alanjjohnstone
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A shift in the goal-posts concerning women priests. Lay women to perform tasks during mass, but stressed the move was not a precursor to them becoming priests.
The law makes explicit that lay women can be altar servers and readers during liturgies. Although this has been common practice for years in many developing countries, the change in canon law means that bishops will no longer have the power to prevent women within their diocese from taking on the roles.
“…There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal…”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/12/israel-largest-human-rights-group-apartheid
Supporters of the well-known Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem, may well find itself accused of anti-semitism. It says Israel is not a democracy but an “apartheid regime” that enforces Jewish supremacy over all the land it controls.
“One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.”
“Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it,” said the body’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad. “It is one regime between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid.”
It argues Palestinians are divided into four tiers with various levels of rights depending on where they live, but always below Jewish people.
Another Israeli rights group, Yesh Din, published a legal opinion last summer in which it argued that apartheid was being committed in the West Bank.
In 2017, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia became the first UN body to accuse Israel of apartheid, a move that Israel’s former foreign ministry spokesperson likened to Nazi propaganda.
Last year, after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he intended to annex parts of the West Bank, 47 UN experts warned it “would be the crystallisation of an already unjust reality: two peoples living in the same space, ruled by the same state, but with profoundly unequal rights”. They added: “This is a vision of a 21st-century apartheid.”
Some here are aware of my criticisms of the waste of resources in what is the growing insustainable pet-ownership trends and the increasing anthromorphism.
Ben & Jerry have developed a pet ice-cream product in two flavors: pumpkin with cookies and peanut butter with pretzels.
The number of U.S. households with pets is 84.9 million in 2020. Spending on just dog treats is $5.5 billion.
https://apnews.com/article/ben-and-jerrys-frozen-dog-treats-e06b685bb618c2128d907741ce33627d
UK supermarkets to enforce mask-wearing on customers. What to expect as where i stay it has been policy for several months and technology has been introduced to enforce it.
Automated swing-gates have been installed at supermarket such as Tesco entrances with cameras and thermometers. It guages if you have a high temperature by raising your wrist to it and the camera recognises if you have a mask in place before they swing open.
The recent shopping mall i mentioned failed to install such technology and it is where what seems now to be an isolated case was found.
The hawks use Trump’s last days to drive in another nail at a time that Cuba is on course of economic reforms. The new sanctions will include major restrictions that will bar most travel from the US to Cuba and transfer of money between the two countries, a significant source of income for Cubans who have relatives in the United States.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/11/cuba-us-sponsor-terrorism-blacklist-sanctions-trump
The Trump administration claims that Cuba is guilty of sponsoring terrorism.
“These are trumped up charges,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House. “Terrorism as an international definition is committing acts of violence against unarmed civilians intended to frighten the population. Cuba doesn’t do that. Yes, it represses its own people – but so does Saudi Arabia.”
Ricardo Herrero, head of the a US-based non-partisan association called Cuba Study Group, said there was “no factual basis” for Trump’s decision.
“This is a malicious, last-ditch effort to handicap Biden’s foreign policy, and reward Maga supporters in Florida for sticking with Trump even after he incited terrorist attacks against the US Congress,”Last year, Biden’s recently appointed chief adviser on Latin America, Juan S Gonzalez, said Trump’s policies on Cuba and Venezuela were based on political self-interest and had failed the people of those countries “by every metric”.
Being officially designated as a terrorist organisation has consequences for humanitarian NGOs who have to work alongside the Houthi government.
“The Houthis don’t really have assets outside Yemen to freeze. Instead this measure will further weaken the Yemeni people who live under Houthi control and make it easier for Houthis to tighten their grip and recruit more children to the battlefield,” he said. “The extra cost [associated with providing aid] is also more likely than not to go to the pockets of Houthi-affiliated middlemen.”
We see the social media self-righteously ban Trump and his followers for “fake news”.
Why?
To avert possible legislation imposed upon Silicon Valley already being raised by the present and also a future Biden administration.
We can also expect some sort of new “domestic” Patriot Act which like all security laws will end up being used more against the left than the right.
.We are facing once again what America is well used to – well-staged political theatre with posturing over a 2nd impeachment, designed to stop any 2024 Trump as candidate. Even if it happens, one of his sprogs will stand as his proxy.
Politicians as good and bad guys is simplistic politics for simpletons/
Labour reneges on promises
Starmer said it was not realistic to pretend that the EU would want to negotiate a new Brexit treaty with the UK… conveniently forgetting that Gibraltar agreed free movement of workers.
On Inauguration Day, 20th January, we will see a very substantial police and National Guard presence for what is being called the Million Militia March.
I don’t fear right-wing protests and demonstrations from now on but terrorism by individuals and small groups. America feared the Jihadist Islamist suicide bomber – the white nationalist aspiring martyrs will become the new and greater threat to the USA.
A recession is coming but damage this time from ‘artificial hibernation by government diktat’ may prove shortlived, say economists.
They were presidential candidates, weren’t they, not organised in a political party.
The Green Party could be considered a third party. The Libertarian Party, too.
Perhaps i should have added the qualifier mass third party.
For decades America’s left have been calling for a third party – a labor party – to break the duo-poly but what has happened is the third party has now become the Make America Great Again Party.
The US political scene will now be the Democratic Party (propped up by the progressives and the DSA), the Republican Party (so-called moderates and right-wing of the Democratic Party) and Trump’s MAGA supporters.
Those who envisage the rise of American fascism will have to wait until MAGA becomes formalised and structured and then a neo-fascist party will be born.
The first signs of the race to the bottom.
A bee-killing pesticide so poisonous that it is banned by the EU may be used on sugar beet in England, the government has announced.
Just a bit of an update. A customer at our nearest shopping mall was identified as having Covid. My wife who was present there at about the same time went to hospital for a check although she is exhibiting no signs of the virus. 4 days for the result to be known, (two to go). She is self-isolating.
So far, where i live we escaped the outbreak other than isolated cases in the town itself (returning workers from the capital) and there was no lockdown, although a curfew was temporarily imposed to curtail gathering to drink, a common custom. It was soon lifted.
The immediate effect of this case that the local neighbourhood shops insist upon mask-wearing. No panic, no protests, just common-sense precaution. With a population of about the UK, there has been less only 60-something deaths and far fewer cases. International travel, vital for the tourist industry and migrant workers from neighbouring countries, is heavily restricted. Initially every worker was provided with a hundred-pound plus grant to help bide them over and to re-adjust.
