The Atlantic: A Better Way to Argue About Politics

Liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different moral codes, which makes arguing about policy complicated. Many people have found themselves locked in debates surrounding the now-suspended travel ban, with little success in convincing the other. “One reason it’s so hard to reach across the ideological divide is that people tend to present their arguments in a way that appeals to the ethics of their own side, rather than that of their opponents,” says Atlantic writer Olga Khazan in this video. However, there’s a psychological trick that goes a long way to changing peoples minds. According to the Moral Foundations Theory, liberals are more likely than conservatives to endorse fairness-based arguments and are more concerned with principles like care and equality. So, when discussing a contentious topic, liberals should reframe their arguments to appeal the the moral values of conservatives, and vice versa. “At the very least, you can avoid making things worse,” says Khazan. “If you can’t reframe your argument, just get off Facebook.”

This is the seventh episode of “Unpresidented,” an original series from The Atlantic exploring a new era in American politic

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Jakub Marian: Percentage of researchers by region in Europe

Researchers form an important pillar of society, creating long-term value upon which entrepreneurs as well as the public sector can build. The following map, based on Eurostat data, shows the percentage of employees that work as researchers by NUTS 2 region. [...]

In London, most researchers are concentrated in one small (but populous) part (which is barely visible on the map), while all other parts of London have less than 0.6% of researchers. On average, London boasts 1.0% of people employed in research.

The data for the two missing regions of Germany are not present in the Eurostat database, and the entries are marked as “confidential”, whatever that means. Perhaps everybody in Niederbayern and Oberpfalz secretly works on a death ray?

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Independent: We asked a lot of British Political Historians the same question: is this the End of the Labour Party?

But while the Labour Party is unlikely to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet, its condition is certainly serious. There are fewer and fewer working class voters around. And more and more of them – turned off by a party they see as too politically correct and/or too like the Tories to make much difference – are either plumping for populists or not bothering to vote at all. Meanwhile, the country’s growing middle class simply can’t see Corbyn and co providing them with the combination of compassion and competence that New Labour, at least for a while, delivered. 

But all isn’t necessarily lost. First-past-the-post means the party’s unlikely to be replaced by either UKIP or the Lib Dems even when (not if) it’s hammered at the next general election. After that, it might secure itself a more credible, centrist leader who’s capable of communicating and connecting with the public. And the Tories will eventually mess up – governments always do. [...]

But to be the majority party it has to create a coalition of shared interests. At the moment Labour has not got a leader who can do that. He can appeal to only one constituency – liberal, metropolitan types – but not Labour’s more traditional supporters.

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The Guardian: Colourful characters beneath Berlin – in pictures

Berlin is known for its underground scene of artists, DJs and techno, but it was the actual underground that captured the attention of photographer Sebastian Spasic. In his project Berlin Lines, a collaboration with website Pixartprinting, Spasic photographed 20 people in the German capital’s metro stations that had a particular significance to them. “Subway stations are part of people’s daily landscape but in most cases go unnoticed,” he says, “but if people wake up to some elements of the stations, like the rich typography, the colour palettes, they can appreciate a new point of view full of meaning and interesting facts.” To Spasic, Berlin is one of the world’s creative capitals: “It’s an eclectic city with a youthful and tolerant mentality. It’s best experienced and not explained.”

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The New Yorker: A Last Chance for Turkish Democracy

The last time I met Demirtaş, in September, it was at a tea shop in the trendy neighborhood of Taksim. He was surrounded by bodyguards. Things were going badly for him—not because he had given up on democratic politics but because he had succeeded so well; in 2015, the H.D.P. captured an astounding eighty seats in the Turkish parliament. The Party had even begun to attract non-Kurdish voters. Soon, however, Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, began cracking down on the Kurds. Thousands of members of the H.D.P. were detained. In November, two months after our last meeting, Demirtaş, who is forty-three years old, was arrested and jailed. Now, facing what appear to be preposterous charges—supporting an armed terrorist organization—he is facing a prison sentence of as long as a hundred and forty-two years. [...]

But Erdoğan is a master at self-preservation. He beat back his accusers and then, last July, in what must be regarded as a political gift from the heavens, elements inside the Turkish military tried to overthrow his government. Erdoğan—not without some justification—blamed the attempted coup on the movement of Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher who lives in exile in the United States. After successfully putting down the attempted putsch, Erdoğan launched a sweeping, and still ongoing, campaign to destroy the country’s democratic opposition. Since July, more than forty thousand people have been arrested, and a hundred thousand government employees—including judges, prosecutors, and academics—have been fired. Tens of thousands remain in prison, including more than a hundred and fifty journalists and media workers. The government has closed a hundred and seventy-nine newspapers, television stations, and Web sites. Turkey is now the most prolific jailer of journalists in the world. [...]

Polls show that the referendum has the support of only around fifty per cent of likely Turkish voters. A “no” vote would be a crushing rebuke to the Turkish President, and, in the short-term, could provoke a violent reaction from him. But, if the Turkish people are serious about stemming Erdoğan’s drive to dictatorship, this may be their last chance.

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