The Atlantic: What the Believers Are Denying

I feel how climate scientists probably feel when they hear Trump and others disbelieve what their scientific community says is beyond disbelief. Scholars of racism watch as individuals dismiss our scientific consensus as casually as they form a consensus of disbelief. Climate and racial scientists watch as the denials of climate change and racism combine for the denial that “marginalized” communities of color “are expected to experience greater impacts,” as foretold in the Fourth National Climate Assessment. [...]

All this disbelief rests on the same foundation: the transformation of science into belief. It is a foundation built from the economic, political, and ideological blocks that stand the most to lose from the aggressive reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions and racial inequities. [...]

And in their ridiculous answers to ridiculous questions, denialists evince more than disbelief. They explain their disbelief using examples in their direct line of sight. They do not trust the far-flung hindsight, foresight, and bird’s-eye view of the scientist. They do not believe the distant averages, likelihoods, disparities, and sweeping histories that show the ravages of racism and climate change on society. If it is not happening within their narrow field of vision, then it is not happening. They disbelieve. They call “believing” scientific findings stupid. They call their disbelief high intelligence.

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Jacobin Magazine: Completing the Feminist Revolution

Because this struggle has been forgotten, we have a distorted memory of the movement, and thus a distorted history upon which to draw. These distortions go in several different directions. One of them is the idea that, in the arena of workplaces, the movement was dominated by liberal feminists who cared primarily about opening the door to women to enter workplaces and then didn’t do anything else about family-related concerns. Another story said more radical feminists ended up turning their attention primarily to issues of reproductive rights and sexual liberation. When we don’t have this full history, we don’t know some of the strategies feminists tried and the successes they achieved to guide the ongoing feminist fights. When you look at the full story of feminism in this era, you see quite a compelling, comprehensive vision of the kinds of changes we need to create an egalitarian society. Their vision is worth resurrecting, because currently, we don’t have a particularly compelling vision of what that world might look like. [...]

The other issue is that conservatives fought back against feminists and in many cases won. They were successful in defeating the largest aspirations of the movement. The conservative family politics of the ’80s and after have obscured the breadth and depth and radicalism of that feminist vision.

Among many young people, there’s an account of second-wave feminism as one dominated by white women who were insensitive toward and ignorant of the needs of women of color; that the movement itself was dominated by advancing the goals of middle-class, largely professional, largely white women. One of my key goals in writing this book is not to minimize the conflicts that unfolded around class and race in the movement, but also to show that there were places where alliances and coalitions formed: where African-American women were feminists and were at the forefront of the movement. I hope to reframe who counts as a second-wave feminist so that their feminist activism is not minimized or made invisible, and to recover the reality of alliance and coalition in many instances. [...]

Beyond those practical policy policies, I think we’re in a period of ongoing cultural struggle about what’s going to replace the old male-breadwinner, female-homemaker ideal. That model did a lot of things: it made it possible to demand a family wage; it provided a person to do essential labor — social reproduction — as well as nurturing and loving. It’s a struggle to say, “How are we going to win those things in our society now without repeating gender stereotypes that trap men and women in particular roles that reinforce that heteronormative model of how households should be organized?”

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Social Europe: Migration And Forgetting In Central Europe

These effects have been most noticeable in East-Central Europe, where they have fuelled the rise of an “axis of illiberalism.” While intolerance is a problem across the post-communist space as a whole, Victor Orbán’s Fidesz and Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) parties have succeeded in creating regimes that combine elections and market economics with illiberal elements, including gerrymandering, the manipulation of voting rules and control of the media. These all come with the rejection of individual human rights and the rights of social minorities. Known as the Visegrád Group, these parties have fueled a counter-revolution against “Western European dogmas” of tolerance and multiculturalism. [...]

The success of this movement in post-communist Europe – as well as the sympathetic reception they have received on the far right across the continent – testifies to a shocking historical amnesia. As the generations of Europeans with personal memories of total war – as well as the massive transfers of people that followed – pass away, Europe risks repeating the mistakes of the past. At a time when migrants and stateless refugees have once again become “the most symptomatic group in contemporary politics,” we must remember the lessons of the 1930s, which testify to the importance of ensuring the liberal protection of both human and minority rights. [...]

This problem dates back to the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789), which links the “the Rights of Man” – human rights, in modern parlance – to the “will of the people” through the concept of citizenship. While this system works for so called “state peoples,” i.e. nationals who have their own state, it does not protect unwanted individuals and minorities from “having no community” or from having their citizenship stripped away “quite democratically – namely by majority decision.” This realization is the basis for Arendt’s call for the protection of “a right to have rights […] a right to belong to some kind of organized community.” Her key insight is that the killing of the “juridical person” during the nationalist furore of the inter-war crisis was the first step towards the larger atrocities of World War II.

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Politico: Welcome/Unwelcome: African migrants in southern Italy

In the three months following Matteo Salvini’s appointment as Italy’s interior minister, the United Nations described a “dangerous acceleration” in attacks on immigrants: 56 physical assaults, 14 shootings and two murders. Magnum photographer Enri Canaj tells the story of migrants of African descent in southern Italy.

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The Conversation: What if consciousness is just a product of our non-conscious brain?

But common sense can be easily confused. Consider these questions for example: if you felt pain in an amputated leg, where is the pain? If you say it is in your head, would it be in your head if your leg had not been amputated? If you say yes, then what reason have you for ever thinking you had a leg?

One source of confusion when explaining “consciousness” stems from common sense and formal accounts that frame the study of mental life. These are typically discussed in terms of a binary split between conscious intentional processes versus non-conscious involuntary processes – the latter of which are outside our awareness. When walking, for example, we have a conscious awareness of the intention to go somewhere. Yet putting one foot in front of the other is a non-conscious action. [...]

The key driver behind this traditional distinction stems from our own powerful belief that causality links subjective awareness with the daily experience of appearing to have control over our thoughts, feelings and actions. Over the past 100 years, however, a growing body of evidence has begun to question this binary distinction. There is now increasing agreement that most, if not all, of the contents of our psychological processes – our thoughts, beliefs, sensations, perceptions, emotions, intentions, actions and memories – are actually formed backstage by fast and efficient non-conscious brain systems.

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The Atlantic: Unanswered Questions Surround Jamal Khashoggi's Murder

Why kill him in the consulate—the one place in Istanbul where Saudi culpability would be undeniable? Istanbul is a big city, and Khashoggi lived there openly and without security. I met up with him in London not long before his assassination, and when we had breakfast, he sat with his back to the street, in an open café. To slay him with a bullet to the head would have been simple, speedy, and deniable. Many other options exist. Consider the lengthy menu of deniable assassination techniques apparently used by Russia in Ukraine, England, and elsewhere.

Why kill him with sedatives? “The Saudi team brought a syringe packed with enough sedative to be lethal,” according to the Post. Assassins have used many weapons, ranging from firearms to a ricin pellet embedded in the tip of an umbrella. You can guess the advantages of each weapon. A syringe of sedatives is, by any measure, a peculiar choice. Sedatives are not reliable killers, unlike, say, cyanide. But why get pharmacological at all? Evidently the integrity of Khashoggi’s body was not a major concern, so why not just shoot him in the head, strangle him, or stab him in the heart?

Why deploy a team of more than a dozen easily recognized Saudi operatives? A kill mission, especially one in a location of the assassins’ choice, does not require a team of that size, and indeed is more secure with fewer people. Instead of sending in two jets loaded with security personnel, why not fly in three or four killers on Turkish Airlines, traveling separately and using false identities?

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CNN: How 2018 became the Catholic Church's year from hell

The church's institutional crisis was mirrored by individual soul-searching, as American Catholics questioned whether to stay in the church. 2018 saw parents challenging priests at Mass, prominent Catholics urging the faithful to withhold donations and parents worrying whether their children are safe in the sacristy. [...]

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the former Archbishop of Washington and an influential voice in the church and international politics, is removed from public ministry by Pope Francis after a church investigation finds an allegation that McCarrick sexually abused a minor in the 1970s "credible and substantiated." McCarrick said he had "no recollection" of the alleged abuse. [...]

Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson, the highest-ranking Catholic official ever to be convicted of covering up sex abuse. [...]

In an 11-page "testimony" released to conservative Catholic media, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, accuses Francis of ignoring his warnings about McCarrick's conduct and calls on the Pope to resign.

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The Guardian view on small-town Britain

The closure of 127 public libraries did not get much attention amid the turmoil of 2018, but that does not make it a small story. The loss was felt by users of the culled services and those who worked in them. According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, local authority spending on libraries fell by £30m to £741m over the past year.

That is a tiny fraction of public spending. The NHS budget for England last year was £124.7bn and, while libraries matter, it is hard to argue that they matter more than life-saving operations. Yet they also matter in ways that are harder to measure, and their loss tells a more profound story of national malaise. Partly it is a story of austerity, but it does not start there. The loss of facilities behind the frontline of public service is part of a protracted hollowing out of the public realm that increasingly makes itself felt in the decay of nationwide political solidarity. [...]

Research by the Centre for Towns (CfT), a thinktank, finds people in small towns more likely than city dwellers to feel that their area is less well off than others and more neglected by politics. Small towns also suffer from population imbalances. Between 1981 and 2011, UK towns and villages studied by the CfT lost over a million people under the age of 25, and gained 2 million over-65s. By contrast, major cities gained over 300,000 under-25s and lost around 200,000 over-65s. That shift has economic and political consequences. The 2017 general election was marked by a national swing from Conservative to Labour, but many small towns, places such as Wigan and Mansfield, defied the trend.

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Independent: These are the psychological reasons why people are religious

A more recent psychological explanation is the idea that our evolution has created a “god-shaped hole” or has given us a metaphorical “god engine” which can drive us to believe in a deity. Essentially this hypothesis is that religion is a by-product of a number of cognitive and social adaptations which have been extremely important in human development. [...]

Our relationships depend on being able to predict how others will behave across situations and time. But the things that we form attachments to don’t necessarily need to be in front of us to predict their actions. We can imagine what they would do or say. This ability – known as cognitive decoupling – originates in childhood through pretend play. It is a small leap from being able to imagine the mind of someone we know to imagining an omnipotent, omniscient, human-like mind – especially if we have religious texts which tell of their past actions. [...]

In addition to these psychological aspects, the ritual behaviour seen in collective worship makes us enjoy and want to repeat the experience. Dancing, singing and achieving trance-like states were prominent in many ancestral societies and are still exhibited by some today – including the Sentinelese people, and Australian aborigines. As well as being acts of social unity, even more formal rituals also alter brain chemistry. They increase levels of serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin in the brain – chemicals that make us feel good, want to do things again and provide a closeness to others.

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