Haaretz: Why Is Israel Still Covering Up Extrajudicial Executions Committed by a Jewish Militia in '48?

Two more Poles were killed in similar circumstances after being arrested near Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station because “they could not explain the purpose of their presence there.” The report cites different accounts regarding the circumstances of their death. According to one version, their interrogation did not lead to charges against them, but nevertheless, “they were executed.” In another account, “suspicion arose that they were spying on the preparations for the convoys leaving for Tel Aviv.” It also was claimed that “a letter recommending him as a German Nazi” was found among the effects of one of them, though it’s not clear what was meant by this. [...]

“There is no justification for continuing to close the file,” Lozowick wrote. “Wars are the most extreme form of policy that a government can pursue. As such, it is most important for the documentation of wars to be open to the public. The period of closure having passed, it is obligatory to open the documentation. Longer closure on the documentation of war is justified only if it contains very special content. In this file, there is none.”

He added: “A democratic society is obliged to allow a free discussion of its wars. The discussion is a guarantee of democratic resilience. This file perhaps contains material for such a discussion, but that is a reason to open it, not close it.”

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Aeon: Meditation under the microscope

Such a useful activity naturally finds a variety of applications. Meditation techniques have been deployed in the military with the aim of increasing the wellbeing and work effectiveness of soldiers. Snipers are known to meditate in order to disengage emotionally from the act of killing, to steady the hand that takes a life (the element of peacefulness associated with meditation having been rather set aside). Corporations counteract stress and burnout with meditation which, on the surface, is an amiable aim, but it can also help create compliant workers. And in schools, meditation interventions aim to calm children’s minds, offering students the ability to better deal with the pressure of attaining high grades. Here, too, the goal is to reduce misbehaviour and aggression in a bid to increase prosociality and compliance. [...]

Initially, the results were promising. Our meta-analysis indicated that meditation did indeed have a positive, though moderate, impact on prosociality. But digging deeper, the picture became more complicated. While meditation made people feel somewhat more compassionate or empathetic, it did not reduce aggression or prejudice, nor did it improve how socially connected one felt. So the prosocial benefits are not straightforward, but they are apparently measurable. The issue is the way in which those benefits were measured. [...]

Confirmation bias is difficult to overcome. Journals rely on reviewers to spot them, but because some of these biases have become standard practice (through the reporting of marginally significant effects, say) they often slip through. Reviewers and authors also face academic pressures that make these biases more likely since journals favour the reporting of positive results. But in the study of meditation there is another complication: many of the researchers, and therefore the reviewers of journal articles, are personally invested in meditation not only as practitioners and enthusiasts but also as providers of meditation programmes from which their institutions or themselves financially profit. The overly positive view of meditation and the fierce fight to protect its untarnished reputation make it harder to publish negative results.

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The Atlantic: The End of the Brexit Illusion

Both resigned for the same reason: to protest Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to preserve some of the benefits of EU membership for Britain in a post-Brexit world. That plan is not a very realistic or workable plan. But that’s not why the two ministers have resigned. They have resigned in protest that the plan is not fantastical enough, that it does not rely enough on fairy dust and magic wishes. Ominously, something like half the British Conservative party agrees with the departing ministers. [...]

This past weekend, May convened a meeting at her country home, Chequers, to propose to her cabinet a draft basis for negotiations with the European Union. The plan proposed what has been known as “soft Brexit”: Britain would seek to exit the Union—and end the free movement of people from the EU into Britain—while effectively remaining within the EU Customs Union. It’s not at all certain that such an outcome could be reached. The document presumes great negotiating leverage on the British side, when at the moment Britain looks to need this deal much, much more than the EU does. [...]

Unfortunately for him, his side won the referendum—and his reputation has been in free-fall ever since. Only 50 percent of Conservative Party members regard Johnson as competent, by far the lowest ranking of any of the top five candidates to succeed May. (Among non-Conservatives, Johnson stands even lower. The New Statesman last year quoted a former British ambassador who called Johnson “the least deserving and least qualified foreign secretary of modern times, who has successfully lived down to all expectations.”) His resignation from the Cabinet is a last bid to regain the factional leadership he has botched.

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euronews: Serbia's king who isn't

Politico: Brussels sheds no tears for Davis and Johnson

But neither of them has played a prominent role in negotiations over the U.K.’s departure from the European Union next March. The EU’s main interlocutor has long been Oliver Robbins, May’s top Europe advisor (poached from Davis’ Department for Exiting the EU late last year). The bloc’s top Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, made exactly that point at an EU summit late last month. [...]

For Brussels and the EU27 nations, what Britain puts on the negotiating table is far more important than who sits at it. On that score, May’s latest customs and trading proposal was greeted with the same muted shrug as the resignations. [...]

Calling the single market “the heart of the European project,” Barnier said in a speech at the Institute of International and European Affairs think tank: “There will be no damage to it.” He added, “There will be no unraveling of what we’ve achieved.”

For Brussels, May’s push at Chequers for a softer Brexit amounted to an important but still insufficient step toward the U.K.’s eventual acceptance of EU negotiating proposals that have not changed in more than a year. And it was not immediately clear that further resignations, or even the collapse of May’s government, would change anything.

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The Atlantic: The Brexiteers Are Defeating Brexit

The problem for May, and for the U.K., is simple: There does not yet appear to be any deal that both the British government and the EU will accept. Any deal acceptable to the government will be far too generous to Britain for Brussels, while any deal acceptable to Brussels will be too strenuous for Westminster. May acknowledged this on Monday, telling members of Parliament to brace for the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without any agreement, which would create serious problems for the movement of goods and people between the U.K. and its nearest trading partners. [...]

In fall 2016, after the vote, Davis said, “There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside.” In May 2017, he said, “Most of the EU states are very sympathetic to our view.” Davis was in a position to shape the course of the negotiation, and his decision to step down is a testament to how wrong his predictions were. In his resignation letter, Davis wrote, “I am ... unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concessions.”  [...]

Now May’s government seems to be crumbling around her as she struggles to handle the situation created by men like Johnson, Davis, and Farage—one she tried to avoid in the first place. Johnson, who is painfully ambitious, strangely charming, and only 54 years old, is surely not gone from politics for good; indeed, he is positively Nixonian in his comeback skills (as well as his tendency toward ethnic slur). Farage is already threatening his return. One could forgive May if she was tempted to sardonically welcome both of them to relieve her of the mess they created and clean it up themselves.  

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