Jacobin Magazine: South Korea After Park

Moon won 13.4 million votes (41 percent) against his conservative rival Hong Jun-pyo’s 7.8 million votes (24 percent). The election represented a major defeat for South Korea’s reactionary conservative forces, but we will have to wait to see if Moon can meet the expectations of the millions of South Koreans who fought to throw his predecessor out of office. [...]

Even if Moon sincerely means his election promises, he will find it very difficult to challenge the deep-seated structures that created South Korea’s culture of state-capital collusion and allowed the nation’s chaebols (conglomerates) to gain dominance. Further, Moon may prove unable — or even willing — to make the kinds of changes that would address the country’s most pressing issues: youth unemployment, soaring inequality, and a crisis-prone political system. Perhaps most significantly of all, it seems unlikely that Moon will cut the Gordian knot that binds South Korea to the United States and keeps it at the center of Northeast Asia’s geopolitical vortex. [...]

At the same time, however, he belongs to the Catholic Church and holds some socially conservative views. When asked during a debate about the military’s persecution of gay soldiers, Moon responded that he opposed homosexuality in general. On the campaign trail, he emphasized national security and played up his credentials as a former member of South Korea’s special forces, signaling that the country’s deep state had nothing to fear from his victory. [...]

The moment clearly illustrated that South Korea has become a peculiar hybrid of a Cold War–developmental state and hypercompetitive neoliberal dystopia. The government still places economic development and defending against the “red menace” as its most important tasks, just as it has since the country’s founding amid anticommunist massacres in 1948. However, neoliberal policies have joined this orientation, leading to a rapid deregulation of the labor market, finance sector, and educational institutions. This combination has created a rampantly competitive society that has the second highest suicide rate in the world. [...]

South Korea has seen a series of great popular uprisings, from the April Revolution of 1960 to the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and the democratic revolution of 1987. Unlike these, the government did not attempt to suppress the 2016–17 movement by force, probably due to the administration’s weakness and the splits that fractured the ruling class. Even the elite’s pet journal, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, came out against the president.

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The Conversation: Maybe we can, but should we? Deciding whether to bring back extinct species

De-extinction – the science of reviving species that have been lost – has moved from the realm of science-fiction to something that is now nearly feasible. Some types of lost mammals, birds or frogs may soon be able to be revived through de-extinction technologies.

But just because we can, does it mean we should? And what might the environmental and conservation impacts be if we did? [...]

Applied to the question of possible de-extinction programs in New Zealand, this approach showed that it would take money away from managing extant (still alive) species, and may lead to other species going extinct. [...]

A recent study took the process that was developed to rank New Zealand species according to priority for action, and included 11 possible candidates for de-extinction in the ranking process. These were birds, frogs and plants, including the little bush moa, Waitomo frog and laughing owl.

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Haaretz: It’s the West’s Turn Now That Rohani Has Won in Iran

No less important is the voters’ message to the conservative elites, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guard and the justice system, which must translate the people’s choice into a political and foreign-policy strategy. For them, the main question is how to brand their failure. Did the public choose Rohani because of the 2015 nuclear agreement with the big powers, which the supreme leader also supported, or was Rohani elected to advance human rights, an issue on which he clashed with the conservatives? [...]

An Iranian president must constantly negotiate with his country’s parliament, military and ideological and economic elites. He can form coalitions to advance his cause and must be able to look the supreme leader in the eye. Rohani has shown an impressive ability in most areas, and considering the broad support he won in the election, Khamenei is the one who has to prove he isn’t acting against the people’s will; that is, sabotaging Rohani’s initiatives. [...]

Now it’s the West’s and especially Europe’s turn to make Iran a diplomatic and economic partner and face up to Trump’s brutal policy that speaks in the language of sanctions. Iran will remain a suspect state and be examined under a microscope. But now that most Iranians have declared their intentions, it’s time to rethink the paradigm that has shaped the world’s policy toward the country.

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Vox: The surprising pattern behind color names around the world

Broadly: The Photographer Showing Burkinis in Objective, Abstract Light

However, burkinis are not the sole focus of Burkini. Burkini is a meditation on life in Abu Dhabi from the point of view of an expatriate. "Burkinis were a base, but I was trying to see the big picture. How people live there. It's really important to say that I'm an outsider. I have travelled there many, many times, but I am still an outsider. I didn't grow up in this culture. [Burkini] is just a way of observing. That's an important point, that I'm an outsider."

The closely-shot images are detail-oriented and have a diaristic feel. Many were taken in and around cars or from moving vehicles. "I was also really interested in finding colours and shapes and form. Those were also things that I was looking for in the images," she says. The closeness of the shots allude to a laser-focused abstraction, where fabric floating through water becomes a study in movement, where car windows become frames for distant skyscrapers. "It was very important for me to take the images really close, because one thing I wanted understood was that so... well, the burkini is, in a way, just a fabric. A car is just a car. It was important to photograph them really close—visually really close—just to observe it as it is.

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America Magazine: As church influence wanes, an abortion debate arises in Ireland

Ireland metaphorically barred the door on the church’s influence on public policy when citizens voted overwhelmingly for the legalization of gay marriage in 2015, making it the first country in the world to do so by national referendum. Now  some devout Catholics fear that door may be locked after a Citizens’ Assembly—a deliberative body of people randomly selected from across the country—recently recommended liberal changes to Ireland’s abortion laws. [...]

The Assembly’s recommendations, which are nonbinding: 87 percent of the 100 members voted that the eighth amendment “should not be retained in full,” and 64 percent voted that abortion without restriction should be lawful. [...]

The recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly are just one step toward potential abortion legislation. Debate among politicians may take months. The Assembly’s advice will go to a parliamentary committee made up of a handful of members from each party. If there is a referendum, it will likely take place in early 2018—a referendum that could accelerate the evolution of Irish politics away from the church.

Throughout the relatively short history of the Irish Republic, church and state have governed private, public and spiritual spheres hand in hand. More than 90 percent of national schools are run by a local parish. A twice-daily call to prayer can still be heard on television and radio. And Good Friday remains the holiest of holy days, with a (much-disputed) nationwide ban on the purchase of alcohol.

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Al Jazeera: Profile: Iran's President Hassan Rouhani

He began studying religion at an early age. In the 1960s, he went to religious seminaries and began attending classes taught by prominent Shia scholars. In 1969, he attended the University of Tehran and received his bachelor's degree in judicial law three years later.

In addition to religious studies, he was interested in learning modern sciences, going on to receive a master's degree in public law along with a doctorate at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. [...]

Since the government takeover of the Islamic Revolution, Rouhani has held multiple positions, including Secretary and Representative of the Supreme National Security Council, member of the Assembly of Experts, member of the Expediency Discernment Council, President of the Center for Strategic Research, and multiple roles in Parliament.

After the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2005, Rouhani, an outspoken critic of the former president, resigned from his post as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council after having held the job for 16 years. Rouhani also served as Iran's top nuclear negotiator from October 2003 up until his resignation from the SNSC.

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America Magazine: The once officially atheist China is booming with religion

That has not always been true. At the end of the 19th century, there were 1 million temples in China and religion flavored every aspect of public and private life. Mao destroyed half of the country’s temples. Religion—what was left—went underground. [...]

A 2005 survey conducted by a Chinese university found that 31 percent of the population—about 300 million people—are religious. Two-thirds of those are Buddhists, Daoists or members of other folk religions, while 40 million people said they are Christian. [...]

But the boom has its limits. The Chinese government recognizes only five faiths—Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. And it still bans Falun Gong, the suppression of which Johnson reported on for The Wall Street Journal, coverage that earned him a Pulitzer. There are state-run churches led by clergy in the government’s employ who give government-sanctioned sermons. Other houses of worship are monitored—one of the most chilling segments of Johnson’s book describes a Christmas Eve service with government agents watching from the back.

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Vox: How many American atheists are there really?

Pew and Gallup — two of the most reputable polling firms in America — both come to a similar figure. About 10 percent of Americans say they do not believe in God, and this figure has been slowly creeping up over the decades. [...]

First is the Pew Research Center. Most recently, Pew found that around 3 percent of Americans say they are atheists. It also found that a larger group — around 9 percent — say they do not believe in God or a universal spirit. (Which goes to show that you may not believe in God but could still be uncomfortable calling yourself an atheist — because that term implies a strong personal identity and an outright rejection of religious rituals.) Gallup also regularly asks the question point blank — “Do you believe in God?” The last time it asked, in 2016, 10 percent of respondents said no. [...]

Study after study has shown that most people (even other atheists) believe atheists are less moral. “We’ll give participants a little vignette, a story about someone doing something immoral, and probe their intuition about who they think the perpetrator was,” Gervais says. “And time and time again, people intuitively assume whoever is out there doing immoral stuff doesn’t believe in God.” [...]

But in the data, they also find some small evidence that the stigma around atheism is changing. When they break the numbers down by demographics, they find that baby boomer and millennials report similar levels of disbelief (even though traditional polling shows baby boomers are more likely to believe in god). This could be because younger people feel less anxious about their atheism.

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