Haaretz: Netanyahu May Have Won, but Israel's Political Landscape Has Fundamentally Changed

So now we are back to two big parties, just without Labor. With its 35 seats, Kahol Lavan has received more votes than any other centrist party in Israeli history. Even Kadima, the only centrist party to ever hold power, never won more than 29. [...]

Why did Likud succeed in coming back from the double whammy of direct elections and the Kadima “big bang” while Labor has been all but obliterated? There are several factors. In Sharon, and now Netanyahu, Likud had strong, persuasive and experienced leaders who were also brilliant campaigners. Of the seven men and one woman who led Labor in the corresponding period, most lacked these skills. There were two who rivaled Sharon and Netanyahu’s stature — Peres and Barak — but they also failed to overcome the failure of Labor’s key policy: A historic compromise with the Palestinians, which had only resulted in more bloodshed during a second intifada and clashes with Gaza. [...]

The only issue really setting Kahol Lavan apart from the right wing is its support for the legal system, in the face of the governing coalition’s campaign to curtail the power of the Supreme Court and shield Netanyahu himself from the criminal indictments he faces. [...]

Kahol Lavan ran its campaign on being the antithesis to Netanyahu but didn’t present an alternative vision. Most of those who voted for it did so in the hope of simply seeing a change in government. That hasn’t happened and Kahol Lavan has no clear idea what to do with its 35 Knesset members.

read the article

openDemocracy: How Pope Francis became a hate figure for the far right

Harnwell was introduced to Bannon by another American and former Brietbart contributor Austin Ruse, who runs a Catholic conservative lobby group called C-Fam that has been described as an anti-LGBT ‘hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center. [...]

Analysis for SourceMaterial by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, which works to counter right-wing extremism, meanwhile shows that several suspected Twitter “bots” that once pumped out pro-Trump messages have in the past year switched to attack Francis. [...]

But he (as other critics do) appears to differentiate between Francis the spiritual leader and Francis the politician. In December 2018, he’d said the pope is “beneath contempt”. [...]

Like many of the pope’s American critics, he appears most preoccupied with the pontiff’s views on the free market – “an economy that kills,” according to a 2016 speech – and global warming, addressed in his climate change encyclical in 2015. [...]

It was around this time, in 2015, that Salvini began courting conservative religious voters with a new emphasis on “traditional” marriage. Previously, his Lega party had been avowedly secular and had even supported civil partnerships for same-sex couples.

read the article

Quartz: How Taiwan became the most LGBT-friendly country in Asia

As far as Asian countries go, Taiwan is not very big. It is home to about 23 million people, compared to 127 million in Japan, and, you know, 1.4 billion in China. Even so, every autumn Taiwan hosts the largest gay pride parade in Asia. This year, more than 130,000 people showed up to march.

The reason such a small country hosts such a large parade is that Taiwan has become the most LGBT-friendly country in Asia. Last year, for example, its highest court declared that same-sex marriage would be legal within two years, a first in the region.

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: The Most Dangerous Stuff in the Universe - Strange Stars Explained

Inside neutron stars we can find the weirdest and most dangerous substance in the universe: Strange matter. What is strange matter, how dangerous is it and what can it tell us about the origin of the universe?

Like Stories of Old: Gladiator | Turning Spectacle into a Meaningful Story (Mar 20, 2018)

BBC Newsnight: Brexit: National humiliation or just embarrassing?

In these divided times, there may be one thing that many on both sides of the Brexit debate can agree on: that this is a national humiliation.

But can an entire nation be humiliated?

David Grossman reports.

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonialism and British Dissent and Professor Richard Tombs from the University of Cambridge, join Katie Razzall in discussion.

VICE: Take a Look Inside Some Abandoned Secret Mansions in Italy

Paris-based photographer Thomas Jorion has gone out of his way to prove that in Italy, even neglected things can be excessively beautiful. Over the past decade, Jorion has traveled across Italy to document the country's most stunning abandoned buildings. His work—which mainly focuses on spaces from the 18th and 19th century—has culminated in the project Veduta (View).

Jorion's last series, Vestige d’Empire (Vestiges of Empire), focused on the architectural heritage of French colonialism in countries such as Vietnam, Senegal, China, and Madagascar. For Veduta, Jorion stayed a bit closer to home and discovered most of the abandoned palaces and gardens through a basic Google satellite view search, but also thanks to tip-offs from people he met along the way in Italy. Jorion won't reveal their exact locations, but we do know that the majority can be found between the regions of Umbria and Tuscany in central Italy, and Lombardy in the north.

see the photos

The Telegraph: Professor Stephen Hawking's final theory: The universe is a hologram

Prof Hawking was always troubled by this idea, which at a fundamental level cannot be reconciled with Einstein's theory of General Relativity. In an interview last year he said: "I have never been a fan of the multiverse." [...]

The new theory embraces the strange concept that the universe is like a vast and complex hologram. In other words, 3D reality is an illusion, and that the apparently "solid" world around us - and the dimension of time - is projected from information stored on a flat 2D surface. [...]

Applied to inflation, the newly published theory suggests that time and "the beginning" of the universe arose holographically from an unknowable state outside the Big Bang.

Prof Hawking said before his death: "We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse, to a much smaller range of possible universes."

read the article

Politico: Social Democrats in front as Finland heads to the polls

The campaign has in many ways been a traditional right-left battle. The Social Democrats have sought to portray themselves as reliable custodians of Finland’s extensive welfare state, making clear they are willing to raise taxes to maintain public services. [...]

Rinne's fortunes contrast with those of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, whose attempts at cost-cutting and privatization foundered amid a public outcry and stiff opposition in parliament. In March, Sipilä, leader of the Center Party, resigned after abandoning plans for an overhaul of social welfare and health care. He stayed on as PM in a caretaker capacity. [...]

If the Social Democrats do win, it's not clear whom they would team up with to form a government. The smaller Greens and the Left Party are likely allies, or the Social Democrats could choose either the Center Party or the NCP, according to analysts. [...]

A win for the Social Democrats would be a rare event in Europe, as center-left parties have faced a steep decline in polls in many countries across the bloc. If Rinne becomes prime minister he would be following in the footsteps of fellow ex-union leader Stefan Löfven, who secured a second term as prime minister in neighboring Sweden earlier this year.

read the article