The Vatican is looking to develop a new doctrine that calls for excommunicating Catholics for mafia association and corruption.
That's the decision reached this week after the Vatican hosted its first-ever conference on fighting corruption and organized crime.
One of the biggest shocks for many foreign visitors to Israel is the lack of familiar Jewish cuisine. Where are the smoked salmon, bagels and cream cheese at breakfast? What about the delis that define Jewish cuisine from Montreal to Los Angeles? Or the kugel (a casserole made from egg noodles or potato), gefilte fish (an appetizer made from poached fish) and matzoh ball soup served at Jewish tables around the world? Time Out Tel Aviv even has a section entitled ‘Where to find the best Jewish food in Tel Aviv’, and the few cafes that do sell Ashkenazi food (like Eva’s) typically emblazon their menus and awnings with the label ‘Jewish food’, something you would never see at a neighbourhood shawarma joint. These are strong indicators of just how spare this kind of cuisine is here.
In reality, Israeli cuisine has long been more closely associated with its immediate environment, a fusion of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditions and ingredients. The early Zionists eagerly adopted Palestinian dishes, such as falafel, hummus, and shawarma, while in recent years Israelis have developed a more diversified palate. Still, ‘Jewish food’ remains scarce. But very few visitors know the reasons behind the dearth of it in Israel: despite the fact that the early settlers were mostly Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, they forsook traditional Jewish food both because of scarcity but also in deliberate service to the formation of a new national narrative.
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Early adherents to the Zionist project, committed to creating a Jewish state in the territory now known as Israel, sought to abandon vestiges of their past. Just as the European settlers favoured Hebrew over Yiddish and khakis over frock coats and homburgs, they also purposefully chose to eat indigenous foods over Ashkenazi ones. “Many of the first Ashkenazi Jews who came here, the ideological pioneers, were interested in cutting off their roots from the past and emphasizing the newness of the Zionist project,” explained Shaul Stampfer, professor of Soviet and East European Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “One of the ways of doing that [was] through the food.”
The adoption of indigenous food lent the early European implants an air of authenticity. The production of local ingredients – the things that grew well in the desert and along the Mediterranean coastline, and the many dishes adapted from Arab kitchens – became part of the Zionist narrative. Advertisements at the time implored the population to eat locally grown ‘Hebrew watermelons’. The Jewish people had returned to Zion and had the diet to prove it.
Later, as Jewish immigrants from Morocco to Ethiopia began piling in, each with their own unique style of cooking, the creation [of] a national cuisine became ever more important. “They were grappling with people from different cultures and traditions and it was a challenge to convince them that they belonged together,” said Yael Raviv, author of Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel. “They had to use everything and anything to forge this unified nation. Food is so tied to Jewish heritage, laws of kashrut [kosher dietary rules], and the Israeli economy is really driven by agriculture – so it became a very effective tool because it could be used in these various ways.”
Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nation moves beyond the simply territorial to divulge the role food plays in the Jewish nation. She ponders the power struggles, moral dilemmas, and religious and ideological affiliations of the different ethnic groups that make up the “Jewish State” and how they relate to the gastronomy of the region.
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Focusing on the period between the 1905 immigration wave and the Six-Day War in 1967, Raviv explores foodways from the field, factory, market, and kitchen to the table. She incorporates the role of women, ethnic groups, and different generations into the story of Zionism and offers new assertions from a secular-foodie perspective on the relationship between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism. A study of the changes in food practices and in attitudes toward food and cooking, Falafel Nation explains how the change in the relationship between Israelis and their food mirrors the search for a definition of modern Jewish nationalism.
A machete-wielding homeowner confronted three would-be robbers early Thursday morning [in Sarasota, FL], holding one of them for deputies and chasing the others off in a dramatic melee that was caught on surveillance video.
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The home’s surveillance video shows the hooded men burst onto the porch waving a shotgun, machete, and a crowbar. One of the residents disappears out of view, then returns waving his own machete as the suspects scramble. Before long, the suspects are scrambling over the fence as other residents and even a small dog chase them around.
The residents disarmed one of the suspects, later identified as Alen Beltran-Vazquez, and held him until deputies arrived. Deputies soon caught up with the two other would-be robbers in their suspected getaway car at a nearby gas station, along with two more suspects.
The Boko Haram split began in August 2016 when ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) announced that it was replacing Shekau, who was accused of mismanagement, with Abu Musab al Barnawi. ISIL believed Shekau devoted too much effort to killing fellow Moslems (especially civilians) rather than the real enemies of ISIL (local security forces and non-Moslems in general). ISIL leadership was also unhappy with the Boko Haram use of children and women as suicide bombers. That has become an issue in Nigeria because the use of children as suicide bombers has tripled this year (27 in the first three months of 2017 compared to nine in 2016). While the new Boko Haram leader has concentrated attacks on the security forces and non-Moslems he has also used children, especially females, as suicide bombers. Barnawi is a son of Mohammed Yusuf, one of the ISIL founders. Barnawi was appointed chief Boko Haram spokesman in January 2015. Although Barnawi has developed a following in Boko Haram Shekau refused to accept the ISIL decision.
Boko Haram is now split into competing factions which is nothing new as there have always been some factions, but not to this extent. At this point many Boko Haram loyalists regret the 2015 decision to become part of ISIL, which was believed to be an effort to avoid a split in Boko Haram as more radical members declared themselves followers of ISIL or even tried to go to Syria to join ISIL. Few African Islamic terrorists have done that, largely because of the cost and difficulty travelling from Africa to areas where ISIL is (or was) dominant. But in many parts of the world older Islamic terror organizations are fracturing because their more enthusiastic members prefer the ISIL style of ultra-violence.
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In many parts of the northeast (mainly Borno state) ravaged by Boko Haram violence local civilian militias have been the key element keeping the Islamic terrorists from winning or, at this point, rebuilding ... Officially called the Civilian JTF (Joint Task Force or CJTF). There are about 30,000 CJTF volunteers and most are now armed. About two percent of those who joined CJTF have been killed and many more have been wounded or injured while on duty. In effect, about ten percent of the CJTF men have been injured. But the soldiers respect them, the local civilians depend on and support them while Boko Haram has come to fear them.
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By the end of 2014 some CJTF groups were launching attacks on Boko Haram, and usually winning because they knew the area and people better and often were able to launch a surprise attack at night. A major factor in this was that in the more remote areas, like near the Sambisa Forest, the CJTF groups contained a lot of local hunters. These men are professional hunters who thrive in rural areas where there is a lot more game than people. CJTF first demonstrated to the army the skills of local hunters who tracked game for a living. The army noted that the success of CJTF attack units was largely the result of local hunters. Soon the army began to hire some of the hunters who were exceptional trackers as well as offering bounties if they could track down certain Boko Haram men or groups.
“The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.” Robert E. Lee
The man was perceptive. Amalgamation of the states under a central government has led to exactly the effects foreseen by General Lee.
In, say, 1950, to an appreciable though imperfect extent America resembled a confederacy. Different regions of the America had little contact with each other, and almost no influence over one another. The federal government was small and remote. Interstates did not exist, nor of course the internet, nor even direct long-distance telephone dialing. West Virginia, Alabama, Massachusetts, New York City, Texas, and California had little in common, but little conflict arose since for practical purposes they were almost different countries. They chiefly governed themselves. The proportion of federal to state law was small.
It is important to note that regional differences were great. In 1964 in rural Virginia, the boys brought shotguns to school during deer season. Nobody shot anybody because it wasn’t in the culture. The culture was uniform, so no one was upset. It is when cultures are mixed, or one rules another, that antagonism comes. Such shotgun freedom would not have worked in New York City with its variegated and often mutually hostile ethnicities.
Regions differed importantly in degree of freedom, not just in the freedom of local populations to govern themselves but also in individual freedom. It made a large difference in the tenor of life. If in Texas, rural Virginia, or West Virginia you wanted to build an addition to your house, you did. You didn’t need licenses, permits, inspections, union-certified electricians. Speed limits? Largely ignored. Federal requirements for Coast Guard approved flotation devices on your canoe? What the hell kind of crazy idea was that?
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Then came the vast empire, the phenomenal increase in the power and reach of the federal government, which really means the Northeast Corridor. The Supreme Court expanded and expanded and expanded the authority of Washington, New York’s store-front operation. The federals now decided what could be taught in the schools, what religious practices could be permitted, what standards employers could use in hiring, who they had to hire. The media coalesced into a small number of corporations, controlled from New York but with national reach. More recently we have added surveillance of everything by Washington’s intelligence agencies.
Tyranny at home, said said General Lee. Just so. This could happen only with the consolidation of the states into one vast empire.
Tyranny comes easily when those seeking it need only corrupt a single Congress, appoint a single Supreme Court, or control the departments of one executive branch. In a confederation of largely self-governing states, those hungry to domineer would have to suborn fifty congresses. It could not be done. State governments are accessible to the governed. They can be ejected. They are much more likely to be sympathetic to the desires of their constituents since they are of the same culture.
A civil war results when the desire for unification and domination overrides the desire for separation and self-determination. The American civil war is a classic example. There were grounds for separation — North and South were culturally different on a scale that dwarfs modern divides between red and blue — but the North did not consent. It sought to first unify and then transform the southern states. By contrast, had Scotland voted to leave the United Kingdom, would England have mobilized in response? No, the U.K. came close to its own national divorce, the dissolution of a union generations older than the American republic.
Here is the core American question. As we continue our own “big sort,” will the desire to separate trump the desire to dominate? Or can we instead choose to tolerate? We’re still quite far from the kind of near-miss that Britain just experienced, and we’re even farther removed from the vicious strife of a true civil war, but the trends are pointing toward continued matching of like with like — and along with that, increasing hostility against communities not like our own. In my Memorial Day column, I asked what I believe to be the key question: “Is there a single significant cultural, political, social, or religious trend that is pulling Americans together more than it is pushing us apart?”
I don’t believe a civil-war mentality will save America. There are simply too many differences and too many profound disagreements for one side or the other to exercise true political dominance. Red won’t beat blue in the same way that blue beat gray. Adopt the civil-war mentality and you’ll only hasten a potential divorce. No, absent a presently unforeseen unifying ideology, event, or person, the idea that will save America is one of the oldest ideas of the Republic: federalism.
So long as we protect the “privileges and immunities” of American citizenship, including all of the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights, let California be California and Texas be Texas. De-escalate national politics. Ideas that work in Massachusetts shouldn’t be crammed down the throats of culturally different Tennesseans. Indeed, as our sorting continues, our ability to persuade diminishes. (After all, how can we understand communities we don’t encounter?)
If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.
"We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the seedy underbelly of fandom, File 770 is a garbage gossip column website run by a scumbag named Mike Glyer. His whole shtick is to be a news aggregator for the sci-fi/fantasy business and collect links from people who actually create things for a living. He play acts at being an impartial journalist, but in reality everything he does is slanted to screw over anybody he doesn’t like.
He chums the water for his horde of psychos so they can go about forming internet lynch mobs, boycotts, and black ballings. But then he pretends to be all impartial and above the fray. If you ever want to lose all faith in humanity, read the comments there. His regulars range between basement dwelling goons, creepy weirdo stalkers, and angry rainbow haired social justice warriors.
If you are in any writer’s groups with conservative or libertarian authors in them, then you’ve inevitably heard about this shithole website. We mostly call it Vile 770 or File 666. At one point or another that page has tried to start shit with every author who gets on Glyer’s bad side. Because when you are ever the nail that sticks up, the File 770 crew are the hammer that wants to knock you back down. Luckily, they’re about as effective as a Fisher Price squeaky hammer. So mostly we just mock them.
The president’s supporters often say his accomplishments get short shrift. But let’s face it: Politicians have no right to expect equally balanced positive and negative coverage, or anything close to it. If a president is doing a rotten job, it’s the duty of the press to report how and why he’s doing a rotten job.
On the one side, we have always had the small-government libertarian types. Back in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they were the Southern Democrats. They were primarily advocates of an agrarian-focused, decentralised, minimalist, small-government philosophy that generally left people the hell alone to get on with their own business.
On the other side, we have also always had the mercantilists, the industrialists, the big-government centralists. They believed that a strong central government was absolutely required to prevent the new nation from being overwhelmed by its competitors and sinking into irrelevance or slavery under a foreign power.
That ideological difference has persisted, in various forms and espoused by various parties, all the way through to the modern day. That is of course well known. Eventually, the divide became so deep and so bitter that it resulted in the War Between the States, which Northerners rather oxymoronically refer to as the Civil War, and Southerners somewhat more accurately refer to as the War of Northern Aggression.
That divide was eventually papered over, at least somewhat, by the North's crushing victory over the South. To this day, the South still hasn't fully recovered from that defeat and the years of the Reconstruction Era that followed- and the wounds and scars inflicted by that defeat still linger on.
But- and here is the key difference between then and now- even throughout those times of bitterest division and discord, the two sides were able to talk to each other, right up until the time for talking was over and there was nothing left to do but start shooting.
And that is precisely what America has now lost.
You will not find finer exemplars of the two spirits of America than Presidents Adams and Jefferson. One believed completely in a strong central government; the other believed equally completely in a weak one. The two argued, often contentiously and always with eloquence and conviction, in favour of their respective positions.
Yet the two of them were also closer than brothers. Their respect for each other transcended their political differences and united them in their love for their new country, and their desire to see it succeed. Not for nothing have they been called "Founding Brothers".
This is what America has lost today. The two sides of the debate no longer talk to each other. They talk past each other.
Aren’t all women supposed to be able to feel safe in their own homes? But now, in Denver, you’ll need to have your husband or boyfriend beat you down and be dragged off by the police three times before it will be treated as something more than a “petty offense.” And why? Just so the City Council can stick their collective thumb in the eye of immigration law enforcement and make sure that the green card holder who is knocking your teeth out can’t be deported.
European authorities stepped in to avert a collapse of Spain's Banco Popular following a run on the bank, orchestrating a last-minute rescue on Wednesday by Santander, the country's biggest lender.
Owners of Popular bonds faces losses of some 2 billion euros, while Santander will ask its shareholders for around 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) of capital to absorb Spain's sixth biggest bank.
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Santander's takeover of the bank, which has been weighed down by risky property loans, for a nominal one euro marks the first use of a stricter European Union regime to deal with failing banks adopted after the financial crisis.
The sale was organized in less than 24 hours, and followed a recent acceleration in the withdrawal of deposits, which two people with knowledge of the matter said had in recent weeks hit 18 billion euros, equivalent to almost one quarter of the total.
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"This deal is good for Spain and it's good for Europe," Santander chairman Ana Botin said of the agreement, which breaks the mold of using taxpayers' money, instead imposing losses on shareholders and creditors of the bank.
This resolution worked in Santander's favor, and was described by two debt investors as unexpected, with the owners of so-called AT1 and AT2 bonds suffering roughly 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) of losses and shareholders losing everything.
The forced sale is the first major action by the Brussels-based Single Resolution Board, set up in January 2015 to deal with euro-area bank failures and wind them down with minimal impact on taxpayers and financial stability. Popular’s situation had become more urgent in recent weeks. Chairman Emilio Saracho struggled to find a buyer, plans for a possible share sale were complicated by a stock slump and the bank’s liquidity situation worsened.
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In the case of Popular, the SRB used only a few of its resolution powers, including the sale of a failed lender to a sound firm for a token price, the wipeout of shares and additional Tier 1 debt and the conversion of Tier 2 bonds into shares. It didn’t have to resort to more drastic measures foreseen in EU law, such as taking over the institution or imposing losses on senior creditors.
