The Atlantic: No Matter Who Wins the Syrian Civil War, Israel Loses

If you want to understand Israel’s ambivalence about the outcome of Syria’s war, look no further than Avigdor Lieberman. In 2016, Lieberman, Israel’s hawkish defense minister, condemned Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, as a “butcher.” He asserted Israel’s moral imperative to oppose genocide, born from the Holocaust, as a reason to oppose the Syrian government’s massacres. It is in Israel’s interest, he added, that Assad and his Iranian allies “be thrown out of Syria.” Fast forward to earlier this month. While touring Israeli air-defense units, Lieberman struck an optimistic note about Assad’s gaining strength, saying it means “there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule” in Syria. Asked whether he believed this would decrease the possibility of clashes on Israel’s northern border, he said: “I believe so. I think this is also in Assad’s interest.”

Those two positions represent Israel’s conflicted priorities in Syria. On the one hand, Assad is Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world—the state he rules provides Tehran with access to Israel’s northern border, and facilitates the flow of weapons to Hezbollah. On the other hand, Assad—his government’s fiercely anti-Israel rhetoric notwithstanding—represents a known quantity to Israel, unlike the chaotic tangle of Sunni militias and jihadist organizations that would replace him. Until recently, Israel’s border with Syria had been its quietest frontier for four decades. [...]

Israel’s reliance on Russia is a result of President Donald Trump’s hostility to a long-term commitment to Syria. Trump told the military earlier this year to prepare to withdraw all U.S. soldiers from the country, and earlier this month announced that the United States would not spend $230 million that had been earmarked to help rebuild the country’s shattered infrastructure. “If you’re an Israeli policy maker and you’re looking at Syria, you see Russia is there and obviously staying,” Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s former chief negotiator with Syria in the 1990s, told me. “And you see the United States—the president says one day that he wants to withdraw the 2,000 [American] troops, and the next day he faces some pressure and keeps them there. But is that reliable in the long term? Doubtful.” [...]

As these political and military dramas play out, there is little question about a fundamental fact—Iran and its allies are poised to challenge Israel on multiple fronts in the years ahead. In Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah boasts more fighters and better weapons than at any point in its history. Earlier this year, in the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Israel engaged in a series of tit-for-tat clashes for months before a cease-fire took hold. And in Iran, there is a growing risk that the Islamic Republic could restart its nuclear program following the Trump administration’s decision to reimpose sanctions on the country.

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The Atlantic: Why Are STDs on the Rise If Americans Are Having Less Sex?

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that reported cases of three sexually transmitted diseases in the United States had reached an all-time high in 2017. Rates of gonorrhea rose by 67 percent, syphilis by 76 percent, and chlamydia by 21 percent, to a total of almost 2.3 million cases nationwide. According to the CDC, 2017 surpassed 2016 as the year with the most reported STD cases on record—and marked the fourth year in a row that STDs increased steeply in the U.S. [...]

Often-cited data from the biennial General Social Survey, for example, indicate that the number of Americans who haven’t had sex at all in the past year has risen from 18 percent to 22 percent over the past two decades, while the number of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 who report having sex twice a month or more has declined from almost three-quarters in the early 2000s to two-thirds by 2016. And a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2017, authored by a research team led by Jean Twenge, found that American adults were engaging in sex nine fewer times a year on average than they did in the late 1990s. So if there’s less sex being had nationwide, how are so many more people getting STDs? [...]

Two factors Bolan identifies as potentially contributing to the record-high rates of reported STDs are a rise in condom-less sex and a rise in high-risk sexual behaviors associated with opioid use and addiction. [...]

Additionally, Bolan says, other CDC research suggests a link between STD transmission and the risky sex acts often associated with opioid use and addiction. She cites a soon-to-be-published CDC study that found 15- to 24-year-olds who reported injected drug use in the past year were more likely to be diagnosed with chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea than those who didn’t inject drugs. More importantly, she adds, “injecting drugs was also associated with higher rates of forced sex, sex with people who exchange money or drugs for sex, and sex with other people who inject drugs”—which are all “high-risk factors” for STD transmission. (Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis are really only transmitted through sexual activity, not through blood exposure from sharing needles.)

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The Guardian: As a system, foreign aid is a fraud and does nothing for inequality

he five poorest countries in the world, measured by GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Haiti.

One might imagine, then, that these countries are among the top recipients of UK aid. Wrong. The main beneficiaries are, in fact, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Not one of the five poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of British aid. [...]

Nor is it any different with multilateral aid (funds channelled through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than directly between donor and recipient). Again, not one of the poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of multilateral aid. [...]

Half of all international development aid is “tied”, meaning that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from the donor nation. As the USAid website used to boast (until the paragraph became too embarrassing and was deleted in 2006): “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development’s contracts and grants go directly to American firms.” Aid has “created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans”. Long before Trump entered the White House, USAid was “putting America first”. [...]

Aid not only boosts the economies of rich countries but also promotes their foreign policy aims. As a 2014 report by the US Congressional Research Service put it, aid “can act as both carrot and stick and is a means of influencing events, solving specific problems and projecting US values”.

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Vox: Why obvious lies make great propaganda

At first glance, US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin seem to have wildly different communication styles. But what they share is a tendency to repeat big, obvious lies -- a tactic researchers have dubbed the “firehose of falsehood.” Whether it’s lying about Russian troops in Crimea or falsely claiming millions of people voted illegally during the 2016 election, both leaders demonstrate a kind of shamelessness when it comes to telling and retelling big lies. And that’s because firehosing isn’t actually about persuasion. It’s about power.

The National Interest: Understanding Putin’s Paranoid Style

Specifically, two-thirds of the two thousand Russian citizens surveyed by VTsIOM in a nationwide survey carried out in late May are convinced that “there is a group of people who seek to rewrite Russian history and replace the historical fact in order to hurt Russia and diminish its greatness.” Another 63 percent concur that “a group of people are trying to destroy the spiritual values formed by Russians through the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.”

These views, moreover, are not those of the uninformed or uneducated. Rather, as the Times details, “the older a respondent became, and the more educated, the more likely they were to agree with the statements referencing a group of people working to undermine Russia in some form.”

Even in Russia’s increasingly authoritarian political climate, where the results of any polls and opinion surveys should be considered suspect, such statistics are striking. They suggest that the secret of Putin’s enduring political success stems at least partly from a sizeable base of Russians who are deeply nervous about the erosion of national identity—and eager to blame the outside world for it.

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The Guardian: The Chosen Wars review: study of American Jews reveals familiar schisms

On election day 2016, Hillary Clinton won more than 70% of the Jewish vote. But that number tells only part of a story. In some predominately Orthodox Jewish precincts, Donald Trump’s numbers were straight out of the rust belt or the deep south. [...]

The book chronicles how the constitution’s establishment clause led to the laity’s supremacy within the synagogue. Most notably for Weisman, a schism within a Charleston shul triggered a landmark lawsuit and decision. Unlike Europe, the civil authorities would not pick sides even when asked. Ultimately, a South Carolina appellate court ruled in 1846 that the judiciary must avoid “questions of theological doctrine, depending on speculative faith, or ecclesiastical rites”. [...]

At times they really did. Weisman describes an actual riot that broke out on Rosh Hashanah 1850 in Albany, New York, over the nature of the Messiah. The police were called and the congregation dispersed, but not before the synagogue president taunted the rabbi, Isaac Wise, saying: “I have $100,000 more than you.” Yet it was Wise’s rejection of a personal and national Messiah that shaped Reform Judaism. It represented a break from 2,000 years of tradition. [...]

Looking at America’s religious landscape, “nones” are now the single largest subgroup among millennials. Among America’s Jews, the tale is not much different. Three in 10 reject denominational identity. Outside the Orthodox community, the Jewish birthrate is below the national average. American Jewry will probably endure, but its demographics stand to be different: from the looks of things, more religious but less educated, affluent and influential.

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The New York Times: A Catholic Civil War?

As the liberal Vatican observer Robert Mickens writes, “There is no denying that homosexuality is a key component to the clergy sex abuse (and now sexual harassment) crisis.” James Alison, himself a gay priest, observes, “A far, far greater proportion of the clergy, particularly the senior clergy, is gay than anyone has been allowed to understand,” and many of those gay clergymen are sexually active. Father Alison describes the “absurd and pharisaical” rules of the clerical closet, which include “doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t say so in public or challenge the teaching.” [...]

After Monsignor Ricca’s sins were exposed, Francis chose to stand by him, famously saying, “Who am I to judge?” Msgr. Krzysztof Charamsa suffered a less happy fate. The priest, who worked at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, announced in 2015 that he was gay and had a male partner, and asked the church to change its teaching. He was immediately fired. Both Monsignor Ricca and Monsignor Charamsa had sinned, but only one had stepped out of line.

The other rule of the clerical closet is not violating the civil law — or at least not getting caught. Francis defended Monsignor Ricca by distinguishing between sins and crimes: “They are not crimes, right? Crimes are something different.” This distinction provides cover for sex abuse. When countless priests are allowed to live double lives, it is hard to tell who is concealing crimes. Cardinal McCarrick was widely seen as “merely” preying on adult seminarians. Now he has been credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor.

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Bloomberg: What Comes After Putin Could Be Trouble

Olga Kryshtanovskaya: It’s pretty widely understood that Russia is run by clans. Their leaders include Igor Sechin [chairman and chief executive officer of state-controlled oil company Rosneft], Sergei Chemezov [general director of Rostec, a state corporation that deals in military and other technologies], Sergei Ivanov [former defense minister], Nikolai Patrushev [former director of the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the KGB]. There’s no institution that gets together and votes, but somehow they interact and Putin makes the final decisions, keeping in mind the interests of the clans. [...]

It’s somewhat similar to China’s Central Military Commission under Deng Xiaoping. People from Russia’s security services [Putin was a KGB officer] are big fans of China. A lot of them think that if Yuri Andropov [general secretary of the Communist Party from 1982 to 1984] had stayed in power, Russia would have followed the Chinese path. All the levers of power would have remained in the party’s hands, and private business would have been allowed to develop only in certain parts of the economy. So it’s the Deng Xiaoping model. [...]

I looked at it using game theory, and concluded that the elite is likely to betray Putin. As soon as Putin indicates which group's candidate he prefers, the optimal strategy for the other groups is to undermine that candidate — because if he wins, they stand to lose everything.

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The Guardian: Uzbekistan's secret underground – in pictures

After the ban on photographing the Tashkent metro in Uzbekistan was lifted this summer, Amos Chapple, RFE/RL’s photographer went underground to reveal the art, architecture and nuclear-blast protection in Central Asia’s oldest subway system.

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