Polish government supports right to discriminate

Polish minister responsible for equal treatment said during a press conference that a business can, on the grounds of freedom to provide services, can refuse to provide a service on the bases of skin colour or sexual orientation of a client. Accoridng to the said official law cannot interfere into private transactions.

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The New York Times: Is This the End of the Religious Right?

Deliberately or not, Mr. Trump may be the perfect candidate for an evangelical subculture that has increasingly become enamored with the prosperity, or health and wealth, gospel. In trying to build a singular religious faction that agreed on some core issues (like abortion), the Republican Party has courted that subculture, even though many evangelicals consider prosperity theology to be heretical. Mr. Trump acts more like a televangelist than an evangelical.

Although Ted Cruz used the traditional religious right playbook to win in Iowa, Mr. Trump’s subsequent successes in beating Mr. Cruz among evangelicals — including across wide sections of the Bible Belt — demonstrated that many Republican voters, and even many evangelical Republicans, were more swept up in Trump-style nativist culture wars than battles over abortion, marriage or, especially, bathrooms. Mr. Trump understood he could unite nativists and culture warriors using his diatribes against political correctness as an all-purpose code to stoke conservative resentments.

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Salon: Delusional, prudish, selfish, violent: This is how Americans compare to the rest of the world

It’s fairly common knowledge that Europeans, overall, are less religious than Americans. U.S. presidential speeches always end with a perfunctory “God bless America,” our athletes thank a god who apparently prefers rigging sports competitions to curing cancer, and there are odes to the lord on our money (America’s Real Highest Power™). A Pew survey released last year found that almost 75 percent of Americans across denominations say religion is at least “somewhat” important to them, with 53 percent calling it “very” important. That’s higher than in every European country polled, a list topped by Poland, where just 28 percent—close to half America’s total—answered in kind. France, in what we’ll see is pretty consistent, came in dead last in Europe, while Japan and China, to borrow a conservative phrase, are even more “godless.” [...]

No indicator exists in a vacuum, so it makes sense that America’s religiosity impacts its sexual mores—or its purported ones, anyway. In a 2013 survey, 30 percent of Americans said sex before marriage is “morally unacceptable.” Pretty much every country that placed a lower importance on religion found premarital sex less of an abomination, although Russia’s in a dead heat with us on this one. France, where just 6 percent held this opinion, tied for last place with Germany. [...]

Rags-to-riches stories do happen, but they happen less in the U.S. than in many other countries. A 2012 Economic Policy Institute study found there’s far less class mobility in America than in other wealthy European countries, as well as Canada, Japan and Australia. Business Insider cites a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study that concluded a lot us of are essentially walled in by the class barriers that surrounded us at birth. Researchers note that “45 percent of American adults who are in the bottom 20 percent in income were born to parents who were also in the bottom 20 percent; nearly half, 45 percent, of adults in the top 20 percent had parents who were also in the top 20 percent. Most Americans who were born in the middle 60 percent had parents who were also born in the middle 60 percent.”

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Reuters: China to relocate 2 million people this year in struggle to banish poverty

The mass relocation of people is a strategy targeted at lifting 10 million citizens out of poverty by 2020, state news agency Xinhua has said.

Some of the villagers will move to areas with better social services, such as schools and hospitals, while others in remote areas will move to places with better roads and water supply, the official, Liu Yongfu, told a briefing. [...]

China's poor, who make up about 5 percent of a population of nearly 1.4 billion, live mostly in the countryside, and earn less than 2,300 yuan ($362) a year, government and state media say.

In March Premier Li Keqiang promised a boost of 43 percent in funding for poverty relief programs. Last October, the cabinet said China aimed to lift all its 70 million poor above the poverty line by 2020.

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The Huffington Post: How To Talk About The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Too often, the conflict is reduced to a “war of perception“ in which politicians, journalists, and activists present compelling evidence supporting their beliefs while omitting equally compelling evidence to the contrary. Simply put, reports and analyses of the conflict tend to be either staunchly pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. These dichotomized opinions are also reflected in the responses to Sanders’ remarks, when the reality is probably closer to Harriet Sherwood’s statement in The Guardian: “The truth is lost amid the propaganda battle being waged alongside the shells, bombs, guns and rockets. What is certain is that the picture is more complicated than either side claims.” [...]

Discursive balance is crucial to understanding conflicts. Although a presidential debate is the last place one would expect to find a ‘no spin zone,’ we should note Bernie Sanders’ remarks for their substance and for their inherent recognition that there are multiple sides to every story. They are a shining example of how we can stop treating the rhetoric around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as antithetical, and instead acknowledge the humanity and flaws on both sides.

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The Huffington Post: The ‘Quiet Revolution’ of Pope Francis

Unfortunately, this discrimination goes beyond name calling. To understand the double standard on the LGBT issue, one has to look at the mindset of some leaders within the Catholic Church in relation to the sex abuse scandal. [...]

Still, even though Burke and Tomasi have been proven wrong, how many others within Catholic leadership hold these discriminatory views towards LGBT people and women? Why is the hateful and destructive language by Burke, Tomasi, Rodriguez, and Bambarén allowed to continue virtually unopposed while the voices of Spence, Winters, Hall, and Estridge; voices advocating peace, love, and compassion, are silenced?

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Think Progress: The 4th Largest Economy In The World Just Generated 90 Percent Of The Power It Needs From Renewables

Germany is the fourth-largest economy on the planet. Germany’s $3.7 trillion GDP beats the economic output of any other country in Europe or, for that matter, any U.S. state. Sunday’s spike in renewable output shows that wind and solar can keep pace with the demands of an economic powerhouse. What’s more, the growth of clean energy has tracked the growth of Germany’s economy. [...]

Individuals are driving Germany’s energy revolution. Sunday’s performance highlights the success of the Energiewende, or “energy transition,” Germany’s push to expand clean energy, increase energy efficiency, and democratize power generation. Smart policies have opened the renewable energy market to utilities, businesses and homeowners. As of 2012, individuals owned more than a third of Germany’s renewable energy capacity.

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