Vox: Want to see what protests can be? Look at what they have been.

The most successful protest movements in history have been the ones that have set their own agendas. Whether abolitionists, women’s suffrage advocates, or civil rights activists, progressive change movements have gained influence by disrupting politics as usual — not by slavishly aligning themselves with electoral parties. [...]

Comparisons to the Tea Party also are of limited utility. Current protesters need not mimic the goals and tactics of the Tea Party, as observers fixated on electoral dividends of activism have recommended. Initially a product of populist anger, the Tea Party evolved into a “grasstops” endeavor funded by Washington lobbyists and think tanks and aligned with the Republican Party. [...]

Current demonstrations are part of a wave of activism that stretches back to the anti-World Trade Organization protests of the 1990s and includes the battle for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and grassroots anger over big bank bailouts that gave rise to the early Tea Party movement. Like these predecessors, the current wave of activism bespeaks many Americans’ sense that electoral politics — and the political process and policies that result from it — are ineffective and, in some instances, rotten to the core. [...]

Because the protests are a byproduct of the popular disdain for politics as we know it, it is perverse to view the new waves of activism only in terms of what they mean for the two major political parties. For many of those who have turned to the streets to protest, the major parties are a part of the problem — not the solution to what ails society.

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The Atlantic: The Commodification of Orthodox Judaism

Two perceived qualities of Orthodox Judaism—authenticity and ancientness—are enticing people outside this religious tradition to pay for the chance to sample it. In Israel, secular citizens and foreign visitors willing to fork over $20 to the tour company Israel-2Go can embark on a trip to an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, where they’ll watch men in black hats and women in long skirts buying challah bread from a kosher bakery while a guide narrates the scene. They can also pay to take a tour of the menorahs in Jerusalem’s Old City alleyways during Hanukkah; eat a five-course Friday night Shabbat meal in the home of an observant family; or hear a lecture about the different nuances of the black-and-white garb worn by men from various ultra-Orthodox sects.

In the United States, the rituals of traditional Judaism can be likewise commodified. You can indulge in prepackaged experiences ranging from a pop-up Shabbat dinner to a customized dip in a ritual bath. There is, apparently, a market opportunity in the gap between some people’s desire to interact with a religious tradition on the one hand, and their disinclination to observe life-encompassing codes and rituals on the other. Thus Jews as well as non-Jews can pay to pick up individual rituals, whether to add meaning or just interesting one-off experiences to their lives. [...]

This appetite for Jewish rituals coincides with a growing popular backlash among diaspora and Israeli Jews against recent Israeli government moves that give the Jewish state’s ultra-Orthodox establishment tighter control over religious matters, including conversions and the prayer spaces at Jerusalem’s revered Western Wall. Perhaps individualized interpretations of religion are a response among some of those who chafe at state control over spiritual matters.[...]

“There is a real desire today to do religious stuff in a way that feels integrated into life,” said Danya Shults, who quit her job at a New York venture capital firm last year to found Arq, a company that organizes events and publishes content for anyone looking to connect with Jewish life and culture “in a more relevant, inclusive, and convenient way.” Arq also works with a number of commercial partners, including the wedding-planning startup Zola, for which Shults has handpicked gift registry options “inspired by Jewish culture.”

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The Atlantic: Donald Trump's Defenders on the Left

When it comes to possible collusion with Russia, Donald Trump’s most interesting defenders don’t reside on the political right. They reside on the political left. [...]

For left-wing defenders like Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald, by contrast, ideology is king. Blumenthal and Greenwald loathe Trump. But they loathe hawkish foreign policy more. So they minimize Russia’s election meddling to oppose what they see as a new Cold War. [...]

Blumenthal is right that Democrats don’t have “a big economic message.” But that’s not primarily because of the Russia scandal. Parties that are out of power rarely have a clear agenda. It’s hard to develop a clear message when you don’t have a clear leader. Narratives emerge during presidential campaigns. And the early evidence is that the progressive themes Bernie Sanders pushed last year—single-payer health care, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage—will carry more weight inside the Democratic Party in 2020 than they did in 2016. [...]

But the problem with downplaying Russian election meddling because you’re afraid it will fuel militarism is that it evades the central question: How worrisome is the meddling itself? When it comes to Russian’s interference in the 2016 election, progressives like Blumenthal are behaving the way many conservatives behave on climate change. Conservatives fear that progressives will use climate change to impose new regulations on the economy. And because they oppose the solution, they claim there’s no problem. [...]

Blumenthal and Greenwald have an ideological problem. On foreign policy, they are anti-interventionists, or what Walter Russell Mead calls “Jeffersonians.” They believe that America’s empire threatens not only peace and justice abroad, but liberty at home. They want the United States to stop defending its “imperial” borders in Eastern Europe, South and East Asia, and the Middle East, because they believe such efforts cost Americans money, cost American lives, and create a pretext for surveillance that makes Americans less free.

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Al Jazeera: How will Qatar-Gulf crisis shape the region's economy?

The ongoing crisis between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states has seemingly posed a new version of the same question: whether wealthy states with major economic disincentives could nevertheless engage in a debilitating conflict with each other. In looking at the Saudi-led group's isolation of Qatar, a reinvigorated Friedman may even suggest that no two countries with a Four Seasons have ever gone to war. [...]

After sponsoring the 2013 military coup that toppled the presidency of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, the Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti governments offered a staggering $23bn to keep the regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi afloat during its turbulent first 18 months. The $1.7bn in aid that the United States provides Egypt each year, which is so often invoked as a lever of influence on Egypt's rulers, pales in comparison to the unprecedented level of assistance provided by Sisi's Gulf sponsors. Predictably, Egypt was the first non-GCC country to join the boycott of Qatar. [...]

But this is not the first time that these governments have placed their political agenda above their economic interests. In responding to the global collapse in the price of oil in 2014, Saudi Arabia made the calculated decision not to cut its production levels, though that would mean diminished revenues. [...]

Perhaps these regimes simply look upon these policies as sunk costs in a battle to impose a singular vision for the future of the Arab region. Or maybe they are part of a long-term investment strategy expected to reap future rewards when neighbouring states come into the fold of Saudi hegemony. In either case, the longer that this crisis drags on, the less likely it is that the economic arrangements that have long defined relations within the GCC can be restored.

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Haaretz: Temple Mount Crisis: Fears of Political Rivals Led Netanyahu to Make a Grave Error

Given his responsible conduct in the first hours following the attack, it’s puzzling how 24 hours later he committed such a grave error in the rushed decision last Saturday to install metal detectors at all the entrances to the compound. After 24 hours in which he seemingly prevented an escalation, that decision reversed the trend and greatly exacerbated tensions, leading to the explosion which erupted over the weekend. [...]

Netanyahu’s mistake was not just in installing the detectors, but mainly in the decision-making process that preceded it. Even though he knows very well that the Temple Mount was the most volatile point in the Middle East, if not in the entire world, he elected that evening to deal with a complex, strategic topic based on tactical security considerations. All complexities were set aside, and the issue boiled down to metal detectors.

Netanyahu’s miscalculation in that discussion and in setting up those detectors put him in an impossible bind. When it turned out that this move was meeting stiff opposition, the government was left with no good solutions, stuck between a rock and a hard place. If it were to remove the detectors, this would be interpreted as weakness, showing it capitulating to threats and admitting that it does not truly have sovereignty over the Temple Mount. If it left the detectors in place, it could find itself sliding towards a violent eruption in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and a crisis with the entire Muslim world. [...]

In both cases the reason is the same – his worries about political rivals on his right. Netanyahu found himself in a government without a token leftist such as Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni or Moshe Ya’alon whom he could count on to block dangerous moves and then draw fire from the settlers’ lobby in the cabinet, the Knesset and the media.

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IFLScience: Why Are We So Fascinated By Serial Killers?

For many, it’s no different to the buzz you get from watching horror movies. Each stab, scream, or stalkery look comes with a rush of neurotransmitters and a physiological change in the body, such as an increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and increased blood glucose levels – the same reaction we get with excitement. It also administers a dose of a dopamine into your brain, the neurotransmitter famously associated with pleasure, mainly food and sex, but also during times of fear.

We get this shot of feel-good chemicals because it's often helpful for our survival. If we are simply spectating the threat from a cool distance, however, then the neurotransmitters are there but in a very different context. It's effectively a safe place for us to relish in a binge of dopamine and adrenaline. [...]

Rubeking’s 2014 study looked into how we react to films and TV shows that tickle our sense of disgust and revulsion. Her team measured the physiological changes of participants as they watched videos that portrayed three different types of disgust: death, gore, and socio-moral disgust, like cheating and betrayal. When it came to death and gore, the initial reaction was negative, but it also provoked the strongest physiological indication of “arousal” and “attention”. [...]

However, this macabre interest in the topic far exceeds its scope. Realistically, the chances of getting nabbed by a serial killer are very, very slim. The curiosity might not be straightforward in its practicality, like learning to avoid foul-smelling meat, but it's a testament to our ability as super-brained mammals to toy around with abstract concepts like good, evil, and death.

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The New York Review of Books: South Korea’s Real Fear

So, many South Koreans have shrugged. As has long been true, the 10 million residents of greater Seoul are essentially human shields: any attack on Pyongyang by the US would be followed by a barrage of traditional artillery from the DMZ on the South Korean capital, and hundreds of thousands would be killed. But in recent months, the primary worry in South Korea has not been its bizarre and militaristic neighbor to the north; most Koreans are by now long used to living within close firing range of Pyongyang and do not think it will attack unless provoked. What really worries them is that the new US president doesn’t know all this—and is too contemptuous of the State Department to be instructed.

In fact, South Koreans did lose a measure of their calm in the weeks after Trump was inaugurated. In the past, the US has tended to observe a cautious policy toward North Korea. For example, during an earlier nuclear crisis in 1994, it was the threat of a retaliatory attack on the south that convinced Bill Clinton not to use force and to pursue negotiations instead. More recently, while Barack Obama’s policy of “strategic patience” was recognized long ago as a non-policy, a way of kicking the can down the road, it wasn’t reckless—and everyone assumed that the can would be picked up by a president like Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney. When Trump announced that all options were on the table, including military action, South Koreans hoped it was bluster, an opening gambit for dealing with Pyongyang. But they couldn’t be sure. Some foreign residents of Seoul even packed evacuation bags and carried them around at all times, in case war broke out. [...]

Indeed, some analysts believe Pyongyang’s long-term strategy is to wait for a US administration that isn’t fully committed to defending South Korea, and then start a second Korean War to accomplish what the first failed to do: make Korea a united, communist nation. It’s an aspiration that has survived seventy-two years and two generational shifts in the world’s only communist dynasty. It’s also an aspiration that has few echoes south of the DMZ. Many South Koreans, while also hoping to reunite their nation, fear that even a peaceful unification with the north could be such a financial drain that it would make them poor again.

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The Guardian: Tory members turn to David Davis in battle to succeed Theresa May

The Brexit secretary was identified by just over a fifth of Conservative members asked to name their favoured successor to May, ahead of foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who still retains support among the rank and file. However, the level of support for both men was well below that of members who said they did not know or could not choose a successor, confirming the belief among MPs that a relatively unknown candidate could emerge over the next two years to seize the crown. [...]

The revealing survey of more than 1,000 Tory members, shared exclusively with the Observer, follows weeks of infighting and briefings fuelled by uncertainty over May’s future. Tory MPs are now beginning what will be a febrile summer recess, with some fearing that a leadership contest could be triggered in the autumn.

The survey was carried out as part of the Party Members Project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It shows that 21% of members backed Davis, 17% backed Johnson and 26% did not know or opted not to choose any candidate. Party members are reluctant for May to stand down now – with 71% backing her to stay and 22% saying she should quit. [...]

The position of any future candidate’s position on Brexit is set to be crucial in a future contest. Conservative members are far more supportive of Brexit than the population at large, which could make it hard for any candidate seen as softening the government’s EU exit plans.

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The Atlantic: Poland: The EU's Next Big Test

The EU threatened Poland with the unprecedented step of sanctioning it with Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, a move that would suspend Warsaw’s voting rights within the bloc. But the threat by the EU’s first vice president, Frans Timmermans, notwithstanding, any move to use Article 7 must be unanimous—and that’s not likely given that Hungary, Poland’s Visegrad ally, has threatened to veto any such action.

The Senate’s 55-23 vote came in the early hours of Saturday after 16 hours of contentious debate. The vote came two days after the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, approved the measure. President Andzrej Duda, who normally supports the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), must then sign the bill into law. He has 21 days to do so. A spokesman for the president said Duda saw flaws in the measure, but declined to say whether he would sign it or seek the opinion of the country’s constitutional court. [...]

The legislation prompted massive protests, including this week after the Sejm’s vote. It was one of the largest protests in Warsaw since PiS came to power in late 2015. The demonstrations continued into early Friday. Protesters carried both Polish and EU flags, and chanted against the government. [...]

For the EU, watching Poland go the way of Hungary has been startling. It may begin infringement procedures against Poland as early as next week—a process that could take years. For the EU, the promise of the era following the collapse of the Berlin Wall was fulfilled when Poland and other Eastern bloc countries joined the EU in 2004. More than a decade later, that initial promise is, in the EU’s view, imperiled.

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