The Atlantic: Religious Leaders Condemn Family Separations—but Not Necessarily Trump

But the volume of the criticism can also be deceiving. Many of the groups that have been most vocal against the border policy are already outspoken Trump skeptics. Among the ranks of Trump’s closest allies—including those who advise him on conservative religious voters—the condemnation has been more tempered. Some even see hypocrisy in this latest round of media attention to the border, pointing to Obama-era policies, which also jeopardized the welfare of children. [...]

Of all the comments made against the administration’s “zero-tolerance policy” in the last week, Graham’s have been the most surprising. The preacher’s son has recently been on a tour across America encouraging evangelicals to turn out and vote, and his comments on and off the stage are often highly supportive of the president and Republican policy priorities. Outright criticism of a Trump administration policy is unusual for Graham. But his recent comments arguably were more nuanced than that: He also said the president isn’t responsible for the situation at the border. On social media, he reaffirmed his opposition to family separations, but also noted that “many in the media want to portray this as @POTUS’s fault, but this predates him by decades.” He objects to the way the situation at the border has been politicized, he added: “It’s even more disgraceful to see that our political leaders won’t work together in a bipartisan effort to solve this. Some just want to use the situation for their own political gain.”

A number of other religious leaders close to Trump’s inner circle have echoed Graham’s caution. Jentezen Franklin, a mega-church pastor from Gainesville, Georgia, who serves on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, told me in an interview that Trump “really does want to do the right thing for these families and these children.” He condemned Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s use of the Scripture to justify family separations—“I don’t believe the Bible is on his side,” he said—but expressed frustration with criticism of the president. “I think it’s disingenuous to just attack President Trump when he didn’t create the problem,” Franklin said. “He didn’t start the problem. But he’s willing to fix the problem permanently if Congress will just do their job.”

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Ministry Of Ideas: Tomorrow, Today

World’s fairs were created to celebrate industry, technology, imperialism, western supremacy, and progress; but they also led to unexpected critiques and movements that challenged those very purposes.

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The Guardian: Trump is creating his American caliphate, and democracy has no defence

To those of us who grew up in the Arab world, where Islam is often invoked by “secular” regimes in order to stem political opposition, and who are accustomed to this charade of piety, there is something chilling yet comforting in observing the authoritarian evolution of the Trump administration. There is a reason why some of those regimes will not do away with blasphemy laws, so handy are they in purging political opponents. It is chilling to see religion used this way in a supposedly sophisticated, liberal democracy, and in particular this element of it, which reduces politics to mere compliance. But it is comforting, in a macabre way, to have it proved that nowhere in the world have humans evolved beyond instrumentalising religion to justify tyranny. The most bewildering thing about US dictator creep isn’t that it’s happening: it’s that it is happening with such predictability.

The terror of the Trump doctrine is not in its innovation but in its imitation. The last few months are a testament to the fact that history is not past, that the passage of time does not necessarily imply progress. The words Sessions quoted were used in the 1840s and 50s to justify slavery. When abolitionists argued that slavery was cruel, and that separating families was a violation of religious ethics, they were met with the argument of religious compliance with the law. John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told the Washington Post: “Whenever Romans 13 was used in the 18th and 19th century – and Sessions seems to be doing the same thing, so in this sense there is some continuity – it’s a way of manipulating the scriptures to justify your own political agenda.”

The invocation of piety is also familiarly threadbare when the behaviour of this holy sovereign, allegedly with God’s will vested in him, is taken into account. Trump is a man mired in allegations of infidelity committed across the course of his three marriages. His church attendance was summed up in his statement that he had “never asked God for forgiveness”, and he referred to communion as “my little wine” and “my little cracker”. Yet he received 80% of the white evangelical vote. Of his unlikely Christian support base, Amy Sullivan, in the New York Times, says: “Decades of fearmongering about Democrats and religious liberals have worked. 80% of white evangelicals would vote against Jesus Christ himself if he ran as a Democrat.”

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City Beautiful: The Best Map of a City: The Nolli Map of Rome

The 1748 Nolli Map of Rome is the best map of any city ever for three reasons: accuracy, detail, and influence. I’m not going to say it’s THE MOST accurate, detailed, or influential map ever, but it has all three attributes in spades. It’s one of the most important historical documents we have about the eternal city, Rome. 

Vox: Jeff Sessions could be expelled from the Methodist Church over migrant policies

More than 600 Methodist clergy and church members are bringing formal church charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, invoking a rarely used church procedure to condemn the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border. [...]

“I really never would have thought I’d be working on charges against anybody in the Methodist connection, much less a lay person,” Pastor David Wright, who organized the effort to charge Sessions, told the United Methodist Church’s news service (UMNS). He expressed hope that the charges would prompt Sessions to reconsider his views. “I hope his pastor can have a good conversation with him and come to a good resolution that helps him reclaim his values that many of us feel he’s violated as a Methodist,” he said. [...]

David F. Watson, a professor of New Testament studies at United Theological Seminary, told Religion News Service that in the past, charges have typically been brought only against clergy who perform same-sex marriages, a hot-button issue that continues to divide the Methodist Church. (Currently, both same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination are officially prohibited by the UMC handbook, but a proposed plan would delegate authority to make decisions about celebrating LGBTQ weddings or ordinations to the church level.)  [...]

The UMC is just one of many Christian religious organizations that have taken action to condemn Trump’s migrant policy, particularly in the wake of the White House’s assertion Thursday that it is acting “biblically.” Last week, the evangelical Southern Baptist Convention unanimously passed a resolution affirming the dignity of immigrants and condemning nativism. Attendees at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops likewise slammed Trump’s migrant policy. Even Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelical preacher Billy Graham, and a longtime Trump ally, spoke out against the policy, although he did not criticize Trump by name.

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Social Europe: The Populists’ Euro

The second point is less well known, but even less controversial: recent polls show that 60-72% of Italians favour the euro. Some believe the single currency safeguards their savings, while others regard it as an emblem of Italy’s status as a founding member of the European Union. But if motives differ, the balance of public opinion does not.

Bowing to this reality, the coalition partners have now dropped the idea of abandoning the euro, expunging the possibility from their “contract” and respective websites. Paolo Savona, a diehard opponent of the euro, has been denied the finance ministry. But Carlo Cottarelli, whose proposed appointment at the head of a technocratic government would have disenfranchised a majority of voters, has also been denied the reins of power. Appropriately, given the election result, Italians now have their populist government and their euro, too.  [...]

In fact, the argument for a measured fiscal stimulus is sound – just not the kind of fiscal stimulus the League and M5S have in mind. An economy in Italy’s condition needs “two-handed policies”: supply-side reforms of labor and product markets to boost productivity and international competitiveness, accompanied by demand stimulus to prevent the uncertainties of reform and the surrounding political noise from depressing spending. Although Italy has a heavy debt burden, it also has a modicum of fiscal space, given low interest rates and a primary budget surplus.

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Social Europe: Spectre Of Munich 1938 Hangs Over Singapore

The similarity between Donald Trump’s gushing endorsements of Kim Jung-un and Vladimir Putin this past weekend is vintage appeasement. Trump’s crass disdain for the suffering millions, who live under rule-of-law violating regimes, in North Korea, Russia, Syria, China, Turkey, Hungary, and his bullying of the people of Canada („I’ll make Canadians pay for the words of their PM”) is not fake news, but harsh reality. It’s identical to how Chamberlain threw the people of Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe, and the democratic resistance in all of those countries under the bus in 1938, thereby emboldening the fascists to double down on their opponents everywhere. Kristallnacht, the first step to the massacre of the Jews, was launched in November 1938 by Hitler, even before the ink had dried on the Munich ‘peace’ document. [...]

Ultimately one has to ask: why is Trump doing this? Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s answer, unfortunately, will not do. Donald Trump and his bullies have not lost their minds but are using them according to their own logic. They are fully at home on a playing field that rejects fair play, where strong-arm tactics and the use of deceptive language dominate. This is why Trump is tougher on Trudeau than on Putin, why he shall never confront China, and will sacrifice the entire Western Alliance if he’s allowed to do so and realign America with the authoritarian tide sweeping across the world. He is non-ideological. He uses the language of the evangelists, strictly for tactical purposes, to get out of the traffic jam on his way to his bank or to a Stormy Daniel. He will not back regime change in the direction of Western liberal values, because that is counter to his interests. He’ll offer a protective umbrella to any fly-by-night authoritarian wannabee, because they are the “tough cookies” he understands, they are the ones he can wheel and deal with in the same way he wheeled and dealed with the sharks in the New York real estate market, intimidating his suppliers, not paying his bills, ripping off anyone he could along the way. Grab’em by the pussy and see ya later alligator.

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CityLab: Grenfell’s Problem Wasn’t Just Lax Regulation

Instead of simply increasing regulation and inspections, governments must remove the opportunity for exploitative profit by insisting on rent controls, providing subsidies for necessary repair work, and re-upping their role—both in ownership and management—of housing, before we are dealing with dire situations. 

In addition, my research shows that if municipalities do not invest in housing, even the best of intentions can perpetuate housing inequality. I learned this after three years of researching housing inspections in Chicago. Consistent with other studies, I saw inspectors’ ire at negligent landlords. One inspector told me that after his 20 years of inspecting deplorable living conditions, he prays for some landlords to go to “landlord hell.” [...]

But my research also illuminates the unintended consequences of these well-intended actions: rent hikes. My statistical analysis of over 280,000 building code citations and five years of rental data verifies that every citation and violation that is then fixed is associated with a 5.4 percent rent increase, a number that is consistent when normed across properties of the same age, size, value, and neighborhood.

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Haaretz: Israel Must Stop Playing Political Games With the Armenian Genocide

Under pressure from Israel’s government, the Knesset has again postponed the debate on the bill to recognize the Armenian genocide until after the Turkish elections on June 24. Meanwhile, prominent figures in the fight against genocide denial have been doing their own lobbying and are strengthening appeal to Israel to recognize the genocide against the Armenians. [...]

But Israel should not worry about Turkey’s diplomatic threats against countries that dare to recognize the genocide. Take, for example, what happened in the wake of the international wave of recognition in 2015 that marked the centenary of the genocide.

Turkey railed against it, protested, recalled ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations, uttered threats and then the course of relations between nations and states resumed its normal course, that is to say sometimes chaotic, but built mainly upon well-known interests and alliances. [...]

Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide will contribute to preventing mass atrocities in the future. Theodor Herzl launched Zionism when he understood the existential threat facing Jews. Since its creation, Israel has been the refuge of Shoah survivors and of every Jew threatened around the world.

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