Der Spiegel Staff, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: About three years ago I was in Turkey for several weeks presenting at a medical conference there and had the pleasure to traveling through much of the country. Having lived in Egypt for most of two years, and having visited a number of Arab cities I thought I knew what to expect in an Islamic country and was stunned to discover that Turkey was something quite different.
I loved Turkey, the people, the absence of the constant burden of religion one feels in Islamic countries, the equality of the women, great food and extraordinary history. Much of that is now coming to an end, as Turkey sinks into fundamentalist religiosity under President Erdogan, an authoritarian and fundamentalist. For instance, I have begun seeing reports of ancient Christian communities being persecuted, academics being jailed for non-Islamic teaching and all the other toxic nonsense that goes with fundamentalism.
American media cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, by which I mean they seem capable of only covering one story line, or at most two, so none of this is getting any coverage, although it is of enormous geopolitical significance. De Spiegel in Germany in contrast to American media does follow events in Turkey closely, perhaps because there are so many ethnic Turks in Germany, and here is what I think is a pretty reasonable take on what President Erdogan and his minions are doing to Turkey. It is a great tragedy with powerful implications.
President Recep Erdogan of Turkey is converting his country from a tolerant democracy to a religious police state.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is taking advantage of last week’s failed coup to consolidate his power. As the country slides into a dictatorship, there is a lot at stake for the West. But the effects in Turkey itself promise to be far greater.
The sun is setting over Ankara and people are pouring out of the subway onto Kizilay Square in the heart of the Turkish capital. They are waving flags and chanting: “God is great!” and “Death to the traitors!”
In a café located 100 meters (328 feet) away, Esra Can is quickly cramming her cigarettes and smartphone into her purse, rushing to make it back to her apartment before the demonstration in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets going. “The mob on the street is unpredictable,” she says.
Can, a petite 30-year-old with brown curly hair and […]
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Rowan Jacobsen, - Scientific American
Stephan: Water is destiny, and I consider it very good news that in an area riven by conflict arising from water the Israeli research described in this report is taking place, and that some wellness oriented thinkers see the potential of water as a peace maker.
Sorek Desalination Plant.
Credit: Photo courtesy of IDE Technologies.
Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.
“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.
We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths […]
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Jay Michaelson, - The Daily Beast
Stephan: Utah is the closest thing we have in America to an essentially open Theocracy. That makes the state particularly interesting in the sense Justice Louis Brandeis described the states as laboratories to test social policies.Utah lets us assess the social outcomes arising from religious fundamentalism, in this case the de facto state religion of Utah, Mormonism.
The three universals of fundamentalism, of whatever religion are:
- A strong sense of entitlement and self-righteousness
- A heightened sense of persecution
- Sexual dysfunctionality centering on an obsessive need for males to be dominate, and their need to control a woman's body and sexuality.
These characteristics are universally justified in the context of religion, independent of any particular religious belief. In Utah that means the Mormons, who I find particularly interesting because their founders, and Joseph Smith particularly, maintained a "Christian" form of the Muslim harem. The church itself acknowledges Smith had 40 wives, some of them married to other men whose husbands he drove off if they did not acquiesce, and one only 14 years old. Women at one point were referred to as "heifers."
Polygamy is gone now, except for fringe LDS groups, it has morphed into strict heterosexual fundamentalist monogamy. Which has left a percentage of LDS males and females, those who make up the LGBT community, locked in the closet. This report focuses on suicide as a specific social outcome in the context Mormonism arising from these repressive policies.
Begin with this: Utah is the state with the highest anti-depressant usage, and the leading state in porn usage, where the most popular search terms are "lesbian" and "shemale" and there is an actual category known as "Mormon porn" involving sacred underwear.
Taken all together, Utah's social profile on sexual gender issues, based on outcome data, is pretty clear.
I think the neuroscience tells us that this fundamentalist sexual/gender attitude is a form of mental illness, protected because it is cloaked in religion. And it is absolutely clear that fundamentalism works to degrade wellness. This report is an example of this principle produced by the Utah laboratory.
Mormon Temple Salt Lake City
Credit: Planetware.com
The LDS Church has ramped up hate against LGBT people as the suicide rate explodes. Are the two connected? We don’t know, because the state isn’t looking.
Utah’s suicide rate is nearly twice the national average and the rate of youth suicide rate has tripled in the last 10 years. And last year, the state’s Department of Health revealed that suicide is now the leading cause of death among 10- to 17-year-olds in Utah.
Overall, the state’s youth suicide rate has increased from 3.0 per 100,000 people in 2007 to 8.5 per 100,000 in 2014.
A coalition of Mormon parents of LGBT children is laying the blame at the doors of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which, beginning in 2008, intensified its anti-gay rhetoric, funding California’s Proposition 8 and, in 2015, excommunicating the children of same-sex couples.
“I know of four suicides of LGBT Mormon youth in the last […]
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Ari Berman, - The Nation
Stephan: The other day I ran a report on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal's decision in the North Carolina voting case; a decision with national consequences, and a startling rebuke to Chief Justice John Robert's decision that gutted Article V of the Voting Rights Act. Here now is the best exegetic essay on the importance of the Fourth Circuit's decision that I have seen.
Jurisdiction of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states with the longest histories of voting discrimination no longer had to approve their voting changes with the federal government. A month after that decision, North Carolina—where 40 counties were previously subject to that requirement—passed the country’s most sweeping voting restrictions.
The state required strict voter ID to cast a ballot, cut a week of early voting and eliminated same-day voter registration, out of precinct voting and pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds. Today the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated these restrictions, which it said “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision” in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. It reversed a 485-page decision by the district court upholding the law.
This is a huge victory for voting rights—the most significant in the country since the Shelby County v. Holder decision—that will make it easier for hundreds of thousands of voters to cast […]
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Saturday, July 30th, 2016
David A. Graham , - The Atlantic
Stephan: The Republican Party has become the party of White Nationalism; Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower would be appalled. And no where is the Republican racism clearer that in North Carolina.
But, thanks to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals we now have some good news. The blatant voter suppression of Governor McGory and the Republican controlled legislature has now been called out for what it is: a racist attempt to manipulate the ability for minorities, the elderly, and students to vote. As a result based on the demographics North Carolina may now go Blue, which could change the outcome of the election.
DURHAM, N.C.—The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down key portions of North Carolina’s strict 2013 voting law on Friday, delivering a stern rebuke to the state’s Republican General Assembly and Governor Pat McCrory. The three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, unanimously concluded that the law was racially discriminatory, and it blocked a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and out-of-precinct voting.
“In what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race—specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” wrote Judge Diana Gribbon Motz.
North Carolina’s law, often described as the strictest in the nation, passed shortly after the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. That section required states with a history of voter discrimination to “preclear” any changes to voting laws with the U.S. Department of Justice. Freed from […]
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