The Atlantic: ‘A Sudden Burst of Movement’ on the Afghan Peace Process

This month, the Trump administration reportedly ordered its diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban. That news report came just days after General John Nicholson, the head of the nato mission in Afghanistan, said the United States was “ready to talk to the Taliban and discuss the role of international forces.” The militant group maintains that the Afghan government is illegitimate and that it will talk only to the U.S. It also insists on a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the country as part of any reconciliation process in Afghanistan. The Taliban has not dismissed the reported offer—but noted it was awaiting a formal offer from the U.S. [...]

The reported U.S. offer of direct talks with the Taliban comes on the heels of the Afghan government’s own unprecedented overtures toward the militant group. In February, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani offered the group unconditional talks; and last month, he offered the Taliban an unconditional cease-fire to coincide with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. If that offer was a surprise, the Taliban’s response to it was a shock: It accepted the offer and ordered its fighters to lay down their weapons for three days. The effectiveness of the truce—as well as the resumption of the fighting after Eid—signaled just how much control the Taliban has over its fighters and the Afghan government over its forces. Not only that, the scenes of public celebrations, Taliban fighters embracing Afghan soldiers and taking selfies together, and a dramatic reduction in bloodshed during those three days showed just how tired everyone in Afghanistan, including those engaged in the fighting, is of their nearly two-decade-long conflict. The Taliban, which is now publicly seeing that the public it claims to represent supports a reconciliation process, has even ordered a halt on attacking civilian targets. The reports of the U.S. offer of direct talks have also strengthened the optimism in the country. [...]

“My interpretation is that the Afghan government sees potential value in a U.S.-Taliban channel with at least two conditions: That it’s coordinated very closely with Kabul and with a great deal of transparency about what’s discussed,” Walsh, who previously served at the State Department as the lead adviser on the Afghan peace process,  told me. “And, second, no talks are going to delve into the political future of Afghanistan without the appropriate Afghan representatives in the room.” He said there is no deal the U.S. could make with the Taliban without “a meaningful agreement between the actual stakeholders who have to live with it, and those are Afghans.”

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Vox: 9 essential lessons from psychology to understand the Trump era

Our teams are lenses through which we interpret the world. In a more recent experiment, researchers showed participants a video of a protest that had been halted by the police. Half the subjects were told the protest was of an abortion clinic. The other half were told it was a protest against the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

People inclined to support abortion rights thought the protesters were more disruptive in the abortion clinic condition. People who had strong egalitarian ideals were more likely to express support for the protesters for LGBTQ rights. Again, it was the same exact footage. All the changed were who the participants thought the protesters were. [...]

This is a key point that many people miss when discussing the “fake news” or “filter bubble” problem in our online media ecosystems. Avoiding facts inconvenient to our worldview isn’t just some passive, unconscious habit we engage in. We do it because we find these facts to be genuinely unpleasant. They insult our groups and, by extension, us. So we reject these facts, like our immune system would reject a pathogen.  [...]

This is called “solution aversion,” and it helps explain why many conservatives are wary of the science of climate change; many solutions to climate change involve increasing government oversight and regulations. Similarly, perhaps, this is why so many Trump supporters discredict the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling. The possible conclusion — that Trump’s election was doctored by outside influences — is unsettling. [...]

Past experiments with liberal participants have found a similar effect: Liberals are more likely to support conservative policies when told their leaders support conservative policies. And it’s possible that when people are changing their minds in this manner, they’re not even aware their minds are changing.

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Vox: Why Eastern European countries aren’t attacking Trump over NATO

For some countries in Western Europe that belong to NATO, which was created during the Cold War to counter Russian expansion, Trump’s erratic behavior was a step too far. But on the other side of the continent, Eastern Europeans who have historically felt the most threatened by Russia were singing an entirely different tune. From Estonia to Romania, current and former leaders said they saw nothing to fear from Trump’s tough talk on NATO. [...]

More spending on NATO’s defenses has been a goal for many Eastern Europeans since Russia’s invasion of the Republic of Georgia in 2008 and the beginning of Russia’s “shadow war” in Ukraine in 2014, so their support of Trump’s demands in Brussels is nothing new. But more surprising were leaders’ reactions to Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki, where Trump failed to challenge Putin on a litany of international offenses, such as his annexation of Crimea in 2014. [...]

Eastern European countries’ worst fears about Russia were finally realized when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, bringing its prospects of NATO ascension to a grinding halt. But the Russians weren’t finished yet — in 2014, following the Ukrainian revolution in which pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown, Putin invaded and annexed Crimea and began to foment a proxy war in Eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian rebels and government forces.  [...]

Trump has personally questioned the need to counter Russia’s expanding regional reach. But his pro-Putin stance remains at odds with that of the State Department, the US military, and the US intelligence community, all of which continue to maintain that Russia is a US rival that needs to be checked.

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The Atlantic: Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians

Second, the researchers found that American “nones”—those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular—are more religious than European nones. The notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.

The third finding reported in the study is by far the most striking. As it turns out, “American ‘nones’ are as religious as—or even more religious than—Christians in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.” [...]

America is a country so suffused with faith that religious attributes abound even among the secular. Consider the rise of “atheist churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff. This is a phenomenon spreading across the country, from the Seattle Atheist Church to the North Texas Church of Freethought. The Oasis Network, which brings together non-believers to sing and learn every Sunday morning, has affiliates in nine U.S. cities. [...]

The Pew survey found that although most Western Europeans still identify as Christians, for many of them, Christianity is a cultural or ethnic identity rather than a religious one. Sahgal calls them “post-Christian Christians,” though that label may be a bit misleading: The tendency to conceptualize Christianity as an ethnic marker is at least as old as the Crusades, when non-Christian North Africans and Middle Easterners were imagined as “others” relative to white, Christian Europeans. The survey also found that 11 percent of Western Europeans now call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”

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Spiegel: Exploring the New Saudi Arabia from the Inside

On Tahlia Street, the liveliest boulevard in the capital, coffee shops recently began springing up. The tables outside are also full -- of men. The fact that they are even allowed to sit outside represents huge progress. The streets of Riyadh used to be empty. Women, though, are not allowed to sit with the men, and are required instead to sit in the "family section," behind screens, curtains or sometimes even frosted glass. [...]

The face of MBS stares at you almost no matter where you go in Riyadh, gazing down from gigantic posters at the airport and from the sides of buildings lining the city's boulevards. The prince's image can be found on bumper stickers, on mobile phone cases and on flags used to decorate shop windows. The king remains the all-powerful ruler, but the pictures make it clear: MBS is Saudi Arabia's future.[...]

Men and women sometimes even walk hand-in-hand, something that until recently was inappropriate if the couple was married and strictly prohibited if unmarried. There is a terrace café in an expensive shopping mall where women smoke in public. There are fancy restaurants where lounge music is played. In some of them, men and women are sitting next to each other without a member of the religious police requiring that they prove they are married. Such couples used to stand a good chance of getting arrested.[....]

In contrast to what many might believe, most Saudis are not rich sheikhs. Per capita income in the country isn't even 17,000 euros per year, less than half of what it is in Germany. Citizens may not have to pay income tax, but the cost of living in the country is relatively high. Fresh fruit and vegetables, imported from the U.S. or Egypt, are more expensive than in Europe. Six organic eggs cost fully eight euros.

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Politico: EU shoots down Theresa May’s customs plan

“The EU cannot — and the EU will not — delegate the application of its customs policy and rules, VAT and excise duty collection, to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU’s governance structures,” Barnier said. [...]

While Barnier and Raab reiterated their hope of completing a withdrawal treaty by October, they also said negotiators would not meet again until mid-August — a schedule that calls into question their repeated statements that talks need to be intensified and infused with new energy. Meanwhile, there has been a flurry of increased activity in Brussels and London to prepare for the possibility of a so-called “no-deal” scenario under which the U.K. would crash out of the EU on March 29, 2019 without a formal treaty. [...]

Barnier restated the EU27’s long-declared and brightest red lines: the single market and the four freedoms, including the freedom of movement of workers, are indivisible and non-negotiable. But on Thursday he was more explicit in saying that the EU would not cede “control of our money, law and borders” to the U.K. if it is not bound to the bloc.  [...]

“President Juncker’s visit to Washington yesterday shows the importance of our Common Commercial Policy,” Barnier said. “It shows that we are stronger together.” Juncker’s deal with Trump also illustrated how firmly the EU stays committed to its core principles even in the toughest of negotiations.

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