The New York Times: Angela Merkel Presses Vladimir Putin on Treatment of Gays and Jehovah’s Witnesses

Ms. Merkel said she had talked to Mr. Putin about her concerns on civil rights in Russia, including, among other issues, the persecution of gay men, a new ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses and the arrests of anti-Kremlin protesters. [...]

“I also spoke about the very negative report about what is happening to homosexuals in Chechnya and asked Mr. President to exert his influence to ensure that minorities’ rights are protected,” she added. He hosted her at his residence in Sochi, her first visit to Russia since May 2015. [...]

In Germany, the talks are important for the chancellor as she faces a difficult race for a fourth term in elections scheduled for Sept. 24. Gay rights protesters had engaged in a 48-hour vigil outside Ms. Merkel’s office, demanding that she bring up the issue of gay men in Chechnya. [...]

The official reason for the visit on Tuesday was the agenda of the Group of 20 summit meeting in July in Hamburg, Germany, where Ms. Merkel will be the host. It will probably be the first face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin.

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The Guardian: The alt-right hates women as much as it hates people of colour

Although best known for its white nationalist brand of racist ideology, there’s growing recognition that patriarchal politics is also central to the movement. Several observers have pointed out that the alt-right advocates not just white supremacy, but more specifically white male supremacy, that the movement feeds on “toxic resentment of women”, and that sexism serves as a “gateway drug” pulling a lot of young men into it. The few alt-right women who have been profiled embrace their own subordination. [...]

Consider abortion. Some alt-rightists, unsurprisingly, argue that abortion is simply immoral and should be banned. Yet many others in the movement disagree – and for reasons that have nothing to do with respecting women’s autonomy or privacy. These alt-rightists support legal abortion because, they claim, it’s disproportionately used by black and Latina women and, secondarily, because they see it as a way to weed out “defective” white babies. In other words, they support abortion as a form of eugenics. Both sides of this internal alt-right debate agree that women have no business controlling their own bodies. As Greg Johnson of the alt-right website Counter-Currents put it, “in a White Nationalist society … some abortions should be forbidden, others should be mandatory, but under no circumstances should they simply be a matter of a woman’s choice”. [...]

For 40 years, the Christian right has been the benchmark of anti-feminist, patriarchal politics in the United States. The Christian right was the first large-scale movement in US history to put the reassertion of male dominance at the centre of its programme. Since the 1970s, it has spearheaded a whole series of patriarchal initiatives, from the campaign to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment to the self-described “biblical patriarchy” movement, which tells women they have a sacred obligation to treat their husbands as “lord”.

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Haaretz: Fight for the Founders’ Vision of Israel

It is “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State,” states the Declaration of Independence. But Israel is denying this natural right to the Palestinian people. The declaration’s key paragraph guarantees the democratic component of the Jewish and democratic state. “The State of Israel ... will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” it declares. But this promise has been replaced by an occupation regime in the territories, and is under violent attack within Israel itself by the government — a government of the right-wing Im Tirztu organization. [...]

The Declaration of Independence adopted the vision of Israel’s prophets — the universal values that put man at the center, the ones through which Judaism made an enormous contribution worldwide. But the nationalist State of Israel, with its fascist tendencies, scorns and derides these values. Israeli society must fight to restore the vision of the Declaration of Independence and make it the state’s vision once more. We cannot and must not accept its abolition.

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SciShow Psych: Does IQ Really Measure How Smart You Are?

The Atlantic: Why We Laugh (Jun 05, 2014)

Laughter is universal, but we know very little about the reasons we do it. Dr. Robert Provine has been studying the social and neurological roots of laughter for 20 years, and has come to surprising conclusions about how we operate as human beings. To learn more about Dr. Provine's research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, read his latest book, Curious Behavior.

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