Religion Dispatches
…ttle-discussed provision of the ACA, hospitals that serve disproportionate numbers of the urban poor are losing their subsidies. But for Obama not to stand his ground and say that the cheap, low-level policies that many healthy people now have should be cancelled for the sake of the common good: that’s just inexcusable. On the other hand, he’s not getting a lot of help from his Democratic “friends” on this one, and for the same reason: They likewi…
Read More…illac” insurance plans that will be taxed under this new law—and “it ain’t cheap!” she proclaimed. As a good Republican, she believes in the self-regulating power of an unencumbered free market. If insurance companies are allowed to compete freely with one another, she figures, then insurance premiums will go down and people will have more choice. She noted that about 10 companies compete for her health care dollar each year when they have open en…
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…human rights framework. Trump’s victory comes as countries like Russia and Qatar have been waging a campaign to undermine the foundations of international human rights law, arguing that the framework has become a tool of wealthy, Western nations to impose “cultural imperialism” around the world. For them, the United States is the biggest offender, and its defense of LGBT people is the most potent evidence to question the legitimacy of the entire p…
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…freedom-loving urban constituency. Throughout Afghanistan people have cell phones and access to the internet. It’ll be difficult to have the same kind of social control two decades later. Another factor is the way the Taliban came to power in recent months. In February 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo represented President Donald Trump in meetings with Taliban representatives in Qatar. Trump essentially surrendered to the Taliban in excha…
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…egion, we have wealthy monarchies, again sparsely populated, and with high numbers of foreign workers, from lower-end service and construction jobs to higher-end management and finance professionals. And then we have the region from the Sinai to Iran’s western border, including Israel and the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and possibly even largely non-Arab Turkey; this region may well be the Arab world’s Balkans, and its rece…
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…counts linking to his jet, Elon peskily doxxed himself at the World Cup in Qatar. Looks like a certain pest needs a suspension! Musk broke the first seal. 2. War: Will Smith vs. Chris Rock We’ve all heard of the culture war and everyone who breathes getting “canceled by the ‘woke’ mob.” Smith vs Rock came to a head at the Oscars after years of sideswipes, “jokes,” and side-eyes. Smith decided not to turn the other cheek no mo’. When Paper and Scis…
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…lands, Germany, Chile, Turkey, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Qatar, Portugal, Canada, Mexico, the Russian province of north Ossetia, Indonesia, South Africa, Morocco, Japan, Israel, Jordan, Italy, and Spain. They took us into their virtual communities, houses, and mosques, invited us to fatwas, took us on a virtual Hajj to Mecca, and discussed their perceptions of extremism, integration, creative collaboration, and cultural values. I…
Read More…Constitution. In fact, much of their business comes from countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen that have very different notions of free speech and the separation between church and state. It was thoughtless for the library to check the box marked “occult” when planning their Internet filtering policy, but what’s even more disturbing here is that something as central to a democratic society as which sites can be accessed in a…
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…get a bill far larger than you expected. (In that case, wars are like cell phones.) We have a right to know just how much can be spent on uncertain military objectives, and it would be nice to know whether that much money could be spent, without consulting Congress, on the betterment of the condition of the American people. The roads around my apartment need repair. Can we get NATO to send some army engineers in? New York City also desperately nee…
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…ation about Egypt from within. Over the past week, others have mentioned a Qatari conspiracy to defame Egypt, along with foreign elements to destabilise Egypt. Others insisted that all this upheaval was the fault of external actors, not domestic ones—and those who appeared to be domestic were simply stooges of outside forces. No one knows anything anymore. The Friday congregational prayer is one of those canonical observances for all Muslim men re…
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