The Conversation: Revenge isn’t always sweet, but it can be beautiful

About 20 years ago, we started conducting research on revenge after noticing that people often struggle with forgiveness – even forgiving the people they love. In most relationships, people usually want to feel like they’re getting a fair deal, and revenge is one recourse they have if they feel they’ve been slighted.

Some forms of revenge do make the perpetrator feel better, though it’s usually not as “sweet” as imagined. A number of other factors influence how people feel about committing revenge, from how it’s crafted to the target’s reaction. [...]

At least two factors determine whether a person feels good or bad about revenge.

One is how “beautiful” or aesthetically pleasing the act of revenge seems. In one study, researchers asked a group of MBA students to tell two stories they personally knew about a time that they (or someone they knew) had taken revenge on a coworker. [...]

The other factor that influences how people feel about revenge is the target’s reaction. [...]

So in order for revenge to be enjoyable, the way it is crafted, performed and responded to seem to matter. The best kinds make people feel like they are living in a better, more controllable and fair world. Others – especially those that make people feel regret, don’t change the offender or result in lopsided amounts of harm – are probably not as sweet as you’d imagine them to be.

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Political Critique: Public Demonstrations in Belarus: A Society Stirred

t has been almost a whole month of public demonstrations in Belarus. The mere materialisation of these protests, which have taken place in a dozen of participating regional towns with hundreds, even thousands, of protesters, is unusual for Belarus. Public protest is a rare phenomenon here, as Belarusians largely perceive themselves as tolerant and passive. But the wave of public upheavals that is currently rolling across the country dispels this stereotype and can have unexpected effects.

There are several lessons one can draw about it from the evolving situation. [...]

At the same time, demonstrations have been unheard of since summer 2011, when after devaluation of the national currency to 56 percent (and other dramas of the domestic economy) Belarusians took to the streets for several consecutive Wednesdays. As demonstrations have to be authorised, people gathered without any slogans and simply clapped their hands. These so-called “silent protests” came to a close as plain-clothed policemen violently arrested hundreds of the clapping participants. Subsequently, the economic situation improved. [...]

Whereas Belarusian state-controlled media blames Russia for interfering into the internal affairs of Belarus and messing with its stability, there have been no pro-Kremlin slogans, no activists promoting a Russian agenda. At the same time, Moscow, the closest political ally and economic partner, became its biggest threat economically, politically, and military. But it’s good news to see that Russia doesn’t (yet?) have a plan or the capacity for a Ukrainian scenario in Belarus.

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Political Critique: Elections in the Netherlands: Can Europe Be Saved?

The Netherlands, however, is still many of these (positive) things, and thus fears about a cascade of populist victories in Europe appear to be somewhat exaggerated. Both the U.K. and the U.S. feature political systems which tend towards single-party (and/or single-person) rule. Both have also spear-headed a neoliberal ‘spirit of the times’ and currently suffer the most dramatic backlash from it. The Netherlands, apart from maintaining a functioning welfare state and enjoying steady economic recovery, can contrastingly be characterized as a ‘democracy of minorities,’ featuring a system of proportional representation in a single constituency. This assures any party that wins 0.67% of the vote a seat in the Second Chamber (or Lower House). Since no single party ever manages to win a clear majority (76 out of 150 seats), coalition governments and a spirit of compromise have been the rule for more than a century.

Recent decades have witnessed a sharp decline in support for the three main governmental parties of the centre-right and centre-left: the Christian Democrats (CDA), the Conservative Liberals (VVD, the party of acting prime minister Mark Rutte), and the Labour Party. Apart from these, eleven other parties are forecast to gain seats in parliament, but none of these parties currently exceeds 12 percent in the polls. Conforming to a Europe-wide trend (excepting the German SPD), the Labour Party, now at a pitiful 8 percent, is heading towards a shattering defeat. Their coalition partner, VVD, is currently the largest party, hovering around 16 percent. The Christian Democrats already suffered their historic defeat in 2012, after participating in an ill-fated and short-lived coalition (which gave the PVV the role of conditional supporter). After having led the polls throughout 2016, Wilders’ party has steadily declined since the beginning of this year, and is now second at around 15 percent. Three other parties – the Progressive Liberals (D66), the Green Left Party (GroenLinks), and the Socialist Party (SP) – are following closely on the heels of both VVD and PVV, polling between 10 and 12 percent. [...]

This timely offer of a ‘politics of hope’ is crucial if we look at the deeper anatomy of the nationalist protest vote, which has fueled populism everywhere, including Brexit and Trumpism. The decline of traditional heavy industry has abolished many working-class jobs and undermined working-class pride, from the American Rust Belt to those of Northern France, the U.K. Midlands, Polish Silezia, the Donbass, and South Limburg (the last being a  Dutch province that still suffers phantom pains from the closing of the coalmines in the 1970s, and which constitutes Wilders’s heartland). Everywhere ‘honest work’ itself has been destroyed, while working-class, male-identified culture lives on as a ‘zombie culture.’ Economic grievances have been transformed into fears about cultural identity, social dignity, and meaning (or, rather, the lack thereof). Zombie or phantom identities such as these turn inward and become poisonous, opening themselves to the lure of gratuitous identities, as with those that are provided by nationalism, ethnicity and machismo. Many of Wilders’ core voters do not seem to care whether or not he is capable of effectively governing the country, and neither do they seem to believe in what he says. This is similar to many Trump voters, who voted out of desire to kick the elite’s ass, regardless of the consequences.

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BBC4 Beyond Belief: Pakistan

70 years ago Pakistan was born out of the partition of the Indian sub-continent, at the end of British colonial rule. It was created to meet the demands of Indian Muslims for their own homeland. The Constitution states that all laws are to conform with the rulings of Islam as laid down in the Quran and Sunnah. Religion is deeply woven into Pakistan; its culture, its laws and its justice system. It's been a turbulent 70 years politically, characterised by a civil war which resulted in the breakaway of Bangladesh; interchanging periods of military rule and transitional democracy. And Pakistan is frequently cited among the top 10 worst countries for human rights violations of religious minorities and women.

How has religious faith shaped Pakistan? To what extent are the blasphemy laws, adultery punishments and honour killings religious? And how is the cultural and religious patriarchy of the country being challenged today?

Ernie Rea explores religion in Pakistan with Iftikhar Malik, Professor of history at Bath Spa University; Humaira Masihuddin, an Islamabad-based lawyer and Islamic scholar, who trains the Pakistani police and judiciary; and Dr Saeeda Shah, reader in Education at the University of Leicester and an expert in Islam and Education in Pakistan.

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Al Jazeera: Duterte: International Criminal Court 'cannot stop me'

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has said he would not be intimidated by the prospect of the International Criminal Court (ICC) putting him on trial over his bloody war on drugs, promising that his campaign would continue and would be "brutal". [...]

More than 8,000 people have died since Duterte took office on June 30 last year, and began his anti-drugs campaign.

A third of the fatalities were killed in raids and sting operations by police who say they acted in self-defence, while the rest were killed by unknown gunmen. [...]

Two men, including the one who is expected to file the ICC case, have testified before the Philippine Senate saying they were part of an alleged "death squad" in Davao that killed at Duterte's behest.

But Senate members found no proof of extra-judicial killings and death squads.

The "death squad" and allegations of drugs-related extrajudicial killings were also among the reasons for an impeachment complaint filed by an opposition lawmaker in Congress against Duterte on Thursday.

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The Guardian: Banned and barred, Israel’s women stand up to religious hardliners

Over the last decade in different parts of Israel, women have been barred from sections of buses, banned from speaking at cemeteries, blocked from pavements, physically attacked for their clothing choices, airbrushed from newspapers and magazines and removed from the airwaves and news photos.

These challenges are rooted in the objections of many in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community to men and women mixing in public places, and to public representations of women in any form, from actors in advertisements to public figures on the news, or images in books. They affect everything from morning commutes and interior decoration to the most solemn religious ceremonies. Moody was attacked for joining public prayers and the celebration of a bat mitzvah – a girl’s coming of age ceremony – at the Western Wall. [...]

But important as these legal rulings are, they rely on government enforcement and community respect, and both are in short supply in a country where religion and state are closely entwined, and ultra-Orthodox politicians command a powerful and loyal voting block, women activists say.

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Political Critique: “No to All Types of Violence!“: Massive Feminist Protest in Kyiv

The central theme of this year’s feminist demonstration in Kyiv, Ukraine, was the fight for eliminating violence against women, which is extremely prevalent in all parts of the world and spheres of people’s lives. For Ukraine, it is an especially important struggle due to the context of the war conflict in East Ukraine.  No official statistics on gender violence in combat zones exists have been offered as of yet, but human rights organizations continually report more and more incidents of gender violence in the combat zone happening more frequently. These reports show that such acts of violence are taking place at checkpoints, in illegal places of imprisonment (so called “cellars”), and in families of ex-servicemen (on the both sides of conflict). Another important topic of the demonstration was a critique of the state “decommunisation” policy, and the initiative of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory to abolish the celebration of International Women Day, relegating it as a “Soviet holiday,” and replace it with Mother’s Day.

An unprecedented amount of participants in this year’s demonstration was achieved due to the great mobilizing power of many feminist, leftist, and anarchist groups, as well as from representatives of LGBT-communities and human rights organizations. Included as representatives with human rights organizations were sex work activists, who state their aim is to achieve decriminalization of sex work in Ukraine. Many human rights speakers also raised serious concerns regarding the implementation of the Istanbul Convention in Ukraine, which Ukrainian Parliament failed to ratify and subsequently postponed, as several members of Parliament argued that several of the convention’s provisions are not ‘gender’ appropriate for Ukraine.

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