BBC4 Analysis: How Voters Decide: Part Two

What makes us change our mind when it comes to elections? We are all swingers now. More voters than ever before are switching party from one election to the next. Tribal loyalties are weakening. The electorate is now willing to vote for the other side.

Professor Rosie Campbell from Birkbeck University finds out what prompts voters to shift from one party to another. Quentin Davies had been a Tory MP for decades when he crossed the floor of the house. He believes his views stayed the same - but the world changed around him. Journalist Janet Daley was once too left wing for the Labour Party - until Margaret Thatcher came along. Meanwhile Daryll Pitcher felt as though no party wanted his vote. Today he is a UKIP campaign manager.

Does age make us become more right wing? Have the main political parties alienated their core vote? And what does this mean for democracy?

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BBC4 Analysis: How Voters Decide: Part One

What does the story of the Downing Street cat reveal about the way voters decide? We are not taught how to vote. We rely on intuition, snap judgments and class prejudice. We vote for policies that clash wildly with our own views. We keep picking the same party rather than admit we were wrong in the past.

Rosie Campbell, Professor of Politics at Birkbeck University, sets out to become a rational voter. Class and religion have a huge impact. But our political views have become less polarised even as the parties have moved further apart. Rosie asks whether discussions of "left" and "right" have become irrelevant. In a neuropolitics lab Rosie undergoes tests to uncover her implicit biases. She learns that hope and anger make her want to vote - but blind her to the truth.

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Haaretz: Separate and Unequal: Inside Israel's Military Courts, Where the Only Defendants Are Palestinians read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.779748

The trials themselves take place in glammed-up trailers, where military and court officials come and go, answering phones, high-fiving and greeting one another. It might have been out of place in many court rooms, but this was Israel’s military court system, a complete justice system that tries only Palestinians, and in 2010 self-reported a 99.74% conviction rate. Israeli settlers, even when committing a crime in the West Bank, are tried in civilian courts

Under the Israeli penal code, individuals can apply for probation after serving half of their sentence. In the military courts, Palestinians must serve two-thirds of their sentence before applying. Israel has also passed laws allowing Palestinians to be held for 180 days without charges, renewable indefinitely. Over 700 Palestinians are being held without charges or trial, what a UN representative calls an “eight-year high”.

Israel is also one of the few countries that allows children to be held under administrative detention. In the military courts, the age of majority is 16, allowing teenagers to be tried as adults, while 18 is the age of majority in Israel. Children in Israel are questioned only by specially trained officers, while in the military courts, officers or members of the Shin Bet security service interrogate minors. [...]

Though many Palestinians see it as a sham court, Israel keeps these courts running in attempt to legitimize its presence in the Palestinian Territories. The UN has repeatedly stated that the court acts in violation of international law. Military courts often lack the impartiality of civilian trials as the judge, prosecutor and translators are all members of the armed forces, rather than independent professionals hired by the state.

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Vintage Everyday: 27 Rare Photos Capture Everyday Life of Italians from Late 19th to Early 20th Centuries

Here is a collection of 27 rare photos that show everyday life of Italians in the late 19th century and years of the 1900s.

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The Intercept: Trump’s War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised

The most recent atrocity was the killing of as many as 200 Iraqi civilians from U.S. airstrikes this week in Mosul. That was preceded a few days earlier by the killing of dozens of Syrian civilians in Raqqa province when the U.S. targeted a school where people had taken refuge, which itself was preceded a week earlier by the U.S. destruction of a mosque near Aleppo that also killed dozens. And one of Trump’s first military actions was what can only be described as a massacre carried out by Navy SEALs, in which 30 Yemenis were killed; among the children killed was an 8-year-old American girl (whose 16-year-old American brother was killed by a drone under Obama).

In sum: Although precise numbers are difficult to obtain, there seems little question that the number of civilians being killed by the U.S. in Iraq and Syria — already quite high under Obama — has increased precipitously during the first two months of the Trump administration. Data compiled by the site Airwars tells the story: The number of civilians killed in Syria and Iraq began increasing in October under Obama but has now skyrocketed in March under Trump.

What’s particularly notable is that the number of airstrikes actually decreased in March (with a week left), even as civilian deaths rose — strongly suggesting that the U.S. military has become even more reckless about civilian deaths under Trump than it was under Obama: [...]

THE CLARITY OF Trump’s intentions regarding the war on terror was often obfuscated by anti-Trump pundits due to a combination of confusion about and distortions of foreign policy doctrine. Trump explicitly ran as a “non-interventionist” — denouncing, for instance, U.S. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria (even though he at some points expressed support for the first two). Many commentators confused “non-interventionism” with “pacifism,” leading many of them — to this very day — to ignorantly claim that Trump’s escalated war on terror bombing is in conflict with his advocacy of non-interventionism. It is not.

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Quartz: The idea of monogamy as a relationship ideal is based on flawed science

Monogamy is so much a part of the emotional makeup of Western culture that even people who study relationships fail to notice their biases towards it, according to research due to be published this week. And that means the very way we study intimacy has some fundamental flaws.

The primacy given to monogamous unions isn’t surprising given the historically patriarchal societies that dominate the world: An economic system predicated upon handing down property from father to son is invested in certainty about paternity and on clear family lines. [...]

Conley, who runs the Stigmatized Sexualities Lab at the University of Michigan, has often questioned the orthodoxies of research on sexuality in relationships, and says that she has encountered resistance from other researchers, and reviewers of the papers she has published over the past years—with some responding emotionally to her raising the very concept of exploring non-monogamy. In one study, Conley found that consensually non-monogamous couples were more likely to practice safer sex than monogamous couples who were secretly cheating on their partners. One reviewer called the paper “irresponsible.” In another case, a reviewer referred to gay relationships that “deteriorate” into non-monogamy. [...]

In recent years, polyamory and other alternative relationship styles have begun to be normalized, in some quarters, Conley said. But for now, the study found, “the premise that monogamy is superior to other types of non-monogamous relational arrangements continues to permeate the ways in which researchers construct and test theories of love and intimacy.”

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Slate: 2nd Circuit Chief Judge: Anti-Gay Employment Discrimination Is Already Illegal Nationwide

On Monday, Chief Judge Robert Katzmann of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals wrote that anti-gay employment discrimination is almost certainly prohibited under existing federal law. Katzmann urged the 2nd Circuit to reconsider precedent holding that employees cannot sue for sexual orientation discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, citing recent legal developments that support an expansive interpretation of “sex discrimination.” If Katzmann’s court accepts his challenge, the 2nd Circuit will further a growing consensus among the federal judiciary that Title VII already protects gay employees from workplace throughout the country. [...]

Katzmann first noted that anti-gay discrimination is, in a very literal sense, always sex discrimination: “Such discrimination,” he explained, “treats otherwise similarly‐situated people differently solely because of their sex.” When an employer mistreats a worker because she dates other women, sex is the key factor: If the employer were male, he could date women without a problem—but because she is female, she faces discrimination. That makes sex the “but for” cause of discrimination: But for the worker’s sex, he would not be mistreated.  [...]

“[N]egative views of sexual orientation,” Katzmann wrote, “are often, if not always, rooted in the idea that men should be exclusively attracted to women and women should be exclusively attracted to men—as clear a gender stereotype as any. Thus, in my view, if gay, lesbian, or bisexual plaintiffs can show that they were discriminated against for failing to comply with some gender stereotype, including the stereotype that men should be exclusively attracted to women and women should be exclusively attracted to men, they have made out a cognizable sex discrimination claim.”

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Land of Maps: Paid maternity leave by country

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Associated Press: Non merci: French voters reject corruption in politics

The change is the result of an aggressive new financial prosecutor, an unprecedented anti-corruption drive by President Francois Hollande, and growing public frustration with a political establishment seen as intent on enriching itself even as ordinary people suffer.

Hollande on Thursday inaugurated the French anti-corruption agency, a public organization focusing on business activity — the latest move in government efforts to fight corruption.

Five years ago, Hollande campaigned on the promise to make the French Republic "exemplary." He probably didn't think he would have so much clean up to do in his own camp.

Former Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux on Tuesday became the fifth minister to quit the Socialist government over financial wrongdoing allegations. Prosecutors opened an investigation into a report that he hired his two daughters for some two dozen temporary parliamentary jobs, starting when they were 15 and 16 years old.

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