26: Israel

कांग्रेसको हातबाट यसरी फुत्कियो मुखैमा आएको सत्ता ‘प्रचण्डले धोका दिएको भन्ने पक्षमा म छैन, प्रचण्डलाई धोका भयो,’ पौडेलले भने, ‘हाम्रो हातमा अब केही छैन, सबै गुम्यो।’ ...... ‘सभापति देउवाले प्रधानमन्त्री छाड्न पार्टीका साथीहरूले मानेनन् भनेर लगातार प्रचण्डलाई भनिरहनुभयो तर देउवाले सांसदहरूसँग छलफल गर्नुभयो? गर्नुभएन,’ ती पदाधिकारीले भने, ‘पार्टीले नमानेको भनेर उहाँले कसलाई भन्न खोजेको हो? पदाधिकारी बैठक बोलाइएन, सांसदहरूसँग छलफल गरिएन, राय लिइएन।’

च्याट-जिपिटीले ढोका खोलेको नयाँ संसार
अमेरिका र क्यानडामा व्यापक हिमआँधी

देउवा दम्पतीको आत्मघाती हठ प्रतिनिधिसभाको ठूलो दल कांग्रेस राष्ट्रपतिदेखि मुख्यमन्त्रीसम्मका सबै शक्तिशाली भूमिकाबाट विमुख हुने भएको छ, यो अवस्थाको जस अपजस लिने गरी निर्णय प्रक्रियामा केन्द्रीय सदस्य मात्र होइन, पदाधिकारीलाई समेत सामेल गराइएन ..... यसको रणनीति बनाउने भूमिकामा सभापति देउवा र श्रीमती आरजु मात्र सक्रिय रहे ........ ०७४ मा प्रत्यक्षतर्फ २३ सिट जितेको कांग्रेसलाई ५७ सिटमा पुर्‍याएको जस लिँदै आएका देउवाको सत्ता महत्त्वाकांक्षा गठबन्धनमा आएको नाटकीय मोडसँगै अन्त्य भएको छ भने पार्टीभित्र उनी रक्षात्मक अवस्थामा पुगेका छन् । यस घटनामा कांग्रेसकै केही नेताले देउवाको ‘हठ’ लाई मुख्य जिम्मेवार ठर्‍याएका छन् । संस्थापनइतर पक्षीय केही नेताले त सामाजिक सञ्जालबाट उनको राजीनामासमेत माग्न थालेका छन् । ....... कांग्रेस नेता रामचन्द्र पौडेल नै सभापति देउवाले पदका लागि ‘हठ’ गर्दा कांग्रेसले एकैसाथ संघ र प्रदेशका सबै पद गुमाएको बताए । कांग्रेससँग गठबन्धन कायम रहेको भए पौडेल राष्ट्रपति हुने सम्भावना प्रबल थियो । ‘देउवा र दाहालबीच प्रधानमन्त्रीका विषयमा सहमति बनिसकेको थियो । माओवादीले पहिलोपल्ट र कांग्रेसले दोस्रोपल्ट सरकारको नेतृत्व लिने गरी भएको सहमति अहिले देउवाले नमानेकै कारण गठबन्धन भत्कियो, कांग्रेसले एकैसाथ सबै पद गुमायो,’ पौडेलले कान्तिपुरसँग भने । ......... देउवाको बुझाइमा दाहालले गठबन्धन कुनै हालतमा छाड्दैनन् भन्ने थियो । यता दाहालले भने भित्रभित्रै एमालेसँग समानान्तर छलफल अघि बढाइरहेका थिए । त्यसलाई देउवाले आफूलाई दबाबमा राख्ने रणनीतिका रूपमा मात्रै बुझिरहे । देउवाले राष्ट्रपति र सभामुखसमेत आधा–आधा गरेर सहमति गरौं भन्ने प्रस्तावसमेत छलफलमा ल्याएका थिए । दाहाल ‘तपाईंले प्रधानमन्त्री हुन्छ भन्नुभएको हो, मैले राष्ट्रपति र सभामुख आधा–आधा कार्यकाल हुनुपर्छ भनेको होइन, प्रधानमन्त्री हुन्न भने जान्छु’ भन्दै बिदा भएका थिए । ....... ‘गठबन्धन रहेन, म गएँ’ भनेर दाहाल निस्कँदा देउवाले ‘बालकोटमा कुरा मिलेन भने फेरि आउनुहोला’ भन्दै व्यंग्य कसेका थिए । कांग्रेस उपसभापति पूर्णबहादुर खड्काले ‘प्रचण्डजी खाना खान जानुभएको हो, फेरि आउनुहुन्छ’ भनेर सञ्चारकर्मीलाई प्रतिक्रिया दिएका थिए । ........ दाहाल बालुवाटारबाट निस्कँदासम्म पनि देउवालाई सत्ता गइहाल्ला भन्ने विश्वास थिएन । दाहालले गठबन्धन छोडे पनि संविधानको धारा ७६ (२) अन्तर्गत मिलीजुली सरकार बन्न नसक्ने उनको विश्वास थियो । विकल्पमा संविधानको धारा ७६ (३) अन्तर्गत ठूलो दलको हैसियतमा आफैं अल्पमतको प्रधानमन्त्री हुनेमा उनी ढुक्कजस्तै थिए । यो कुरा उनले आफ्नो पार्टीका केही नेतासँग भनेका पनि थिए । ........... ‘राष्ट्रपतिले थप समय दिने सम्भावना छैन, बरु, अल्पमतको प्रधानमन्त्री मै हुन्छु भन्ने शेरबहादुरजीको कुरा थियो,’ बैठकमा सहभागी कांग्रेसका एक नेताले भने, ‘त्यसपछि रामचन्द्रजीले अल्पमतको सरकार बने पनि विश्वासको मत लिनुपर्छ । गठबन्धन जोगाउनुपर्छ भनेर जोड दिनुभयो तर सभापतिले त्यतिबेलासम्म धेरै दल आइसक्छन् भन्नुभयो ।’ ........ एमालेले दाहाललाई प्रधानमन्त्री बनाउन नभएर गठबन्धन फुटाउन मात्रै प्रयोग गर्न खोजेको देउवाको बुझाइ थियो । एमालेले कांग्रेससँग सहकार्यको प्रस्ताव गर्दा पनि देउवाले नै बेवास्ता गर्दै आएका थिए । एमसीसी संसद्बाट अनुमोदन गर्दा माओवादी बाध्य भएर गठबन्धनको पक्षमै आएको स्मरण गर्दै यस पटक पनि त्यही अवस्था दोहोरिने उनको विश्वास थियो । .......... आइतबार बिहान पनि एमालेले कांग्रेससँगको समीकरणका लागि विकल्प खुला गरेको थियो । स्रोतका अनुसार बिहान देउवा र ओलीबीच टेलिफोन संवादसमेत भएको थियो । ओलीले पद बाँडफाँट र समझदारीका लागि बैठक राखौं भन्ने प्रस्ताव गर्दा देउवाले हच्किँदै साँझ ५ बजेसम्म पर्खन भनेका थिए । त्यसपछि निराश ओलीले ‘कांग्रेसको सरकारमा एमाले आउन खोजेको होइन, हामीले समर्थन दिने मात्रै हो, अब तपाईंहरूलाई कुर्ने समय छैन भन्दै फोन राखिदिनुभयो,’ स्रोत भन्छ । ......... दाहाल बालुवाटारबाट बाहिरिएपछि भने देउवाले ओलीलाई टेलिफोन गरेर कांग्रेस–एमालेको सरकार बनाउने प्रस्ताव अघि सारेका थिए । तर, ओलीले माओवादीसँग कुरा भइसकेको भन्दै देउवालाई ढिला भएको जवाफ दिएका थिए । ओलीसँग कुरा सकिनासाथ देउवाले दाहाललाई पनि टेलिफोन गरेका थिए । देउवाको फोन जाँदा दाहाल बालकोट पुगिसकेका थिए । बैठकमै भएका एक नेताले भने, ‘देउवाले तपाईंलाई नै प्रधानमन्त्री दिने गठबन्धनको निर्णय भयो, फर्कनुहोस् भन्नुभएको थियो । तर तपाईंले ढिलो गर्नुभयो, अब एमालेसँग कुरा मिलिसक्यो भनेर दाहालले फोन राखिदिनुभयो ।’ ........... ‘माओवादीको यो निर्णयपछि अब हामीले गठबन्धन गर्नु नै उचित थियो कि थिएन भन्नेमा घोत्लिनुपर्ने भएको छ ।’ ......... ‘गठबन्धनलाई मिलाउन सक्ने क्षमता भएको भनेर शेरबहादुर देउवालाई संसदीय दलको नेतामा निर्वाचित गरियो तर आजको दिनमा उनी परिपक्व राजनीतिक खेलाडी होइनन् भन्ने पुष्टि भएको छ ।’

The language of “ascension” no more implies that heaven is spatially above us than our language of “sunrise” and “sunset” means that the sun orbits the Earth. Jesus tells us that eternity is beyond our human comprehension. Without using imagery we can recognize, we would have no way to even start to understand them. .......... the liberals don’t appreciate how these Christians offer a lifeline in small towns across America, running soup kitchens and emergency shelters ......... the Christians who are actually carrying out works of compassion in prisons in the United States, in AIDS facilities in Africa and in shelters for the poor and unhoused everywhere. ......... These people tend not to put out press releases about their work and aren’t as interesting to the outside world as what television evangelist endorsed which presidential candidate. ......... Jesus was frustrating to the people around him — sometimes his own followers — because he wouldn’t “line up” with some political or nationalistic faction or the other. When people wanted to make him king, he withdrew to the mountains. That’s why he counted both tax collectors — collaborators with the Roman Empire — and zealots — those who wanted liberation from the empire — as his followers. .............. Evangelical Christians around the world can be found on almost every place on the political and ideological spectrum. ........... when we really pay attention to what he’s saying, all of us will be uncomfortable at some point or another. He just refuses to be a “useful” political mascot for anybody. ......... Two of the main moral issues that evangelicals have been associated with in the last few decades are hostility to abortion and to gay people. Jesus never spoke directly about either, but he was explicit about being against divorce and in favor of giving away all one’s money. So why hijack faith to obsess about abortion and same-sex lovers? ........... I just don’t think we should estimate a person’s value based on how powerful or “viable” he or she is. ......... The most important blind spot is perhaps missing why so many of us are drawn to faith in the first place. We really do believe

the Gospel is Good News that answers the deepest longings of the human heart

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‘Tripledemic’ Rages On: Fever-Filled Weeks Lie Ahead R.S.V. has probably peaked, but flu is still surging and Covid-19 cases are rising. Scientists are hopeful next winter will be better. ......... New, immune evasive versions of the Omicron variant are spreading, and Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are once again rising ....... this year the coronavirus has company: Common seasonal viruses, which lay low for the last two winters, have come roaring back. .......... influenza and R.S.V., or respiratory syncytial virus, hit early and hard this fall, causing major outbreaks that are now overlapping with a resurgent coronavirus. This viral pileup — what some are calling a “tripledemic” — has already set off an exhausting season of sickness, triggering sky-high demand for pain and fever relievers and pushing children’s hospitals to the brink......... in most parts of the country R.S.V. has probably already peaked, while flu is now surging ....... And Covid is still ramping up, with cases likely to continue rising. ........ more difficult, fever-filled weeks still lie ahead. “A lot of sniffly kids” .......... experts repeated their now-common exhortations to take basic precautions, such as wearing masks in crowded indoor spaces, using rapid Covid tests before visiting vulnerable people and staying home when feeling unwell. .......... Right now, for the next some number of weeks, we’re in not a great spot.” ........ The first virus to surge this fall was R.S.V., which usually causes mild illness but can be severe, or even fatal, in older adults and young children. By the time children in the United States are two years old, almost all have been exposed to the virus........... Flu took off in October, about six weeks ahead of schedule, and has already caused at least 150,000 hospitalizations and 9,300 deaths .......... There are more than 400 Covid-related deaths a day, on average, a 41 percent jump from two weeks ago.

What Growing Up on a Farm Taught Me About Humility We were aware each day, when we entered the pasture to check the water in the stock tank, that even the smallest of the Charolais cattle could beat us in a fight. We had friends who had been trampled or gored by bulls, and Grandpa told the story of an area farmer who, years before, slipped on a patch of ice while inside one of his pens, hit his head and was eaten by hogs. ............ and listened to the sermons about man’s dominion over the earth. But in our bones we knew it was the other way around.......... We worked the land and killed animals so that others would eat, so that we would afford propane for the winter, and so that the rich, rigged industry we supplied grain to would become a little richer. .......... More than once, while wrapping meat, I sliced my finger on the sharp edge of the butcher paper. There was nothing special about my blood. It was red just like the pigs’ and the cows’. ......... — I began to see through the many false narratives of supremacy that govern our society. That men are better than women. That white people are better than everyone else. That the rich are better than the poor. Even, yes, that human beings are better than animals. .......... It also left me rageful toward industries that devalue both. In some ways, my professional mission to champion the exploited and expose the powerful — as a journalist, an author and an advocate for social justice — can be traced back to lessons I learned on the farm. ......... forced out of business by policies that favor large industrial operations. ........ Today an estimated 99 percent of the meat in the United States comes from factory farms, barbaric places that leverage the selfish, amoral paradigm of human supremacy for immense capitalist gain. Industrialized agriculture has made meat, eggs, milk, leather, cheese, wool and other animal goods readily, cheaply available to the modern consumer but at a terrible cost — both to the animals, who endure savage cruelty, and to the low-wage laborers, many of whom are immigrants of color, who suffer injuries to body and spirit. ...........

The torturous treatment of animals at the hands of multibillion-dollar monopolies is among the greatest horrors being committed on this planet.

........... it was a fortune and privilege to grow up with a big garden, with cows and pigs and chickens. .......... Subsistence through modest land ownership historically has been refused to people of color, stolen from Indigenous peoples and made economically unfeasible for poor folks of all stripes, who set off for cities in order to survive. ......... in my experience, environmental impacts are most keenly felt and understood by the poor and unheard. ........... most of my peers give little thought to animal suffering in their eating decisions. ........ For me, there is no taste of meat without bodily memory — the heat of a newborn calf in my cold arms, the smell of the mother’s cascading excrement, the danger of her heavy hooves. I could see the cows on our farm from my upstairs bedroom window and the pigs and chickens from our front door. ......... minimizing waste and reusing and repairing old things were economic necessities ........... politicians who cater to massive agricultural corporations, the fossil fuel lobby and other powerful entities that destroy our planet. .......... Wealthy corporations and the governments beholden to them, choosing profit over sustainability and moral decency, created and fortified the food systems with which the average individual has little choice but to engage. .......... ultimately only policy has the power to restrain the agriculture industry’s worst abuses

A Strong Signal That Recession Is Looming there’s about a 95 percent chance of a recession in the coming year.

She Worked for Twitter. Then She Tweeted at Elon Musk. Sasha Solomon, a software engineer, joined others in the media business who lost their jobs this year after publicly taking on their employers.

Why Dickens Haunts Us “Dickens can be said to have almost single-handedly created the modern idea of Christmas.”

Russia Is Starting to Feel Squeezed by Sanctions YouTube, which is an important way that ordinary Russians get an uncensored picture of the world. ......... “Our television says with sarcastic joy that the Europeans are freezing. I do not quite understand what is there to rejoice. In fact, we are losing the markets that we have been building since the days of the Soviet Union.” .......... Western sanctions on Russia are like the mills of God. They grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

This Was the Year Everything Changed in Germany To this generation — my generation — war was a distant and gloomy impossibility, something that happened elsewhere, if at all. ........ Putin’s war in Chechnya, announced with the horrific shelling of Grozny in 1999, lasted a decade. ........ 10 years later, Russia attacked Georgia. The war in Ukraine, of course, started in 2014 when Mr. Putin annexed Crimea and fomented separatist conflict in the Donbas region. ........ The economy minister and a Green Party leader, Robert Habeck, agreed to keep nuclear plants running and get coal plants back on the grid and even helped seal a deal with Qatar for liquid gas. The Liberals, for their part, discarded their quasi-religious belief in balanced budgets to fund military spending and ease rising energy costs.

A Christmas Conversation About Christ
The Ideal of Democracy in a Jewish State Is in Jeopardy the far-right government that will soon take power, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, marks a qualitative and alarming break with all the other governments in Israel’s 75-year history.