Jacobin Magazine: In Search of an Alternative in Slovenia

SDS is not a new party; party leader Janez Janša led governments in the past. The international media outcry was not so much about Janša being a nationalist, anti-immigrant, or a representative of harsh neoliberal reforms, but about his open political alliance with Orbán’s Hungary. Rather than becoming a new Switzerland, Slovenia is looking more like authoritarian Hungary. [...]

In the small and richer republics, the political representatives of the Slovenian and Croatian League of Communists used to complain during the 1980s that their efforts for a “fairer” (which meant more neoliberal) distribution of wealth were thwarted by Belgrade and central institutions that privileged the periphery. Rather than addressing the class question, rising unemployment, and the implementation of the IMF’s structural adjustment programs, the Yugoslav political class translated social issues increasingly into nationalistic terms. In this respect, the Yugoslav crisis of 1980s speaks directly to the crisis of the European Union today. [...]

Behind the ideological affiliation lies a naked agenda of economic interests: the Slovenian “silk road,” which consists of building additional railway infrastructure between the coastal port of Koper and the interior. This would extend the traffic of port cargo. Thanks to an agreement with Orbán, this would also become Hungary’s corridor to the Adriatic Sea. Orbán’s government would not only receive profits from tolls on the infrastructure and a return on credit, but also become the owner of this strategic infrastructure.

The electoral results show that only 52 percent of all eligible voters actually voted. From those that voted, a predominant amount favored the authoritarian SDS, with 25 percent (twenty-five seats in the parliament), and the second new center party — the one-man show Marjan Sarec, came in second with 12.5 percent (thirteen seats). All other seven parties gained between 4 percent to 9.9 percent of the vote, speaking to the fragmented nature of the political crisis and the collapse of ideological hegemony.

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The Guardian: The George Soros philosophy – and its fatal flaw

Unlike Gates, whose philanthropy focuses mostly on ameliorative projects such as eradicating malaria, Soros truly wants to transform national and international politics and society. Whether or not his vision can survive the wave of antisemitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic rightwing nationalism ascendant in the US and Europe remains to be seen. What is certain is that Soros will spend the remainder of his life attempting to make sure it does. [...]

But it was more than a lack of political will that constrained the west during this moment. In the era of “shock therapy”, western capital did flock to eastern Europe – but this capital was invested mostly in private industry, as opposed to democratic institutions or grassroots community-building, which helped the kleptocrats and anti-democrats seize and maintain power. Soros had identified a key problem but was unable to appreciate how the very logic of capitalism, which stressed profit above all, would necessarily undermine his democratic project. He remained too wedded to the system he had conquered. [...]

Soros argued that the history of the post-cold war world, as well as his personal experiences as one of international finance’s most successful traders, demonstrated that unregulated global capitalism undermined open society in three distinct ways. First, because capital could move anywhere to avoid taxation, western nations were deprived of the finances they needed to provide citizens with public goods. Second, because international lenders were not subject to much regulation, they often engaged in “unsound lending practices” that threatened financial stability. Finally, because these realities increased domestic and international inequality, Soros feared they would encourage people to commit unspecified “acts of desperation” that could damage the global system’s viability. [...]

The George W Bush administration’s militarist response to the attacks of September 11 compelled Soros to shift his attention from economics to politics. Everything about the Bush administration’s ideology was anathema to Soros. As Soros declared in his 2004 The Bubble of American Supremacy, Bush and his coterie embraced “a crude form of social Darwinism” that assumed that “life is a struggle for survival, and we must rely mainly on the use of force to survive”. Whereas before September 11, “the excesses of [this] false ideology were kept within bounds by the normal functioning of our democracy”, after it Bush “deliberately fostered the fear that has gripped the country” to silence opposition and win support for a counterproductive policy of militaristic unilateralism. To Soros, assertions such as “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” eerily echoed the rhetoric of the Nazis and Soviets, which he hoped to have left behind in Europe. Soros worried, wisely, that Bush would lead the nation into “a permanent state of war” characterised by foreign intervention and domestic oppression. The president was thus not only a threat to world peace, but also to the very idea of open society. [...]

Bush’s victory convinced Soros that the US would survive as an open society only if Americans began to acknowledge “that the truth matters”; otherwise, they would continue to support the war on terror and its concomitant horrors. How Soros could change American minds, though, remained unclear.

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FiveThirtyEight: We’re Divided On Patriotism Too

Overall, the survey found that 76 percent of Americans consider themselves “very” or “somewhat” patriotic. But between Republicans and Democrats, there were pretty big differences: A whopping 97 percent of Republicans placed themselves in the “very” or “somewhat” categories, compared with 71 percent of Democrats. That’s a gap of 26 percentage points. Even more starkly, 72 percent of Republicans consider themselves to be “very” patriotic (the highest level of patriotism), compared with 29 percent of Democrats — a 43-point gap.  [...]

The “patriotism gap” is nothing new. Gallup has asked its respondents how proud they are to be Americans periodically since 2001. According to those polls, one year after the Sept. 11 attacks, 93 percent of Democrats and 99 percent of Republicans said they were either “extremely” or “very” proud to be Americans. The GOP number stayed comfortably in the 90s for the duration of George W. Bush’s presidency, but by January 2007, amid an unpopular war in Iraq that sparked no small amount of liberal dissent, the share of Democrats who were “extremely” or “very” proud to be Americans had shrunk to 74 percent — 21 points lower than the Republican share (and, to that point, the widest gap since Gallup started asking the question). The Democratic share increased during Barack Obama’s presidency (reaching a high of 85 percent in 2013) but was still consistently lower than the GOP’s: The share of Republicans who said they were “extremely” or “very” proudly American never dipped below 89 percent despite the extremely low opinion GOP voters had of Obama. [...]

So what accounts for the persistent difference? It could just be that Republicans are more comfortable with the most obvious manifestations of patriotism these days. Public displays of patriotism often assume a pro-military dimension (sometimes purposefully and tactically so), which may be more likely to appeal to Republicans (other polls show they are generally more hawkish than Democrats). Singing “God Bless America” and military flyovers at sporting events also first came into fashion in the years immediately following 9/11, when rallying around the flag coincided with rallying around a Republican president. By contrast, funding AmeriCorps or paying taxes probably aren’t the first things many people think of when they think of patriotism, but lots of Democrats would argue they should be. Even apple pie and baseball aren’t the unifiers they once were: Pumpkin pie beat out apple as Americans’ Thanksgiving dessert of choice in 2015, and football blasphemously beats out baseball as Americans’ favorite sport to watch, 37 percent to 9 percent. In sum, we’re a big country, and there are just as many ways to enjoy America as there are Americans.

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The Guardian: Enough of the knob gags: penis size is a mental health issue

And yet. Walker’s is a serious line of scientific inquiry that is worth pursuing, and it is now not taking place because the public couldn’t take it seriously. “I’ve talked to men who haven’t been to the doctor for a physical in over a decade because they don’t want to be naked in front of their doctor,” she told Vice. “I’ve talked to men who have never even approached anyone for a romantic relationship because they don’t believe anyone would be interested in them because of their size. I’ve talked to men who have attempted suicide because of their size.”

“From the moment a boy is born it’s drilled into him that size matters. And not just the size of his penis: it’s also the size of his muscles and the size of his wallet,” Chris Hemmings, author of Be a Man tells me. “The general size of our being becomes inextricably linked to our sense of self-worth, and with it comes shame and embarrassment when we don’t stack up. This study was a great opportunity to find out how damaging that correlation can be, but instead it’s been hijacked by the very people the researcher was trying to help the world understand. Until we, as men, accept that tropes about our body can damage our psyche, we’ll continue to be trapped within the very system most of us would like to escape.”

You can’t have it both ways, fellas. You can’t keep insisting to feminists that the ways in which men suffer are gendered, too, that we need to pay more attention to male mental health, and then play silly buggers when someone tries to help. Was it significant that media coverage of Walker’s “dick pic” request was accompanied by pictures of her looking attractive, blonde, youngish, in lipstick? Would the reaction to an older male professor have been the same? Or did her appearance make men feel even more insecure? Or are dicks just so funny that it overrules serious mental health consequences, even suicide?

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Deutsche Welle: International Kissing Day: French greeting makes headway in Germany

When I arrived in Germany 12 years ago, one of the first things to take me by surprise was the amount of handshaking that goes on here. An appointment with my banker opened with a handshake. With the realtor, too. At work, I walked into office after office, meeting new colleagues, each of whom wanted to shake my hand. Even the yoga teacher at my first class put her hand out to introduce herself. [...]

Although I had rarely done it in the US —  perhaps because I am a woman or because I was seldom in a professional environment — here I am expected to keep my right hand free at all times, just in case someone new were to arrive and I would need to outstretch my arm. [...]

That potential for misunderstanding explains why, in 2011, the German etiquette group, the Knigge Society, called for a ban on kissing in the workplace, even for those friendly two-cheek kisses.

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The Harvard Gazette: We solved the problem! Now let’s unsolve it.

In a series of studies, Gilbert, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, his postdoctoral student David Levari, and several other researchers show that as the prevalence of a problem is reduced, humans are inclined to redefine the problem. As a problem becomes smaller, conceptualizations of the problem expand, which can lead to progress being discounted. The research is described in a paper in the June 29 issue of Science. [...]

“Another way to say this is that solving problems causes us to expand our definitions of them,” he said. “When problems become rare, we count more things as problems. Our studies suggest that when the world gets better, we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself.” [...]

Even when participants were warned of the tendency, and even when they were offered money to avoid it, they continued to alter their definitions of blue. Another experiment, this one using faces, showed similar results. When the prevalence of threatening faces was reduced, people began to identify neutral faces as threatening.  

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Haaretz: Israel's Long History of Cooperation With Ruthless, anti-Semitic Dictators

In mid-July, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will host the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for a state visit. The leader of the left-wing Meretz party, Tamar Zandberg, has been among those calling on Netanyahu to cancel the visit because of Orban’s anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish philanthropist George Soros during his recent election campaign. [...]

Begin cooperated closely with the murderous Galtieri regime in Argentina during the early 1980s. During this period, Israel sold Argentina over 20 Nesher fighter jets as well as numerous Skyhawks and Mirage jets and other military hardware. This was controversial for several reasons. [...]

"This worsening anti-Semitism is the latest expression of hatred against the Jews in Argentina. Leading anti-Semites who themselves identify with Hitler and Mussolini serve in high educational and cultural posts in the government. There have been hundreds of anti-Semitic acts against Jews. Yet in its seven years in power the Argentine government has arrested not one of the perpetrators of these acts."

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Haaretz: Tunis Elects Its First Female Mayor - From the Islamist Party

Elected Tuesday, Souad Abderrahim, is the manager of a pharmaceutical firm and a militant women’s rights activist. Despite being a member of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, she does not wear a veil. [...]

She is the only female winner of half a dozen other female Ennahda candidates who ran in the mayoral elections in, and around the Tunis region. [...]

Abderrahim stated in an interview with the Associated Press that her first priority was to clean the city and plant trees. The city of Tunis has been suffering from the degradation of the waste disposable services since the 2011 Arab Spring.

She dedicated her victory to all Tunisian women, and asserted that the Ennahda party would not compromise the advancements made in women’s rights, something which they had safeguarded by promoting female candidates in municipal elections.

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