Deutsche Welle: Britain's overseas territories brace for Brexit

Anguilla, one of Britain's six territories in the Caribbean, is located some 6,500 kilometers (4,039 miles) from Britain and relies heavily on imports — even for its drinking water.

Most of the goods come in through the EU, via a port just 15 minutes away on the French island of Saint Martin. [...]

If London fails to secure a good Brexit deal, Anguilla's residents are worried they will be among the biggest losers. The territory's dependency on its ties with the EU means most residents would have chosen to stay in the bloc. [...]

The EU plays a significant role in Anguilla. Hurricane Irma devastated the tiny territory last September and many homes still lie in ruins, and with the state having no money to spare, the planned reconstruction is funded by the EU.

The EU is also Anguilla's largest provider of development aid, with much of the money earmarked for education. But for the moment it is unclear whether London will step in to help after Brexit.

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The Atlantic: Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular

You can, however, experiment like that with virtual people. And that’s exactly what the Modeling Religion Project does. An international team of computer scientists, philosophers, religion scholars, and others are collaborating to build computer models that they populate with thousands of virtual people, or “agents.” As the agents interact with each other and with shifting conditions in their artificial environment, their attributes and beliefs—levels of economic security, of education, of religiosity, and so on—can change. At the outset, the researchers program the agents to mimic the attributes and beliefs of a real country’s population using survey data from that country. They also “train” the model on a set of empirically validated social-science rules about how humans tend to interact under various pressures. [...]

Using a separate model, Future of Religion and Secular Transitions (forest), the team found that people tend to secularize when four factors are present: existential security (you have enough money and food), personal freedom (you’re free to choose whether to believe or not), pluralism (you have a welcoming attitude to diversity), and education (you’ve got some training in the sciences and humanities). If even one of these factors is absent, the whole secularization process slows down. This, they believe, is why the U.S. is secularizing at a slower rate than Western and Northern Europe. [...]

merv shows that mutually escalating violence is likeliest to occur if there’s a small disparity in size between the majority and minority groups (less than a 70/30 split) and if agents experience out-group members as social and contagion threats (they worry that others will be invasive or infectious). It’s much less likely to occur if there’s a large disparity in size or if the threats agents are experiencing are mostly related to predators or natural hazards. [...]

When you build a model, you can accidentally produce recommendations that you weren’t intending. Years ago, Wildman built a model to figure out what makes some extremist groups survive and thrive while others disintegrate. It turned out one of the most important factors is a highly charismatic leader who personally practices what he preaches. “This immediately implied an assassination criterion,” he said. “It’s basically, leave the groups alone when the leaders are less consistent, [but] kill the leaders of groups that have those specific qualities. It was a shock to discover this dropping out of the model. I feel deeply uncomfortable that one of my models accidentally produced a criterion for killing religious leaders.”

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Politico: Spanish conservatism’s new face

Pablo Casado ran for the party leadership promising to take a hard line against Catalan separatists and pushing a conservative agenda on social issues. He promises a far more confrontational style than that of the man he’ll replace, Mariano Rajoy, who was ousted as prime minister in June after losing a confidence motion in parliament, a political shock that prompted the conservative leadership contest.[...]

Aged just 37, Casado is not only a fresh face at the top of the scandal-hit PP, but also has an approach that’s far removed from that of Rajoy, who often mirrored Angela Merkel by promoting an image of solid, technocratic management while trying to avoid ideological battles. [...]

When a German court ruled that former Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont shouldn’t face the charge of rebellion if sent back to Spain, Casado said he wouldn’t tolerate such a “humiliation to national sovereignty,” suggesting the EU’s Schengen free movement zone be scrapped. [...]

An average of recent polls by Electocracia has the Socialists in the lead with 26 percent — a rise of around 5 points from two months ago — followed by the PP with 23 percent, Ciudadanos on 22 percent and Podemos on 18 percent.  

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Political Critique: Of Rainbows and Rabbits

While the man’s expertise lies primarily in obtaining illegal financing for his party since 2010, what ultimately broke his back as a member of the government was disapproval by His Senility the President, who claimed Poche had voted in favor of the country accepting immigrants in the European Parliament. As a result, Zeman refused to call Poche a minister. Surprising? Not at all, considering that Poche tried to rally the Social Democrats to vote against Zeman in this year’s presidential elections. And that, no self-respecting vindictive zombie can forgive. [...]

It is a school well-known for providing easy titles with no questions asked to people with the proper political inclinations and, coincidentally, also a school whose graduates are not recognized in the Czech Republic as lawyers. Further research revealed that her thesis contained passages plagiarized from somebody else’s work, including the typos.  Still, one does not have to be a lawyer to be an expert Minister of Justice, right? [...]

The inevitable question of why did Babiš – who, unlike, Malá, would have had a fair chance of successfully defending the claim that he is not a complete moron – appoint a clearly unsuitable candidate into an already extremely unpopular government, was in part answered when Malá gave her resignation. At the same press conference, Babiš announced that he would suggest that he temporarily takes the place of Minister of Justice himself. He has since consulted this with his PR department and backpedaled into appointing another sycophant – not that they are in short supply, ANO being what it is – but chances are that press conference provided a rare moment of him speaking the truth about his intentions.

With all the staffing curiosities, this is still a minority government that walks a very thin line if it wants to pass any laws through the Parliament so it takes sympathy wherever it can get it – and this is where the same-sex marriage proposal fits in. Babiš himself does not give a flying fig about minority rights, ANO has no clear political stance on essentially anything and it does not hurt him in the slightest to point at the bill and claim his party is being progressive, since after all, this is the first time a Czech government has backed up such a law. Similarly, the groups most likely to sympathize – liberals, intellectuals, city folk – would find their anti-government sentiments somewhat curbed by the fact the current parliamentary opposition, which they mostly voted for, is in large part opposing it. As far as PR gambits go, it is genius; it shows a populist/social democrat/communist government in a positive light to those convinced it is physically incapable of doing a good thing.

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Al Jazeera: Top UN court rules UAE blockade violated Qataris' rights

On Monday, judges at the ICJ ruled that Qatari families affected by the UAE's measures must be reunited, imposing a measure before The Hague-based court hears in full the discrimination case.

They also said that students should be given the opportunity to complete their studies in the UAE or to retain records of their studies to be able to continue their education elsewhere.

Finally, they ruled Qataris should be allowed access to judicial services in the UAE. [...]

"The sheer fact that the UAE, out of the four countries that imposed the blockade upon Qatar, is the only signatory to this convention means that it is duty-bound and legally-bound, to uphold all of the details within that convention," he added.

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