriage equality and Taiwan’s legislature passed the first draft of a bill for same-sex marriage. Voices have also been raised for equal marriage in Cuba, Nepal and Vietnam. [...]

Both in countries that do and don’t criminalise same-sex behaviour, hundreds of millions of LGBTI people are at risk of “honour” killing by family members, mob violence and discrimination in housing, employment, healthcare, education and the provision of goods and services – much of it orchestrated by religious zealots and opportunistic politicians, as witnessed in Russia and Nigeria.

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The Atlantic: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.

Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle. [...]

This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D. [...]

For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.

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Katoikos: Is the European Union falling apart?

Fear itself can be dangerous. Accompanied by horror and panic, it can induce changes in behaviour and prompt people to react to events irrationally. And there are many sources of fear in Europe. The flood of immigrants and the terrorist attacks are two of them, but unemployment is another one. As a consequence, the psychological landscape of Europe has been transformed and traditional cultural behaviours have been distorted.

In fact, the immigrants’ influx in Europe has revealed a number of serious political fault lines. Initially welcomed by many, refugees were eventually considered an anathema by many governments, which claimed that they could not deal with them logistically, that the newcomers were a threat to national identities or a risk to national security. Measures to prevent immigration (link 1, link 2) went from border controls and the closing of borders to fence building, suspension of ferry links and rail travel, spot checks on cars and even state of emergency declarations with soldiers’ deployment. [...]

According to the above table, there are two countries or regions registering the emergence of parties of the far-right in their National assemblies or parliaments for the first time in 2016: Kotleba (People’s Party Our Slovakia), whose chairman is considered a neo-nazi, positioned against the euro, and against NATO; and, in Wales, UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), a great supporter of the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum of 2016. In Romania, a catch-all party also emerged for the first time, getting the third place. [...]

The EU has not been doing enough. Decisions are taken in the grey towers of Brussels, with short briefings to the media, hardly reaching the common citizen. Bad or good, people do not know what Brussels decisions are about, tending to blame the institutions and their bureaucracy for all the wrong-doings and the malaise affecting their national states. And we see no real will and synergies to change the situation. The EU leaders are not giving answers. There is no vision, no credible proposals, no assurances.

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Deutsche Welle: Solar panels make Morocco’s mosques a model for green energy

It's all part of a scheme being pioneered by Morocco's Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Of around 50,000 mosques dotted across the country, the ministry is responsible for energy and water in approximately 15,000. The government plans to install electricity producing PV, or photovoltaic panels, LED lighting and solar thermal water heaters at around 600 mosques by 2019 and more after that. [...]

The changes taking place at mosques are just some of the measures Morocco is taking in developing its renewable energy sector. A frontrunner in the region, the country has already rolled out large wind farm and solar energy projects. In 2015, the King of Morocco announced the country would aim to get more than half its electricity from renewables by 2030. [...]

Currently, Morocco is heavily dependent on energy imports. AMEE estimates that more than 95 percent of its energy comes from outside the country, which makes it vulnerable to energy price fluctuations.

The government believes that energy efficiency and renewable energy are the key to reducing the country's dependency and providing people with an affordable source of power, at least in the long run. But the initial costs for installing solar panels or measures to make their energy more efficient are beyond what many Moroccans can afford.

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Curbed: The 19 most beautiful libraries in the U.S.

From museums to churches, architecture in U.S. cities ranges from jaw-dropping modernist masterpieces to historic gems hidden on side streets. But an oft-overlooked category of Instagram-worthy architecture is our country’s libraries.

Although the first function of a library is to house books and manuscripts, they also serve as places to study, research, and contemplate. Historic libraries, from New York to California, feature massive reading halls, many with coffered ceilings, chandeliers, and the warm glow of reading lights.

More modern buildings—like the Seattle Central Library or the Billings Public Library—are not only architectural marvels, but also function as community gathering spaces and technology hubs. Today’s libraries don’t just stop at books; new designs include recording studios, computer labs, and even art exhibition spaces.

In honor of their beauty, and to underscore their continued relevance in an increasingly digital world, we’ve rounded up 19 architecturally significant libraries throughout the United States.

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Creative Boom: Neglected Utopia: Photographer explores the forgotten modernist estates of Paris

From the 1950s to the 1980s, Paris was booming. Foreign migration and urbanisation of the city caused a huge surge in population and a crisis for housing. France’s solution came in the form of vast housing projects and so during this period massive, modernist and really quite unique estates sprung up across the city — aiming for a new way of living.

Just a few decades later and these towering buildings look dated, discarded and forgotten. Often stigmatised by the media, they divide opinion in France and have been left mostly occupied by the ageing community of ‘urban veterans’ who first made it their home, as the younger generation are drawn to more contemporary city living.

Local photographer Laurent Kronental has become fascinated by the ‘ambitious and dated modernist features’ of these estates, known locally as ‘Grands Ensembles’. Since 2011 he has developed ‘Souvenir d’un Futur’, a series of stunning photographs documenting these neglected communities and capturing what he calls ‘the poetry of ageing environments’. He also explores the idea of the aspirational ‘utopia’ design contrasted with the neglected state they are in today, by consciously conveying the impression of towns that have been left almost empty.

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Al Jazeera: Emmanuel Macron struggles to impress French Muslims

The upcoming contest could have serious consequences for the country's Muslims, with polls putting the Front National's Le Pen in front in the first round of voting.

Restrictions on halal meat, religious clothing, and "burkinis" have formed part of the far-right leader's strategy to fight for the "soul of France".

Macron, her centrist rival, trails behind her in the first round, but polls show he has a healthy lead should the pair face off in the deciding second round.

At 39, the former minister for economy has pulled in energetic crowds for his campaign rallies, drawn by his promise of "democratic revolution" in the face of a global turn to far-right populism of the kind represented by Le Pen.

On Islam, Macron has been cordial, insisting "no religion is a problem in France today" and even drawing ire from the right by condemning French "crimes and acts of barbarism" during its colonial rule in Algeria.

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Political Critique: The Lost Opportunity: After the Pogrom

Today we are at the scene of the crime: a place which belongs to art. This is very painful for us. Everything here can be seen for exactly what it is: the smashed walls are smashed walls, the destroyed pictures are destroyed pictures, the vandalised space is vandalised space. What’s more is that the pogromists were armed and shot at the artwork. This attack was fueled by hatred: a trace of a misanthropic fascist ideology, based exclusively on destruction and murder. Those who can do this to paintings can do the same to people – the only difference being that this attack was not deadly.

The exhibition, preserved in the state it was left in after the pogrom, is a sculptural portrait of Ukrainian society in its current form; it is the Ukrainian body today. The terrifying neo-Nazi cleansing of The Lost Opportunity exhibition reinforced the main political lesson that we have to remember after Maidan: a revolutionary opportunity has been lost by turning into its ideological opposite. [...]

Fascism is always terror, and always leaves a political void; they have come not only for us, but for you, too – for all of us. Where there is fascism, there is nothing but fascism. That’s why in order to enable art to be presented, and for a field of culture to exist, we – the Maidan society, not a Dogville community – have no other option than to remain consistent in our pursuit of anti-fascism. Every action has to be based on this political assumption, as this is the only opportunity for freedom, equality and social solidarity. If we lose this opportunity, none of us will survive.

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CityLab: The Cities That Have Risen From Ruins

Each tragedy has its silver lining, however faint that may be. When a city is destroyed beyond recognition, the need to rebuild presents an opportunity—a blank slate—for the community to redraw the physical landscape, to make it stronger and grander than it was before.

To find examples of that resiliency, just look back to history. Some of the world’s greatest cities were once victims of events that turned them into nothing more than piles of wreckage. Yet even after the worst of destructions, like in Hiroshima where recovery seemed impossible, cities have bounced back, rebuilt from the ground up, and reborn as symbols of modernity and peace.

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Quartz: Another former colony wants Germany to pay for its atrocities in Africa

Mwinyi said he was encouraged by the Mau Mau in Kenya and the Nama and Herero in Namibia, who achieved post-colonial justice. In 2013, a lawsuit brought by five elderly victims of colonial-era torture and forced labor saw the British government award £19.9 million ($24.8 million) to over 5,000 Kenyans. That led to as many as 40,000 Kenyans launching a similar lawsuit in 2016.

Last year, Germany finally acknowledged that its first genocide was in fact in Namibia at the turn of the century, and committed to compensation in the form of aid. Then in January this year, the descendants of the murdered Herero and Nama people filed a class action lawsuit against the German government.

While Germany’s colonial record was already cruel, it was in Tanzania where their extreme tactics led to the highest fatalities. An estimated 75,000 people died, but some believe it could be as many as 300,000. The African population in the region decreased by as much as three quarters (pdf).

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The Atlantic: How Would Immortality Change the Way We Live?

Terror management theory, as Atlantic writer Olga Khazan explains in this video, posits that whenever you remind someone of dying, they try to manage their fear by regaining a sense of control. What would the benefits be to living forever, and consequently, not fearing death? Would it make us happier, or more generous? In Silicon Valley, some of the country’s wealthiest and brightest minds are pooling their resources behind technologies that promise to extend life. “Our purpose now, in the 21st century, is to become god-like and overcome death,” says Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist and former presidential candidate. This episode of “That Feeling When” explores the growing number of people who have already begun preparing for a life without death.

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The Atlantic: Why right-wing populist parties have failed to flourish in Spain

The huge demonstration is a striking reminder of what Carmen González-Enríquez, a senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, has dubbed “the Spanish exception”(pdf). Following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) last year, there’s been growing anxiety that right-wing populism will gain more ground in Europe. But this populist wave has yet to make much of a splash in Spain, where right-wing populist parties have failed to obtain more than 1% of the vote in national elections in recent years. The working paper is one part of a major new research project led by British think tank Demos on feelings about current policy and politics across six EU member states.

The paper restricts the definition of right-wing populism to a party or a movement that is xenophobic, anti-European, and anti-globalization. González-Enríquez notes that Spain has the conditions that so many right-wing populist parties have successfully exploited across Europe: a massive influx of migrants, economic crisis, and growing dissatisfaction with political elites. In 1998, immigrants accounted for 3% of the population, but this figure jumped to 14% by 2012, the paper notes. The increase in immigrants coincided with a boom in the Spanish economy between 1996 and 2007, which was largely based on a construction bubble. [...]

Using public data (including statistics and opinion polls), interviews with experts and original polling, González-Enríquez gives three-explanations for the absence of an enduring right-wing populist response to the crisis. First, a lack of strong leadership by the far right, then the Spanish electoral system, which tends to favor big parties that have an established presence in electoral districts of differing sizes. Lastly, González-Enríquez cites the dark legacy of Francisco Franco’s 1939 to 1975 dictatorship, which weakened national identity and introduced a strong sense of cynicism in the authoritarian right.

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The Conversation: China says it has stopped harvesting organs, but evidence belies its claim

In 2005, China publicly stated what many already believed: that its transplant system was built on harvesting organs from criminals sentenced to death (“executed prisoners”). According to declarations by officials, this practice has been banned since January 2015, with organs now sourced from volunteer citizen donors. [...]

Several articles have drawn attention to the double meaning of the term “executed prisoner”. And independent investigators have identified that they include prisoners of conscience, who are executed for their organs without due process, as well as death-sentence prisoners whose organs are harvested after judicial execution. [...]

Zheng has also written a paper about performing 46 emergency liver transplants, between January 2000 and December 2004. Rather than spending time on a waiting list, these patients received their new livers within one to three days of arriving at the hospital. That again suggests a plentiful supply of organs at short notice.

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Motherboard: This Neuroscientist Wants to Know Why People Who See UFOs Feel So Good

In other words, ufologists will always be the first ones to let you know that they don't believe in UFOs, they know they are real. But the gap between belief and knowledge is a large one, a chasm that separates the scientific and the pseudoscientific. Since ufology became something of an organized field of study, albeit a fringe one, in the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of the scientific community hasn't hesitated to label the field as pseudoscientific, much to the ire of ufologists. [...]

Ufologists have always thought that this phenomenon was a negative or hostile experience, but we're finding just the opposite. What we've found is that about 85 percent of the people who are experiencing this phenomenon are being transformed in a very positive behavioral or psychospiritual way. Generally, people become more humane, experience a oneness with the world. They become less interested in organized religion, they become more spiritual, they have less interest in monetary values, and become more sensitive to the ecological welfare of our planet, among many other psychospiritual outcomes. It is a real and powerful outcome that is generally ignored by the UFO community. [...]

The obvious question is whether these individuals might be having an illusion or a fantasy proneness, some aberrant psychological pathology that might give rise to their contentions that they're behaviorally transformed. That's discounted to a large extent because if they were in fact having some type of psychological aberration to begin with, it would be very unlikely that they'd report such positive behavioral outcomes as a result of their interaction with this phenomenon. The fact that so many, about 85 percent, say the same thing, also diminishes the possibility that there is an underlying psychological aberration associated with it. Unfortunately we didn't have the time and money to screen all individuals for some psychological problem. Future research should look at that component of the individual who is reporting this kind of experience.

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America Magazine: Finding a way forward for wounded and hurting Catholics

Sadly in so many ways, Catholics are very reluctant to face the devastation that this crisis has unleashed in the church. People want to keep it at arm’s length and believe that the crisis has passed. For many victims, the crisis is still very much alive. In the course of writing the book, I traveled to speak with and interview two survivors of clergy sexual abuse who were willing to share their stories with me. In turn, I’ve included their stories in the book. Telling their stories is of paramount importance for their healing, and—as I argue in the book—listening to their stories is of paramount importance to heal the church as a whole from this great tragedy. [...]

Francis has proven to be an enormously enigmatic figure for many of us—even for those of us who have lived in Latino culture and ministered there. Austen Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer has been a great help in understanding Francis. The pope has been nothing less than prophetic on the message of mercy, and in attempting to shepherd the church into what he calls a “revolution of tenderness”—a theme I build on in my final chapter. I think we’ve gotten that message heard loud and clear, and it will be at the heart of his legacy. But if I could say one thing to him now, I would say, “Your Holiness, now we need to hear you talk more about truth—the truth of the human person, about moral truth and how truth and mercy are not at odds with each other.” That’s something he has, in fact, affirmed, but it seems to get lost in the media accounts of what he says. At any rate, I’d like to hear him develop that line of thinking more.

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Bloomberg: Italy's Renzi Quits as Party Leader, Triggers Re-Election Fight

With critics from leftist factions threatening to abandon the Democratic Party, Renzi, 42, told the national assembly of the party in a Rome hotel on Sunday that he had handed in his resignation, acknowledging he was set back by defeat in the Dec. 4 constitutional referendum. [...]

Renzi, who is expected to stand for re-election at a congress in April or May, denounced “blackmail by a minority” and infighting that he called “a gift” to the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. [...]

Renzi has faced challenges to his reformist strategy and leadership especially since losing the referendum, which prompted him to resign as premier and sponsor current Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, a Renzi loyalist and fellow PD member, as his successor.

Renzi, who has pushed for early national elections in June or September, made no such appeal on Sunday and instead urged his audience to support Gentiloni and his government. [...]

The survey credited Five Star with 30.9 percent of the vote, against 30.1 percent for the PD, 13 percent for Forza Italia of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi and 12.8 percent for the anti-immigrant Northern League.

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Al Jazeera: Attack on shrines in Pakistan since 2005

Armed groups such as the Pakistani Taliban and others have often targeted shrines for not conforming to their strict, literalistic interpretation of Islam.

On February 16, 2017, at least 88 people were killed when a suicide attacker targeted a famous Sufi shrine in Sehwan.

That attack at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) also injured at least 250 people.

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The Economist: Young people and free speech

Overall, the poll conducted by Populus, a research firm, on behalf of the Varkey Foundation, an educational charity, shows that among young people there is broad support for expanding rights to historically marginalised minority groups. In all of the 18 countries surveyed, a majority of 18- to 21-year-olds agreed that there should be equality between the sexes and rights for transgender people. In the United States, three-quarters of respondents are in favour of transgender rights. The young are similarly supportive in India, which introduced a law recognising rights for a “third gender” in 2014.

Even when equal treatment is not enshrined in law, young people tend to support it. More than half of youngsters in 15 countries want safe and legal abortion—even in places where the procedure is currently illegal, such as South Korea. Similarly, respondents in most countries are in favour of same-sex marriage. This pattern includes India, where homosexuality is a crime. 

However, there is one right that young people are less keen on extending to others: the right to say what you want. Overall, fewer than half of those polled agreed that people should be allowed to express non-violent opinions even if they offend minorities. In Britain and Germany, for instance, only 46% and 48% did.

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The Guardian: Agnieszka Holland: Pokot reflects divided nature of Polish society

The 68-year-old, whose first international hit was in 1990 with Europa, Europa, which concerned a young Polish Jew who disguises himself as a member of the Hitler Youth to survive, said: “There’s a cultural counter-revolution going on, which we see with Jarosław Kaczyński [the de facto leader of Poland], as well as in Russia and the US, which is represented by men who have a populist authoritarian agenda that places women’s rights and nature preservation in the front line of attack,” she said in an interview with the Guardian at the Berlin film festival, where her film had its world premiere this week.

Women’s rights and ecology have been two areas under attack since the rightwing Law and Justice party took power in 2016. Among many controversial moves, the government has sought to introduce an all-out abortion ban, as well as relaxing laws that protect swaths of Europe’s last remaining primeval forests. [...]

Holland said the protagonist embodied many disillusioned women of her generation “who are very rational, working as engineers or scientists, who reject the official religion that became very politically corrupt and has little to do with Jesus Christ. But at some point they start to have the need to connect to something like astrology, yoga or zen. It’s the above-55 generation who believed in progress and in the freedom that came with the collapse of communism, and the fact they could take things into their own hands, but who have now lost this hope.”

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The Guardian: Trump’s dangerous delusions about Islam

Bush’s tact may have been caused by a short-term desire to rein in attacks on American Muslims (and others mistaken for them, such as Sikhs) in the wake of 9/11. But it also served the longer view of the president and his advisers, who believed that the Muslim world, much like everywhere else, was capable of being improved by exposure to democracy, free market capitalism and individual freedoms. In this regard, Bush’s views were in line with the then-influential “end of history” thesis proposed by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in 1989. With the end of the cold war, Fukuyama argued, it was only a matter of time before western liberal democracy was recognised everywhere as the best form of government. By the turn of the century, the belief that we were witnessing “the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to western liberalism” was never more widely shared, and it lay behind one of Bush’s professed goals in invading Afghanistan and Iraq: to shepherd the Muslim world towards the universal ideology of liberalism. [...]

A fear and loathing of Islam is the central plank of the nativist populism that has surged on both sides of the Atlantic. Consider Geert Wilders, whose populist Party for Freedom is on course to perform better than any other party in next month’s Dutch elections; he has warned that unless the Netherlands takes strong anti-Muslim measures, the country will be “colonised and Islamised”. The sounding of demographic sirens has become respectable again. Regretting the declining birth rate among native-born German women, the Alternative für Deutschland party leader Frauke Petry has said, “We have to make sure that Germany, as a population and as a nation, does not disappear entirely.” [...]

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were naturally aggressive and bloody affairs, for which the clash theory provided useful cover. To the delight of his supporters in the Bush administration, the septuagenarian Lewis wholeheartedly endorsed the war on terror. It soon became clear that in order to support the invasions you didn’t need to subscribe to ideas about the inevitable victory of universal liberalism – faith in the clash was enough. [...]

In this way, over the 1920s and 1930s the threat and reality of colonisation redefined Muslim relations with the west along lines that anticipated today’s combustible enmity. At the beginning of the century the efforts of the political class in Turkey, Iran and Egypt had been directed at nation building and the consolidation of parliamentary regimes. In the 1920s and 1930s the paramount issue became getting rid of the foreigners or keeping them at arm’s length. Of course the powers objected. Britain and France argued that the mandates were not ready for independence. Reza Shah was toppled by the allies in 1941 for showing partiality to Nazi Germany. And in 1953, in a breach of Iran’s sovereignty that would convince many Middle Easterners of the west’s fathomless duplicity, and CIA and MI5 overthrew Muhammad Mossadegh, Iran’s most successful constitutional politician for half a century, as punishment for his temerity in nationalising the oil industry.

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Politico: Between genders in Prague

The procedure for legally changing one’s gender in the Czech Republic — consistently ranked one of Europe’s most developed post-communist democracies — is among the most restrictive in the European Union. It hinges on the individual undergoing full gender confirmation surgery.

Trans people are also required to divorce their spouses or same-sex registered partners, live for a year in their preferred gender roles before applying for surgery, and relinquish their ability to have biological children. [...]

Because names and surnames are gendered in the Czech Republic — female names generally end in “a” or sometimes “e,” and female surnames carry the suffix “ová;” male surnames often, but not always, carry the masculine ending “ý” — surgery becomes the only way to obtain a legal identity that doesn’t automatically “out” an individual at the post office or on a job application. [...]

In 2008, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled compulsory divorce was unconstitutional and the country now allows trans people to remain married during their transition. Last year, the Swedish government announced trans people would receive compensation for forced sterilizations that took place prior to 2013, when the practice was abolished.

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