Haaretz: Group Sex and Tel Aviv: What Goes on in the City's Erotic Workshops

Both are here on their own. Their fantasy has more to do with each other but they’re happy for the chance to bring me in. We lie on the cushions in the living room, lightly caressing. There’s no nudity, no touching of private parts. Nothing is too sexual, but the intimacy is high.

This is the living room of television director Shahar Berlowitz, who in his confident voice is facilitating the workshop. He sets boundaries and lifts tensions, but he also knows how to give the necessary push to remove another inhibition, to break through another self-imposed barrier. To do something you hadn’t thought you’d do. [...]

The workshop is called the Erotic Archetype and its aim is to expose hidden erotic mechanisms and help realize sexual potential. “But when you come to your first workshop, the content is less important. Important is the fact of participating in something like this, the move out of your comfort zone,” Berlowitz says. [...]

“As you’ve seen, it’s not a bunch of sleazy men trying to push their wives and girlfriends into threesomes or open relationships. Despite all the stereotypes, women are the ones who lead these processes – it’s easier for women to talk about a lack of satisfaction.” [...]

“Yes, I’m a monogamist but the concept of monogamy has changed. It used to be that it meant being with one partner all your life, and today it’s being with one partner at a time. There’s monogamy with soft edges, which is me, I suppose. I’ve never been in love with two people at the same time, and I don’t have that need. The polyamorists I know say that when they’re in a couple relationship they feel they’re lacking something. I don’t think monogamy is the perfect thing but I don’t have that inner conflict.”

read the article

openDemocracy: German social democrats have alienated their base and fractured Europe

But buffeted by two oil price shocks, in 1973 and 1981-82, and unable to stem the rapid rise in unemployment, the SPD lost electoral favor. For 16 years, from 1982 to 1998, the SPD was consigned to the political wilderness while Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the rival Christian Democratic Union (CDU) reigned supreme. Kohl also lured SPD supporters by adopting some of the social justice agenda: more generous unemployment benefits and new a child-rearing allowance. [...]

Schröder’s major initiative was the so-called Hartz reforms, which reduced benefits for unemployed workers and so pushed them harder to look for new jobs. As a result, workers who could not retain their privileged positions in Germany’s best-performing firms accepted low-wage temporary and part-time “mini” jobs in the low-productivity services sector. Such workers fell into a trap of low earnings and increasing economic insecurity. Unsurprisingly, they steadily transferred their allegiance from the SPD to other parties, including what now is called the Left Party, which promised to work harder for workers’ protections and rights. [...]

But Schröder aggressively promoted a narrow German national interest in European affairs. He fought for national voting rights in the Council of Ministers. To protect the German automaker Volkswagen, he blocked a European Union proposal for the reform of corporate takeover legislation. Schröder’s parochial interest was motivated by his allegiance to Volkswagen, on whose supervisory board he had sat as governor of the state of Lower Saxony.  And while Schröder rightly opposed the European Central Bank’s excessively tight monetary policy and the European Commission’s mindless pursuit of fiscal austerity, he sought only a German exemption rather than a constructive change in rules. [...]

The SPD’s intellectual influence was particularly insidious in the area of “labor market reforms.” In October 2014, Renzi announced what was to be his singular achievement: the Jobs Act. Much like the Hartz reforms, the act weakened workers’ rights and, despite claims of protective provisions, reinforced the tendency toward jobs with insecure tenures. Italian governments before Renzi’s had implemented similar reforms, which indeed increased employment. But the evidence from the past reforms was that they dulled the incentives for employers and employees to increase productivity and, hence, contributed to the steady decline in Italian productivity growth. Renzi’s Jobs Act seems destined to prolong Italy’s near-zero productivity growth.

read the article

The Atlantic: Does Honor Matter?

To Sommers, honor and the struggle to achieve it are important parts of a good life, fostering values like “courage, integrity, solidarity, drama, hospitality, a sense of purpose and meaning.” And it is these very things, he argues, that 21st-century Americans are lacking. Indeed, Sommers finds the decline of honor responsible for many social problems. Anti-immigration rhetoric, he writes, plays on selfish fears, trying to portray immigrants as threatening—all members of ISIS or MS-13. Sommers argues that this line of attack could be challenged by an appeal to Americans’ generosity and hospitality, which are central values in any honor-based culture. Why not rally people around the slogan “We’re not cowards; we’re Americans,” Sommers asks, encouraging people to see fearfulness as an insult to the nation’s self-respect?

Again, Sommers sees our dysfunctional criminal-justice system as a casualty of America’s disregard for honor. Because society is motivated by fear instead of pride, Americans tolerate mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline—any amount of injustice, so long as crime statistics go down. Sommers is particularly sensitive to the way that the current justice system ignores the honor of both criminals and victims. In honor-based cultures, he emphasizes, the victim of a crime is responsible for avenging it, because he or she has been personally injured. In American law, on the other hand, a crime is not considered an attack against a person, only against the state and its laws. As a result, victims play little role in the punishment process, and are denied the chance to regain their lost honor. Nor can criminals repair their honor by making amends to those they have injured. As a result, trials rarely satisfy the deepest needs of individuals or of society. [...]

Yet Sommers’s idealized picture of honor ignores many of the ways it actually manifests itself in our society. Take his examples of problems for which honor is the proposed solution—fear of immigrants and fear of crime. Sommers does not adequately consider the possibility that, in fact, it is not fear that motivates these political positions, but hatred—specifically, racial hatred. It is no coincidence that it is black and Latino youth who are the primary victims of mass incarceration, or that it is Latino and Middle Eastern immigrants who are most demonized by immigration opponents.

read the article

Politico: Populist plan for 2019 election puts EU in crosshairs

Emboldened by the success of populist role models in Italy and Austria, leading members of the two Euroskeptic groups in the Parliament have begun work on parallel strategies to expand their influence. The effort will involve an aggressive push in the European election next May, involving a less overtly Euroskeptic pitch to voters, new parliamentary alliances and no mention of Brexit. [...]

A larger populist presence in the next European parliament is a growing concern in Brussels and other key EU capitals. It could deny the mainstream right and left parties control over the chamber and complicate plans to choose replacements for the biggest EU jobs becoming vacant in 2019 — the presidency of the European Commission, European Council and the European Central Bank. It could stifle French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitions to reform Europe. And if the populists do well and then manage to unite as a single force in Parliament, then they could muster the strength to start to implement their agenda for the EU.

Nicolas Bay, a member of Marine Le Pen’s National Front party from France and co-leader of the Europe of Nations and Freedoms group (ENL) in the Parliament, said that his party would offer a “true alternative.” That would no longer be based exclusively on criticism of the EU though, he added, but on “a real European project aimed at another Europe — a Europe designed differently.” Last weekend, the party voted to rebrand itself as the National Rally — part of an effort to broaden its support and move away from the racial hatred and anti-Semitism associated with the party’s founder, Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie. [...]

Populists across the Continent are pulling back from some of their most strident messages to attract voters. Under its new name, France’s National Rally hopes to profit politically from its strategy of ameliorating some of the party’ more hard-line political messages, a process that began before last year’s presidential election. It no longer advocates Frexit from the EU or leaving the euro currency. In Italy too, the League and 5Star coalition government is not pushing to leave the euro despite both parties campaigning for it in the past.

read the article

Associated Press: End of an era? Tea party class of House Republicans fades

By some measures, the tea party Republicans have been successful. The “Pledge to America,” a 21-page manifesto drafted by House Republican leadership, outlined the promises.

Among them: “stop out of control spending,” ″reform Congress” and “end economic uncertainty.”  They forced Congress into making drastic spending cuts, in part by threatening to default on the nation’s debt, turning a once-routine vote to raise the U.S. borrowing limit into a cudgel during the annual budget fights.

Republicans halted environmental, consumer and workplace protection rules, and that rollback continues today.

Perhaps most notably, the GOP majority passed $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that Trump signed into law, delivering on the tea party slogan penned on so many protest signs: “Taxed Enough Already.” [...]

In fact, there are an unusually high number of House Republicans retiring this year, including nearly a dozen from the tea party class. Several are running to be governors or senators, though some have already lost in primaries. Others, including Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., another rising star, are simply moving on. Some resigned this year amid ethics scandals.

read the article

Quartz: George Soros’ radical plan to save the EU from its next financial crisis

Soros thinks everything came to a head with the refugee crisis. Austerity had already set the stage for Germans and other rich countries to think of Greeks as foreign, or other. Then in 2015 came a whole new wave of outsiders from countries like Syria, Somalia, Bhutan, Iran, and Afghanistan. “At first, most people sympathized with the plight of refugees,” Soros said in his speech. “But they didn’t want their everyday lives disrupted by a breakdown in social services. And soon they became disillusioned with the failure of the authorities to cope.” The refugee crisis fueled populist ire even in countries with few migrants. Hungary’s current prime minister, Viktor Orbán, ran on an anti-refugee reelection campaign even though Hungary was hardly touched by the crisis. [...]

In the long run, migration has major benefits for host countries, bringing in diverse populations who can help the economy grow. That said, any country, for a time being, might struggle to handle a high flow of economic migrants. Soros worries that Europe, in its current state of disintegration, political populism, and austerity, could collapse under the pressure to provide social services and jobs to incoming refugees. As migrants join the labor force, it could,in the short term, lead to growing competition for jobs and a fall in wages, only stoking populist anger. If the crisis continues at its current pace, the European Union is at stake. [...]

Soros’ plan to rescue Europe is both simple and incredibly difficult: Solve the refugee problem. Soros wants the EU to commit to giving €30 billion ($35.4 billion in US dollars) annually to Africa for a number of years; he left the exact timeline vague. This “Marshall Plan for Africa” would go toward building and fortifying democratic nations in Africa. Support and improve African economies, the thinking goes, and fewer refugees will leave the region. [...]

“I don’t think George is suggesting that someone next week is about to draft a bill and pass it, but he’s creating a conversation,” says Johnson. “He is painting a vision to start a conversation to move the conventional wisdom away from its unsustainable structure.” That vision involves bringing about popular recognition that there is a positive, collective interest in everyone pitching in and doing something for Africa. 

read the article

The Guardian: After Ireland’s abortion vote, where does the Catholic church go now?

Many people connected the referendum result in Ireland to the sex abuse scandals that have beset the church there in recent years and caused a loss of authority. While the scandals hastened an end to Catholic Ireland, it is not so clear that they caused it. Rather, it is Ireland’s reinvention of itself that led to this result. When the taioseach, Leo Varadkar, described the referendum result as a “quiet revolution”, he was borrowing a phrase first used about the province of Quebec. It, too, was once devoutly Catholic; it, too, has become remarkably secular in recent times. Both places have a history of being suppressed by the English. Quebec’s people once held on to their French tongue and heritage and their Catholic faith as expressions of being Québécois. But as Quebec province gained more autonomy and the Canadian government gave French equal status with English as the official language, so Catholicism became less prominent a part of Quebec’s identity. In Ireland, as relations with Britain improved, and the Troubles over the border waned, so the need to cleave to the church as part of Irish identity has declined.

For the Vatican, this severing of cultural ties may be at its most dramatic in Ireland and Quebec, but there has been decline in its power and influence elsewhere, particularly in western Europe. Last week, even in strongly Catholic Portugal, parliament voted to reject euthanasia – again opposed by the Catholic church – by a mere five votes. Personal morality and church teaching have been issues for Catholics since Pope Paul VI published his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, in July 1968, which banned artificial birth control. Many Catholics rejected such papal interference in the bedroom. Fifty years on from Humanae Vitae, Paul VI is to be made a saint. [...]

Much of that antipathy is due to the vast numbers of migrants and refugees, including Muslims, flocking across the Mediterranean from Africa and the Middle East. While Pope Francis has long spoken up for refugees – and took a refugee family of Muslims home to Rome with him after a visit to Lesbos in 2016 – his denunciation of what he calls the “globalisation of indifference” to the plight of desperate people has often been ignored. Instead, in many Catholic places, conservative politicians have suggested that migrants, especially Muslims, are a threat to traditional culture. In staunchly Catholic Poland, the Law and Justice party-led government has denied settlement to Muslim refugees, while Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, has decreed that the Christian cross should be erected at the entrance of all public buildings to reinforce Christian identity following the arrival of Muslim migrants. Catholic bishops have expressed strong disquiet about it.

read the artcile

LSE Blog: Rajoy Loses Power In Spain: What Happens Now?

In some ways, Spain’s problems closely resemble those of Italy’s. In both countries, public disgust with a corrupt elite combined with the financial crisis to bring about a partial collapse of the mainstream centre-right and centre-left, and facilitated the rise of new anti-elite challengers. In Spain, the conservative People’s Party (Partido Popular – PP) and the centre-left Socialists (Partido Socialista Obrero Español – PSOE) have had to contend with the left-populist Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos, which somewhat resembles Macron’s La Republique En Marche in France. The PP and PSOE declined to record lows of support in the December 2015 elections; the PP recovered slightly in June 2016’s repeat polls and formed a minority government. However, the PP’s position was very weak; Rajoy only won office with Ciudadanos support, and even then relied on the Socialists abstaining, a decision that nearly tore that party apart and briefly cost Sánchez his job as leader. [...]

Sánchez won office by exploiting a confluence of events that benefited his party. Firstly, although both of Spain’s legacy parties have been touched by accusations of corruption, the Socialists’ most notable scandal erupted in Andalusia, home of Sánchez’s chief internal rival, Susana Díaz. Meanwhile, the PP’s scandals have tended to receive more coverage in recent months. First, there was the discovery that the president of Madrid’s regional government, Cristina Cifuentes, had fraudulently obtained a master’s degree, and had been caught trying to shoplift. Then came the handing down of verdicts in the long-running Caso Gürtel. This years-old investigation looked at the illegal financing of the PP, and on 24 May, the Audiencia Nacional sentenced its ex-treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, to 33 years in prison. It also convicted Rajoy’s former health minister, Ana Mato, and found the PP itself guilty, fining the party €245,000. It was the Gürtel ruling that gave Sánchez his opening to introduce a motion of no confidence.  [...]

Ciudadanos, on the other hand, has been leading recent polls, well ahead of the PP, its rival on the centre-right. The party draws votes from both the PP and the PSOE, has strong anti-corruption credentials and is perhaps the most adamantly centralist party in Spanish politics – that is, it tends to oppose concessions to Catalan or Basque nationalism. The Catalan crisis has thus helped its support to grow. Although Ciudadanos has worked with the Socialists before, the party had been backing Rajoy since his re-election in 2016. In this case, it decided not to back Sánchez, instead claiming to want snap elections (rather disingenuously, since it had agreed to support Rajoy’s proposed budget). Most likely, Rivera did not wish to be seen voting alongside Podemos, or worse yet, Catalan nationalists.  

read the article

Jacobin Magazine: Emmanuel Macron Goes to Church

This past April, however, Macron made the controversial move of accepting an invitation to speak at the annual conference of the bishops of France. In a country with a long tradition of militant anticlerical struggle, the fact that the president would even get in a room with the Catholic Church’s top clergymen was enough to rouse some secularists’ worries that Macron’s commitment to laïcité was less than solid. Minutes into his speech, the young president seemed to confirm these worries, announcing to the bishops that “the link between the church and the state has become strained, and it is up to us to repair it.” [...]

Addressing the bishops only days after workers went on strike to contest his government’s liberalization of the national rail service, Macron took the opportunity to describe what he believed was the real challenge facing French society. “It is not only an economic crisis,” he insisted, “it is a relativism, even a nihilism, the idea that nothing is worth it: not worth learning, not worth working, and especially not worth lending a hand in service.” In our “postmodern era,” Macron continued, “our system traps people in a spirit of ‘What’s the point?’” by discouraging hard work and entrepreneurial initiative.

The message was clear to anyone familiar with Macron’s tendency to moralize economic activity. Throughout his short political career, he has cast himself as a champion of entrepreneurs and risk-takers against the “lazy.” For Macron, France is divided between those who want to set the country in motion — or as he named his campaign movement, En Marche! — and those who want to keep it stuck in place. In his speech to the bishops, Macron unsurprisingly insinuated that striking workers across the country are on the side of immobilism and laziness; choosing his words carefully, he referred to this moral crisis as “burdening our country,” the verb grever, “to burden,” being a homonym for the word for “strike.” More original was his suggestion that the church is on the side of dynamism and initiative. Throughout his speech, he praised the Catholic “energy” that he believed was the authentic source of French politics and culture, and called on Catholics to continue to “act politically” in this struggle. [...]

Sensing the growing respectability and popularity of anti-immigrant rhetoric, many prominent figures of France’s mainstream right has been determined not to let the Front National reap all the benefit. As a result, its strategy in recent years has increasingly been to exacerbate the far right’s obfuscations by associating laïcité, paradoxically, with Catholic religious identity. The massive protests against the legalization of gay marriage in 2013 revealed the political engagement of Christian conservatives to be a much greater political force than many had previously acknowledged. Under the leadership of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, the Right began staking its future on concocting a mixture of anti-immigrant rhetoric and ethnicized Catholic identity politics that could compete with that of the Front National.

read the article