openDemocracy: Catalonia vs Spain, a clash of two nationalisms

And, on November 9, the autonomous government has vowed to organise a referendum on Catalan residents' “Right to decide” whether they want to become a State and, if they do, whether they would choose independence or remain in the fold of the Spanish monarchy. A vote which is bitterly opposed – as unconstitutional – by the right wing PP's (Popular Party) government in Madrid as much as by PSOE (Socialist) opposition in the name of Spanish unity. For the moment, according to recent opinion polls, over two thirds of voters would vote “yes” at the first question and a small majority would opt for independence. [...]

In a democratic country there is nothing which could not be solved through negotiations. Provided there is a common will to negotiate, i.e., to give and take. The Catalan government, led by Artur Mas, head of Convergencia I Unio (CiU), the moderate nationalist party which spearheaded the fight for autonomy after Franco's death and who has long kept alive the hope of negotiating a better status with Madrid, is now advocating the “Right to decide”. He has announced for November 9 a referendum considered as illegal by the PP and PSOE, both of whom have vowed to oppose it by all legal means. Mas is also keeping up his sleeve the option of holding “plebiscitary” elections to the Barcelona Parliament, which would bring in a wider nationalist majority.

While Madrid politicians, and media are staunchly opposed to a referendum which, for them, would mean secession – some having gone so far as to compare Catalan nationalists to Nazi national-socialists, portraying Mas with a Hitler-like moustache and advocating sending the army in to restore rule of law in Barcelona – the two main Spanish parties, PP and PSOE, have all but vanished from the Catalan political scene. At the same time, moderate nationalists, who have failed to bring negotiations forward, are now threatened by the rise of the old radical anti-monarchy nationalists of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), which has overtaken CiU in latest polls. [...]

By targeting the Mas government, widely portrayed as extremist and irresponsible, and by refusing to negotiate on key constitutional, economic, social, cultural issues, Mr. Rajoy has – willingly or not – been playing into the hands of radicals like the ERC or social organisations like Omnium Català and ANC (Catalan National Assembly), who are behind the latest massive demonstrations. New local elections would probably bring to power a coalition led by ERC. Specially as a significant number of neo-Catalans – immigrants from the rest of Spain and abroad – have recently joined the traditional independence camp. While, at the same time, neither the PP nor the PSOE want to be seen by their traditional Spanish voters as giving away to “separatists”. Rajoy knows that his party's radical wing, influenced by his predecessor Jose Maria Aznar, could threaten his leadership. While PSOE leaders are well aware that no Socialist government could be returned to the Cortes without the Catalan votes.

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Haaretz: Whisper It, but Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Community Is Starting to Talk About Homosexuality

When a religious Knesset member was pressured by his party into resigning last week after attending the wedding of a gay nephew, many Israelis saw it as further proof of the intolerance and rigidity in the ultra-Orthodox world. But others saw just the opposite.

The real news, they insisted, was not that Yigal Guetta had been given the boot from the Shas party, but rather that an ultra-Orthodox politician in Israel had attended a gay wedding, had urged other members of his family to join him and was not afraid to speak about it publicly. [...]

Guetta had publicized the fact that he attended the wedding in an Army Radio interview early last week. Although he insisted he was opposed to gay marriage, Guetta explained that for him, family ties took precedence and he believed it was his duty to honor his sister by attending her son’s wedding. [...]

“Not only homosexuality, but also other phenomena once considered to be stains on the family or the community – mental illness, for example, or children who left the Orthodox way of life,” he says. “These are phenomena the Haredi community has been starting to come to terms with. There is a growing understanding that they exist, that they can’t be hidden or denied, and that they have to be dealt with.” [...]

As El Or notes: “Ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Jews tend to be much more tolerant and accepting of those who are different than their Ashkenazi counterparts. In the Sephardi community, it is much less common for families to cut ties with children who come out as gay – so in a way I’m not surprised it was someone from Shas involved in this incident.” Within the party itself, Guetta belonged to the more moderate wing.

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Haaretz: The Father, the Son and the Jewish Spirit: Saving Synagogues Where There Are No More Jews

“Today there isn’t a single Jew here,” says Pavol Hudak, 59, an engineer and resident of the picturesque medieval town. He and his son Peter, 31, a historian who wrote his doctoral thesis on the Jewish community of Bardejov, have led a project to preserve and restore the synagogue over the past few years. The work, which began in 2015, was completed a few months ago.

“We succeeded in preserving the stones, the bricks and the wood,” Hudak says proudly. “We’ve also preserved the story of the place.” He then points to the old sundial that was discovered on the façade of the building during the restoration work and is no longer used. “There isn’t anyone left to hold prayers at their proper time,” he adds. [...]

The synagogue restoration was completed in April; it cost 765,000 euros ($917,500) and was funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Slovakia. The question that remains is what will become of the building in the absence of a local Jewish community.

For now, the synagogue serves as a museum and memorial to the Jewish life that was eradicated in Bardejov. Groups from all over the world, including from Israel, visit the site and get a guided tour from one of the Hudaks, who give them on a fully voluntary basis. The two hope to eventually establish an education center and enliven the place by holding cultural activities there.

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Is Reality Real? The Simulation Argument

Haaretz: Palestinian President Abbas Puts One-state Solution on the Table

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday was punctuated with anger and frustration. Abbas is aware that his ability to inspire hope in his people – the hope of an independent Palestinian state – is diminishing before his own eyes. This very forum, which applauded Abbas six years ago when he submitted an application for the recognition of Palestine, has since failed to turn its support into facts on the ground. [...]

Speaking at the highest international forum, Abbas declared that the one-state solution is an option for the Palestinian leadership. “Neither you, nor we, will have any other choice but to continue the struggle and demand full, equal rights for all inhabitants of historic Palestine,” he said. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the realities before us as a result of ongoing Israeli policies that are gravely undermining the two-state solution.” [...]

Abbas and his political circle know very well that a quarter of a century after the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian public has lost hope. Survey results released before Abbas’ visit to New York found that two-thirds of the Palestinian public demands that he resigns. The poll, conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, headed by Khalil Shikaki, also found that 57 percent of Palestinians no longer believe in a two-state solution, while 74 percent think the Trump administration is not serious in its intentions to reach a peace agreement.

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America Magazine: Pope Francis: Priests proven to have abused minors cannot appeal

Pope Francis said that “the church irrevocably, and at all levels intends” to respond to the sexual abuse of minors with “zero tolerance,” in a meeting with members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors this morning, Sept. 21. [...]

“Today the person repents, he goes forward, we pardon him, but two years later he does the same,” the pope said. He acknowledged that “the church became aware of this too late” to realize the gravity of the problem and the church’s own responsibility in the matter. Referring to the past practice of moving priests around, and not facing the problem, he thanked God for sending “prophetic men and women” in the church who involved others and got the church to face the problem head-on. Acknowledging that there is a backlog of cases to be dealt with in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Francis said that more personnel would be assigned to this work. [...]

The prepared text noted that Francis accepted the commission's proposal regarding responsibility in the church for the protection of minors, when he issued the motu proprio, “Like A Loving mother” in June 2016. That decree “addresses the cases of those diocesan bishops, Eparchs, and Major Superiors of Religious Institutes who through negligence committed or through omission facilitated acts that have caused grave harm to others, either to physical persons or to the community as a whole.”

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Politico: Still hungry like the Wolfgang

In his eight years in the job, Schäuble made good on a promise to balance Germany’s budget and pay down its debt, even as he steered around the shoals of the euro crisis. In the process, he built a powerbase that Berlin’s chattering classes compare to a mini-chancellery. [...]

If Merkel is forced to trade away the finance ministry to secure a coalition, finding a place for Schäuble will be difficult. Any other Cabinet position she could offer him would pale in comparison. While the foreign ministry and the presidency of the German parliament are both possibilities, neither position would easily accommodate Schäuble’s often acerbic wit. [...]

As Merkel moved the Christian Democrats further to the center over the years, Schäuble became one of the last truly conservative voices in the party’s leadership. He plays a crucial role in shoring up the base. He is also extremely popular among the general electorate, regularly topping approval rankings. That makes him a key voice in selling government policy to the public. [...]

Though Merkel and Schäuble have been working together since shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, their personal relationship is not as close as one might expect. Even in private, they still address one another formally as Herr Schäuble and Frau Merkel.

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Al Jazeera: Thousands of Filipinos slam Duterte's drug war

Thousands of people have protested in the Philippines on the 45th anniversary of the declaration of martial law in the country, while denouncing what they say are President Rodrigo Duterte's authoritarian tendencies and his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs. [...]

A group calling itself a "Movement Against Tyranny" used the anniversary to highlight human rights violations under Duterte's so-called drug war on drugs.

According to police statistics, more than 3,000 suspects have been killed in anti-drug operations since Duterte became president on June 30, 2016.

Another 2,000 more have died in drug-related homicides, according to government figures. [...]

"Marcos, Duterte, no different, they both kill," the activists chanted, referring to the late leader Ferdinand Marcos who imposed military dictatorship for eight years in 1972, citing the threat of communism.

Marcos' martial law era, which ended in 1981, was marked by massive human rights violations and the muzzling of civil liberties.

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Quartz: Our analysis of five decades of sex research shows an evolving spectrum of sexual norms

We found that over five decades, the most popular words in sexology evolved to reflect cultural ideas about what’s normal bedroom behavior. Broadly, these changes reflect major social events over time, including the sexual revolution, the AIDS epidemic, and the civil rights and LGBTQ movements. As sexual norms in the public eye evolved, so did the science studying it.

Early on, sex researchers—and scientists in general—tended to talk about people they worked with as objects of study, rather than fellow human beings. The language was stiff and clinical, formalizing sexual behaviors in a way that made them sound like medical conditions. Over time, sexologists adopted more humanizing terms, reflecting a shift toward thinking of volunteers for their work as equals who deserve to benefit from the research. By substituting terms that sound less clinical, researchers indirectly acknowledge that different traits, like sexual orientation, are all normal. Ideally, this attitude would reach health care settings and eventually the greater public. [...]

Men—particularly gay men—have been studied a lot more than women in the field of sex research because of the HIV epidemic. At the start of the crises, in the 1980s, the virus mostly affected men who had sex with men. In the following decade, there’s a striking shift in usage of “man” compared to “woman” in the literature, which reflects the surge of papers related to HIV related to public health. [...]

Americans don’t live and interact with each other the way they used to. Marriage rates in the US have declined since the 1970s, and families are a lot more diverse today than the post-war picture of a wife and husband raising kids. There was a dramatic shift in public perceptions of sex beginning in the late 1960s, with growing acceptance of sex outside heteronormative marriages, and in the 1970s, feminists pushed the public conversation to start addressing rape and sexual assault. Sex research evolved alongside these social changes.

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