Syria is a small, poor, and crowded country. On the map, it appears about the size of Washington state or Spain, but only about a quarter of its 185,000 square kilometers is arable land. That is, “economic Syria” is about as large as a combination of Maryland and Connecticut or Switzerland.
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in title, tags, annotations or urlUnderstanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad - William R. Polk - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Except for a narrow belt along the Mediterranean, the whole country is subject to extreme temperatures that cause frequent dust storms and periodic droughts. Four years of devastating drought from 2006 to 2011 turned Syria into a land like the American “dust bowl” of the 1930s.
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The most important physical aspect of these storms, as was the experience in America in the 1930s, was the removal of the topsoil. Politically, they triggered the civil war.
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Billy Graham, Dead at 99, Reshaped Evangelicalism - The Atlantic - 0 views
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Billy Graham, the famous preacher who reached millions of people around the world through his Christian ministry, died on Wednesday at 99. Over the course of more than six decades, he reshaped the landscape of evangelism, sharing the gospel from North Carolina to North Korea and developing innovative ways to communicate the message of the Bible. He influenced generations of pastors and developed friendships with presidents, prime ministers, and royalty around the world. His death marks the end of an era for evangelicalism, and poses a fundamental question: Will his legacy of bipartisan, ecumenical outreach be carried forward?
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Although the term “evangelical” is now commonly used to refer to Christians who focus on personal salvation and outreach about the gospel, it wasn’t always so common. “Billy was sort of the original evangelical,” argued Jack Graham, the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, who serves with Laurie on President Trump’s unofficial evangelical advisory council. (He’s not related to Billy Graham.) The North Carolina preacher was focused on evangelism, or sharing the good news of the gospel. As he grew more popular, he became the face of the movement to many around the United States and the world.
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He was also firmly committed to remaining bipartisan, proudly claiming that he provided spiritual counsel to 12 sitting presidents and participated in events surrounding nine inauguration ceremonies. “Billy had great influence on people from every side of the aisle, politically,” said Jack Graham. “To me, he reminds us always that more important than partisan politics, more important than the political divisions that we have today, that Christ can unite us.” Even President Trump met Graham, before he won the White House: Laurie said the now-president sat with the preacher at Graham’s 95th birthday party.
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Why Is This Hate Different From All Other Hate? - The New York Times - 0 views
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The president and his associates mix anti-Semitic dog whistles with frank attacks on Muslims, immigrants and refugees. The paradox is that in today’s America, coded anti-Semitism is more of a political taboo than open Islamophobia. We spend a great deal of time and energy parsing the semiotics of Mr. Trump’s role in stoking anti-Jewish sentiment, while Muslims and immigrants can be defamed with impunity. The risk here is that we’ve been distracted by the anti-Semitism controversy from the ways in which other groups are being demonized as Jews once were.
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In his definitive 1994 book “Anti-Semitism in America,” Leonard Dinnerstein describes American anti-Semitism reaching a high tide in the early 1940s. The country was traumatized by the Great Depression and apprehensive about war in Europe. Reactionaries imagined themselves squeezed between globalist Jewish bankers above and subversive Jewish refugee hordes below.
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The America First Committee, formed to keep the United States out of World War II, was full of bigots and Nazi sympathizers; Mr. Dinnerstein quotes the chairman of the Terre Haute, Ind., chapter saying, “Jews were now in possession of our government.” There were widespread assertions that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was secretly Jewish; anti-Semites insisted his real last name was Rosenfeld.
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