Jacobin Magazine: What Orbán Knows and His Enemies Don’t

But Hungary’s case seems even more extreme, showing signs of slipping toward an autocratic system like Turkey’s. Its conservative-nationalistic turn has been around longer, preceding rather than following Western trends, and it may have begun a dangerous cycle: the Western media and public opinion initially ignored or ridiculed Orbán’s nationalistic, xenophobic, and autocratic measures, but now they greet similar moves elsewhere as legitimate thanks to being “mainstreamed” by Hungary’s ruling class. [...]

Importantly, however, decommodification isn’t always progressive. Polanyi argued that the rise of Italian fascism represented society’s attempt to protect itself from the excesses of the market, writing, “the victory of fascism was made practically unavoidable by the liberals’ obstruction of any reform involving planning, regulation, or control.” It is this regressive decommodification that we see in Hungary today. [...]

To boost competitiveness and reduce the country’s crushing debt, the nation hurried to privatize state-owned companies, which also seemed like a way to “adopt” capitalism and attract foreign investment. In time, Hungary not only became liberalized — it became more liberalized than most “old capitalist” countries. [...]

Much like Polanyi described, Orbán has won the support of disgruntled and alienated citizens. Meanwhile the opposition has nothing to offer than more liberalism. Opposition parties (apart from Jobbik, of course) promise to make Hungary “more European,” but, for most Fidesz voters, the past decade’s efforts to advance toward Europe have been disastrous — slashing the welfare state, endangering their jobs, and making their lives more uncertain. For these Hungarians, voting for Fidesz makes perfect sense. [...]

Much like the Italian left under Berlusconi, the Hungarian opposition is obsessed with Orbán but not really interested in why he’s so popular. They love to hate his flamboyant rhetoric, his obvious lies, and the absurdities of the government-managed mass media. Many people recognize all this as a dangerous swing toward authoritarian rhetoric, but no one seems to wonder why it was so successful.

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Politico: Europe’s (not so) free press

When it came to the EU, they had other concerns: the misuse of defamation laws, the lack of protection for whistleblowers, the authoritarian mood in Hungary and Poland, media concentration in countries like Italy, or the impact of the decline of legacy media on pluralism and independence. [...]

Aside from the ever-present risk of terrorism, the rise of extremist parties and populist movements has made the job more dangerous. Reporters are heckled while covering street protests. Editorial writers are targeted on social media platforms. European political leaders take cues from Donald Trump, bashing the media and fanning hostility toward the press, essentially giving a green light to violence against journalists.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, expressed his condolences after Kuciak’s murder and promised that justice would be served. But just a few months ago, he called journalists “anti-Slovak prostitutes.” Czech President Milos Zeman, meanwhile, appeared at a recent press conference in Prague with a Kalashnikov replica, with the word “journalists” on it. [...]

These organizations have already shown they do not like inquisitive journalists. In Italy, a founding member of the EU, some 200 journalists received police protection in 2017, according to RSF. Roberto Saviano, the author of television series “Gomorra,” a scathing reportage on the Naples’ mafia, has lived underground since 2006.

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Haaretz: The Israeli Who Espouses Leftism With a Human Face

Meretz, the party to the left of the Labor Party, is inarguably an Ashkenazi party – made up of Jews with roots in Europe. Since it was founded to run in the 1992 election, only two of its Knesset members have been of Mizrahi – Middle Eastern or North African – extraction: Ran Cohen and Mossi Raz. And its community of voters rarely changes very much. [...]

After so many years of arrogant disregard, the expectation that Mizrahim would choose Meretz seemed pretty absurd. Now the party apparently understands the need for greater change. For the first time Meretz will hold an open primary, which has sparked a lively leadership contest between young and old, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, offering some hope for the party’s future. [...]

Buskila says that while party veterans have raised an eyebrow over his candidacy, younger people understand that there’s an issue they can’t ignore. “All told, the Mizrahi discourse deals with the issues that are Meretz’s bread and butter. Equal opportunity, distributive justice – that’s what the party does,” he says. “The Mizrahi discourse isn’t against Ashkenazim, it’s a debate with the establishment that continues to operate the same way.”

Still, Buskila knows that the issue of distributive justice is problematic in Meretz, which has a strong support base in the kibbutzim. Distributive justice means reallocating the state’s resources that were provided to population groups with power and status, as well as a realignment of municipal boundaries in outlying areas that isolate development towns from the wealthier regions studded with moshavim and kibbutzim.

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Haaretz: The Rift in Society Between Israeli Jews and Arabs Is Growing, Survey Shows

According to the 2017 installment, the percentage of Arab respondents who acknowledge Israel’s right to exist fell to 59 percent in 2017 from 66 percent in 2015. In that time, the proportion of Jewish respondents acknowledging that Arab citizens should have full rights declined to 74 percent from 80 percent. [...]

The latest survey – a representative sample of 700 Arab and 700 Jewish adults – was conducted from May to August 2017. The margin of error is 3.7 percent.

Some 48 percent of Jews do not want to have Arabs as neighbors, an increase of seven percentage points from two years before. In that time their willingness to let Arab children study at school with their own children sank to 51.5 percent from 57.5 percent. [...]

“A majority of Arabs and a majority of Jews believe in a shared society,” he told Haaretz, adding that they accept coexistence within Israel proper and feel that Israel is a good place to live. “They are committed to democracy as a mechanism to regulate their relations and agree that equality is the basis for coexistence.”

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Political Critique: How Białowieża Forest’s cards have been reshuffled

In 2017, almost 190 000 cubic meters of wood was logged, which is four times the average annual harvest. Additionally, this was the first time that heavy-duty machinery had been used in this forest, threatening the forest’s natural ground and the habitat of many smaller species. [...]

Both the increased logging and the use of heavy machinery was criticized by Greenpeace Poland and UNESCO, for example. Many demonstrations were held, in the forest as well as in major Polish cities. While the government did not change its opinion, and many of the protests were suppressed, both the protests and the logging were hotly debated in Poland and Europe. [...]

The case was brought to court and although the final judgement has not yet been delivered, the court has ordered Poland to stop the logging immediately as of November 2017, even announcing a penalty of €100,000 per in case of any infringement upon this order. There has not been any logging in the forest since. The final judgement is expected soon and there are many reasons to believe it will be in accordance with this order. On the 20th of February the court published an opinion which states that the logging was unlawful. Although this has no legal impact, the judgements are quite often consistent with the opinions published. The Polish Minister of Environment has changed since then and the new minister Henryk Kowalczyk is taking a different approach towards the forest. Although he wants the logging to go on, he has announced that Poland will follow the ECJ’s decision.

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CityLab: Britain Plans a Memorial for Grenfell, a Tragedy That's Far From Over

The announcement of the plan—which could also see the nearby Latimer Road Tube station renamed to Grenfell—strikes the right note so far, making it clear that residents of the West London housing project will get the deciding say on any kind of memorial that happens on the tower’s site. [...]

This is, after all, a tragedy that could easily have been avoided with proper safety standards. The blaze was sparked by a small domestic fire that could have been contained under normal circumstances. A cheap aluminum composite cladding—banned on tall buildings in Germany and the U.S., but permitted in Britain—caused the fire to spread with alarming speed. Unbearably, residents were well aware of the flaws and actively petitioned to have them changed. [...]

There’s an overwhelming sense from locals that they aren’t being sufficiently represented or listened to at the public inquiry. Take all that together and it’s no wonder why the Grenfell Tower disaster remains unhealed. Even before the fire, the neighborhood’s situation was paradoxical: London’s poorest ward, located within the city’s wealthiest borough, housing many people who believed that local officials saw them only as an inconvenience. That belief was only confirmed by the distant, unaccountable handling of the aftermath.

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FiveThirtyEight: Making Sense Of Trump’s Two Big Moves On North Korea And Tariffs

1. Trump is leading — Trump often seems like a weak and disengaged president, with his ideas downplayed and/or ignored by Republicans on Capitol Hill (his infrastructure proposal) and even his own staffers (his Democrat-friendly positions on immigration and guns at recent bipartisan meetings). But on tariffs and North Korea, Trump appears to have taken control. He took advantage of the fact that Congress doesn’t have to sign off on either of these decisions and that even if his staffers want to rein him in (as they sometimes do), that becomes a lot tougher when he publicly announces a policy. [...]

Even Trump’s bold moves this week demonstrate the extent to which he is still operating within constraints. While Trump aides initially said his tariffs would have no exceptions, the final policy exempted Canada and Mexico as the president seemed to bow to complaints from congressional Republicans. [...]

4. Trump’s moves are only opening bids, so a lot depends on how he follows up — Outside of a few Democrats running in red states, it’s hard to find many people in Washington who agree with Trump’s tariffs. Economic experts on the right and left strongly oppose them, arguing that they will start a trade war that hurts the U.S. economy. Trump now owns the course that tariffs take, whether that lurches the country toward economic warfare or not.

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IFLScience: This Is What Eating People Does To The Human Body

In 1961, a young Australian medical researcher called Michael Alpers headed to the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, inspired to merge his two passions of medicine and adventure. Here, he began to investigate a mysterious condition suffered by the Fore people, a scarcely touched tribe that lived deep in the mountains and practiced cannibalism. [...]

They called this condition "kuru". Every year, kuru would kill up to 200 people of the tribe, sometimes in startling circumstances. Starting with tremors and an impaired ability to work, sufferers go on to develop a total loss of bodily function, depression, and often emotional instability, sometimes exhibiting itself as hysterical laughter. When word of the disease spread to the west, the media sensationally dubbed it “laughing death”.  [...]

So, eating human brains might not always be the best of ideas, even before you get into the whole array of blood-borne illnesses that you could contract, from HIV and hepatitis to E. coli and Ebola. However, here’s where the story takes a turn. A study published in Nature in 2015 found that the Fore people who regularly ate brains had developed a resistance to prion diseases, a discovery that is still helping scientists understand degenerative brain diseases, such mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and some cases of dementia.

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IFLScience: 13 Things You're Doing That Make People Dislike You Immediately

Results showed that the "sweet spot" for likability was about 300 friends. Likability ratings were lowest when a profile owner had only about 100 friends, and almost as low when they had more than 300 friends. [...]

But psychologists say that disclosing something too intimate — say, that your sister is having an extramarital affair — while you're still getting to know someone can make you seem insecure and decrease your likability.

The key is to get just the right amount of personal. As a 2013 study led by Susan Sprecher at Illinois State University suggests, simply sharing details about your hobbies and your favorite childhood memories can make you seem warmer and more likable. [...]

In an effort to impress friends and potential employers, some people disguise bragging as self-criticism. This behavior, otherwise known as "humblebragging," could be a turn-off, according to a recent study from Harvard Business School.

In the study, college students were asked to write down how they'd answer a question about their biggest weakness in a job interview. Results showed that more than three-quarters of participants humblebragged, usually about being a perfectionist or working too hard.

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