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Javier E

At Canada's Northern College, Most of the Students are From India - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-college-indian-students.html

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • How a Canadian college — in a remote town most Canadians have never visited, where winters can feel subarctic — became a magnet for young Indians is the story of the many forces buffeting the country.
  • Public colleges and universities, hit hard by budget cuts, have grown dependent on the higher tuitions international students must pay. For students from abroad, the institutions can be a conduit to permanent Canadian residence, and for Canada, the students help reduce labor shortages and increase the country’s flagging productivity.
  • The Canadian government said it was on track to host 900,000 foreign students this year, three times as many as a decade ago.
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  • Indians make up the largest group by far, accounting for 40 percent of all international students across the country, according to the Canada Bureau for International Education. China ranks second, at 12 percent.
  • At Northern College, there were 40 international students in 2014 — now it has 6,140. Enrollment got a further boost after Northern, like other remote public colleges, opened a campus by partnering with a private college in a Toronto suburb in 2015. Today, about one-third of Northern’s foreign students are in Timmins and at three other smaller northern campuses, while the rest are on the Toronto campus.
  • Maninderjit Kaur said she would probably not have gone to Timmins if the education consultant in India — who arranged her enrollment at Northern — had told her the school’s exact location.
  • She recalled landing at the airport in Toronto in 2018, and then hopping into an Uber, believing that Northern College was nearby. The eight-hour ride cost 800 Canadian dollars.
  • Now, Ms. Kaur works in marketing at the college and owns a gas station in town with her fiancé, Karanveer Singh, 28, who also came from India to study at Northern.
  • Dr. Penner, the college’s president, believed she held an ace: Graduates of Northern and other public colleges may apply for a post-graduation work permit that could lead to permanent residence and citizenship.
  • Early childhood education is a popular major among international students because of the high demand for related jobs in the region, said Erin Holmes, who oversees the program at Northern. Dozens of international students are immediately hired after graduating, allowing them to apply for permanent residence, Ms. Holmes said.
  • Across Canada, the influx of foreign students has been so great that it is blamed for worsening housing shortages. The Canadian government has recently taken measures to stem the increase, including by doubling the level of savings international students must prove they have
criscimagnael

Biden Administration Begins Trade Dialogue With Taiwan - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-taiwan-trade.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration said on Wednesday that it would pursue negotiations to strengthen trade and technology ties with Taiwan, a move that is aimed at countering China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region and one that is likely to rankle Beijing.
  • The talks with Taiwan will cover many of the same issues as the framework, like digital trade ways to reduce red tape for importers and exporters. U.S. officials said the talks, the first of which will be held in Washington at the end of June, would focus on a variety of issues, including opening up trade in agriculture and aligning technological standards.
  • Several topics of the discussion are clearly aimed at addressing mutual complaints over Chinese trade practices.
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  • Taiwan has long pushed for deeper trade ties with the United States. In 2020, it eased restrictions on imports of U.S. beef and pork in an effort to entice the United States into formal negotiations. The next year, the United States and Taiwan resumed some trade talks despite Beijing’s opposition.
  • Given Taiwan’s contested status, the two sides will also meet unofficially and under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan, which is the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei, and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which represents Taiwan in the United States in the absence of diplomatic recognition.
criscimagnael

In Mali, a Massacre With a Russian Footprint - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...li-massacre-investigation.html

shared by criscimagnael on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Suddenly, five low-flying helicopters thrummed overhead, some firing weapons and drawing gunfire in return. Villagers ran for their lives. But there was nowhere to escape: The helicopters were dropping soldiers on the town’s outskirts to block all the exits.
  • In Moura, the security forces “may have also raped, looted, arrested and arbitrarily detained many civilians,” according to the mission, which is preparing a report on the incident.
  • However, using satellite imagery, The New York Times identified the sites of at least two mass graves, which matched the witnesses’ descriptions of where captives were executed and buried.
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  • The Wagner Group refers to a network of operatives and companies that serve as what the U.S. Treasury Department has called a “proxy force” of Russia’s ministry of defense. Analysts describe the group as an extension of Russia’s foreign policy through deniable activities, including the use of mercenaries and disinformation campaigns.
  • They ally with embattled political and military leaders who can pay for their services in cash, or with lucrative mining concessions for precious minerals like gold, diamonds and uranium, according to interviews conducted in recent weeks with dozens of analysts, diplomats and military officials in Africa and Western countries.
  • However, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov said in May on Italian television that Wagner was present in Mali “on a commercial basis,” providing “security services.”
  • “From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” said Hamadoun, a tailor working near the market when the helicopters arrived. “The whites and the Malians killed together.”
  • The death toll in Moura is the highest in a growing list of human rights abuses committed by the Malian military, which diplomats and Malian human rights observers say have increased since the military began conducting joint operations with the Wagner Group in January.
  • nearly 500 civilians have been killed in the joint operations,
  • Some abuses could amount to crimes against humanity, the U.N. said in one report.
  • The foreigners, according to diplomats, officials and human rights groups, belonged to the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner.
  • Wherever there are Russian contractors, real or fictional, they never violate human rights.”
  • “They have no incentive to end the conflict, because they are financially motivated,”
  • “They are the government in the region,”
  • The mass executions began on the Monday, and the victims were both civilians and unarmed militants, witnesses said. Soldiers picked out up to 15 people at a time, inspected their fingers and shoulders for the imprint left by regular use of weapons, and executed men yards away from captives.
  • “cadavers everywhere.”
  • The soldiers and their Russian allies left on Thursday, after killing six last prisoners in retaliation for four who had escaped. A Malian soldier told a group of captives that the soldiers had killed “all the bad people,” said Hamadou.
  • The soldier apologized for the good people who “died by accident.”
  • Investigators from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali have so far been denied access to Moura. Russia and China blocked a vote at the U.N. Security Council on an independent investigation.
  • Some Malians in these regions are losing trust in the government.
  • Soon after, the militants returned and kidnapped the deputy mayor. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Javier E

Reality Is a Tank - The Triad - 0 views

thetriad.thebulwark.com/...reality-is-a-tank

hegemony foreign policy international relations order policy politics

shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • It is men and women like Bildt, who believe that the international order is secured by pen and ink, who have been living in a fantasy land. They have spent a generation inviting catastrophe into their sitting rooms.
  • They watched Putin jail and destroy Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia.They watched Putin assassinate dissidents on the ground in NATO countries.They watched Putin’s army commit war crimes in Chechnya.They watched his 2007 Munich speech in which he literally said, out loud, that he wanted to roll back the Westernization of Eastern Europe and restore Russia’s dominance.They watched the invasions of Georgia and then Ukraine.
  • In response these same men and women decommissioned nuclear power plants in Europe and built gas pipelines to Russia so that they could have good feelings about “environmentalism” while also pocketing economic windfalls.They crossed their fingers and closed their eyes.You tell me who “lost contact with reality.”
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  • A one-war doctrine, on the other hand, invites conflict.
  • Our presidents were not alone. Much of Conservatism Inc. has become functionally pro-Russia.
  • much of the American foreign policy establishment decided that it could live in whatever reality it preferred. Their signal accomplishment was killing America’s two-war doctrine.
  • The goal of the two-war doctrine was to prevent America from having to fight any major wars. Because when you have the ability to fight two conventional ground wars, you deter all of your enemies.
  • it’s not just the lotus-eating Europeans. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both got rolled by Putin. Donald Trump was practically Putin’s gofer.
  • both China and Russia are emboldened to pursue their interests: They know that we are unlikely to respond to aggression because in any given instance we will be paralyzed by the need to be able to deter a second aggressor.
  • The two-war doctrine was a victim of its own success. It was so effective at deterring large-scale aggression that Americans became convinced it wasn’t needed. That we could pocket the savings and get the same level of security through norms and agreements and economic interdependence.
  • Here is a thing everyone except Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping seems to have forgotten: Reality is a tank. Not a memorandum. Not a summit. Not a promise.
  • Over the last 20 years, Americans experienced the very real costs of being the global hegemon and decided that, all things being equal, we’d rather not have the job.We are about to experience the very real costs of not being the hyperpower.
  • I would like to think the American people will survey the situation and come to the hard conclusion that while it is expensive and arduous to be the enforcer of the international order, it’s ultimately cheaper and safer than the alternative. And that we will then select leaders who will carry out this brief.
  • But I’ve lived through the last three years, just like you. I’ve watched half of America whine like children over being asked to wear a KN-95 at the grocery store. I’ve seen a third of this country refuse to get a life-saving vaccine because they are so detached from reality.
  • In my darker moments I suspect that Vladimir Putin has taken our measure quite precisely.
sidneybelleroche

Explainer: Can the U.N. do more than just talk about Russia, Ukraine crisis? | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ssia-ukraine-crisis-2022-01-31

shared by sidneybelleroche on 31 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The U.N. Security Council is due to meet in public on Monday, at the request of the United States, to discuss Russia's troop build-up on the border with Ukraine as international diplomacy aimed at easing tensions moves to the world body in New York.
  • The United States describes the meeting of the 15-member body as a chance for Russia to explain itself, while Russia signaled it could try and block it.
  • Russia is one of five permanent, veto-wielding powers on the council along with the United States, France, Britain and China.
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  • If Russia's military escalates the crisis, diplomats and foreign policy analysts say diplomacy and action at the United Nations is likely to mirror what happened in 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region.
  • So far, Western diplomacy at the United Nations during the latest military build-up has largely focused on trying to rally support - should they need it - among U.N. members by accusing Russia of undermining the U.N. Charter.
woodlu

A war in Ukraine could have global consequences | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...could-have-global-consequences

politics history crisis

shared by woodlu on 27 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • A full Russian invasion would be Europe’s biggest war since the 1940s, and the first toppling since then of a democratically elected European government by a foreign invader.
  • Russians would not only suffer casualties, especially during a long-running insurgency, but also cause the death of untold Ukrainians—fellow Slavs, with whom many have family ties.
  • War would affect the prices of other commodities, too. Oil is already spiking. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, with Ukraine close behind. Russia is a big source of metals: in today’s tight markets even a small shock could send commodity prices upwards.
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  • Europe faces the prospect of Russia throttling the flow of piped gas. Even in the absence of a cut-off, it was expected to spend $1trn on energy in 2022, twice as much as in 2019.
  • Russia would also suffer heavy sanctions. Its banks would be harshly penalised and its economy deprived of crucial American high-tech components.
  • Sanctions might be lighter, but they would still be painful. Russia’s decoupling from the West would still accelerate. Moreover, if the government in Kyiv remained independent, it would only redouble its efforts to join the West.
  • And the subjugation of Ukraine would come at a strategic cost to Russia. Every country in its shadow would revise its security calculations. NATO would reinforce the defences of its eastern members. Sweden and Finland might join the alliance.
  • For Mr Putin, the economic consequences of war would be survivable, at least in the short term. His central bank has $600bn in reserves—more than enough to weather sanctions. But the political gains in Ukraine could easily be overwhelmed by setbacks at home which, as Mr Putin knows better than anyone, is where his fate will ultimately be determined.
  • Perhaps, then, he will start with a less ambitious invasion. However, a limited war could claim many lives and be hard to contain.
  • Perhaps Mr Putin is planning a full-scale invasion, with Russian forces thrusting deep into Ukraine to seize the capital, Kyiv, and overthrow the government. Or he may seek to annex more territory in eastern Ukraine, carving out a corridor linking Russia with Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Mr Putin grabbed in 2014. Then again, he may want a small war, in which Russia “saves” Kremlin-backed separatists in Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine, from supposed Ukrainian atrocities—and, at the same time, degrades Ukraine’s armed forces.
  • The global order has long been buttressed by the norm that countries do not redraw other countries’ borders by force of arms. When Iraq seized Kuwait in 1990 an international coalition led by America kicked it out.
  • if he seizes a bigger slice of Ukraine, it is hard to see him suddenly concluding that the time has come to make peace with NATO.
  • More likely, he would push on, helped by the newly established presence of Russian troops in Belarus to probe NATO’s collective-security pact, under which an attack on one member is an attack on all.
  • Not only would he relish the chance to hollow out America’s commitments to Europe, but he has also come to rely on demonising an enemy abroad to justify his harsh rule at home.
  • The likelihood of China invading Taiwan would surely rise. The regimes in Iran and Syria would conclude they are freer to use violence with impunity. If might is right, more of the world’s disputed borders would be fought over.
  • West should respond in three ways: deter, keep talking and prepare. To deter Mr Putin, Western powers—especially Germany—should stop equivocating, present a united front and make clear that they are willing to pay the price for imposing sanctions on Russia and also to support those Ukrainians who are ready to resist an occupying army.
  • Meanwhile, diplomats should keep talking, looking for common ground on, say, arms control and pressing for a face-saving climbdown that Mr Putin and his captive media would be free to spin however they wish.
  • And Europe should prepare for the next crisis by making clear that its energy transition will cut its dependence on Russian gas by using storage, diversification and nuclear power.
  • Russia would benefit from better, closer, peaceful relations with the West. Such ties would be available if Mr Putin didn’t behave so abominably. Only he benefits from discord, since he can tell Russians they are under siege and need a strongman to defend them. But even the wiliest strongman can miscalculate. Invading Ukraine could ultimately prove Mr Putin’s undoing, if it turns into a bloody quagmire or makes Russians poorer, angrier and more eager for change.
kennyn-77

What next for world powers in war-torn Libya? | News | Al Jazeera - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...world-powers-in-war-torn-libya

libya troops turkey Russia

shared by kennyn-77 on 04 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • The presence of both Turkish and Russian forces in the North African country is deeply unsettling to European powers, unlike the United States, analysts say.
  • Libya’s electoral commission decided that no such vote could take place for numerous reasons. The presence of foreign forces on Libyan soil was unquestionably one of the delicate factors, adding complexity and controversy to the now-postponed election scheduled for December 24.
  • Turkey’s military or Russia’s Wagner Group will leave the country in the foreseeable future.
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  • First, the Turks and Russians have too much to gain from staying in Libya. Second, they have little incentive to leave under current circumstances because the only power in the world that could potentially use its leverage to pressure Turkish and Russian forces to depart is the United States. It is unlikely for the US to play its cards in such a manner.
  • Washington is not interested in Libya, especially at this time when there are far more pressing problems – from Donbas to North Korea, to China and, above all, to the enormous internal problems that the Biden administration is facing,”
  • From Washington’s perspective, this is not necessarily problematic so long as the Wagner Group’s presence does not expand. Because of such concerns about the Russian force enlarging its footprint in Libya, the US sees the Turkish military’s presence in the polarised North African country as the best outcome that Washington could realistically expect.
  • Beyond issues stemming from economic competition, there are security issues that give EU members reason to perceive the Turkish and Russian hard power in Libya as threatening national interests of European powers. “Finally, whoever controls the Libyan coast controls migration flows and this is a strategic issue that Brussels should not underestimate,” said Fasanotti.
  • The presence of both Turkish and Russian forces in the North African country is deeply unsettling to European powers, unlike Washington that has taken a far more favourable stance towards Ankara’s role in Libya.
  • “The presence of Turkish forces there is of course considered detrimental to France’s interests, given the strategic alignment of Paris to Abu Dhabi and its support of the Eastern forces of General Khalifa Haftar in the 2019-2020 Tripoli offensive,”
  • “Economic competition must be also factored into these considerations, which help explain why after many years of a worrisome intra-European spat, Paris [which backed Haftar] and Rome [which backed the Government of National Accord] decided to come together, set aside their differences, and face outsiders expanding their influence in the Libyan arena.”
  • “The only mechanism that the United States has is the Turkish presence. When the United States looks at Turkey it sees a NATO member.
  • If the US remains unwilling to throw its weight around in Libya and maintains its own perspectives on Turkish-Russian rivalry for influence that leads Washington to be more accommodating of Ankara’s Libya foreign policy than several of the US’s close European allies, these divisions could deepen.
Javier E

Russia's Money Is Gone - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...russia-s-money-is-gone

money russia social construct private property foreign reserves

shared by Javier E on 01 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • One great theme of the post-2008 financial world is that money is a social construct, a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services.
  • 15 years ago it was easier to think that money was an objective fact. Money is a kind of stuff, you might have thought, stuff with some predictable value that you can exchange for goods and services, and you can acquire a quantity of it and then you own that money and can use it however you like to buy things. 
  • The bulk of Russia’s foreign reserves are held in the form of securities, deposits at other central banks and deposits at foreign commercial banks. A ban on transactions with Russia’s central bank means that it can’t sell those securities or access those deposits.
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  • The fiscal response to Covid-19 reinforced this point: Money is a tool of social decision-making, not an objective thing that you get through abstract merit.
  • the value of cryptocurrency is so clearly socially constructed: A Bitcoin was worth roughly nothing a decade ago, and roughly $41,000 today, solely because people collectively decided to ascribe value to Bitcoin.
  • money gets its value from people agreeing that it’s valuable.
  • As of Friday Russia had about $630 billion of foreign currency reserves, a large cushion designed to allow it to withstand economic sanctions and prop up the value of the ruble
  • But “foreign currency reserves” are not an objective fact; they are mostly a series of entries on lists maintained by foreign-currency issuers and intermediaries (central banks, correspondent banks, sovereign bond issuers, brokerages). 1  If those people cross you off the list, or put an asterisk next to your entry freezing your funds, then you can’t use those funds anymore.
  • Russia’s foreign reserves consist, in the first instance, of a set of accounting entries. But in a crisis the accounting entries don’t matter at all. All that matters are relationships, and if your relationships get bad enough then the money is as good as gone.
  • Now you want something for yourself? OK, but that is going to be subtracted from the running total of how much you’ve done for the rest for us.
  • There is a lot to dislike, or at least to be uncomfortable with, in this situation.
  • This is arguably bad for the dollar’s long-run dominance: Russia will develop its own ways around SWIFT, China will push other countries to adopt its digital yuan, everyone will use Bitcoin, etc
  • it is also arguably bad for global prosperity: Trustworthy rules-based trade works better and produces more value than arbitrary uncertain trade.
  • But what I want to suggest is that this weekend’s actions are evidence that the basic structure is good. What I want to suggest is that society is good, that it is good for people (and countries) to exist in a web of relationships in which their counterparties can judge their actions and punish bad actions.
  • If money is socially constructed and property is contingent then money is a continuing, dynamic, ever-at-risk reward for prosocial behavior.
  • one of the ways I suggest students think about money is as a kind of social scorecard.
  • You did something good — made something somebody wanted, let somebody else use something you own, went to work and did everything the boss told you? Good for you, you get a cookie. Or more precisely, you get a credit, in both senses, in the personal record kept for you at a bank.
  • But the response to the 2008 global financial crisis, and to its later European aftershocks, made it clear that something else was going on. Who has money and what they can do with it can be adjusted by the actions of central banks and national treasuries; banks can be bailed out; costs can be socialized.
  • we have exactly this system already. The number is called a bank account. The difference is simply that we have so naturalized the system that “how much money you have” seems like simply a fact about you, rather than a judgment imposed by society.
  • Pervasive social credit systems seem dystopian, and you would not really want the U.S. government making day-to-day decisions about who deserves to keep their bank accounts.
  • But another idea is that money can insulate you from  the obligations of society, and that is also bad.
  • You get a claim on goods and services by being part of society, and having a big number next to your name on a list does not relieve you of your obligations. If you do something so outrageous that society as a whole decides you are a pariah, then money is a way for society to express that.
Javier E

The War in Ukraine Holds a Warning for the World Order - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ssia-war-authoritarianism.html

world order ukraine warning liberal democracy

shared by Javier E on 06 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The liberal world order has been on life support for a while.
  • President Biden, in his inaugural address, called democracy “fragile.”
  • President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said two years ago that “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose,” while China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has extolled the strength of an all-powerful state and, as he put it last March, “self-confidence in our system.”
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  • The multinational response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that the demise of the global postwar rules-based order may not be inevitable.
  • But the reappearance of war in Europe is also an omen. With toddlers sheltering in subway tunnels, and nuclear power plants under threat, it is a global air raid siren — a warning that the American-led system of internationalism needs to get itself back into gear, for the war at hand and for the struggle against authoritarianism to come.
  • “The global system was built in the 1950s, and if you think of it as a car from those years, it is battered, out of date in some ways, and could use a good tuneup,”
  • Because the founder of that concept, the United States, continues to struggle — with partisanship, Covid and failure in distant war zones — many foreign policy leaders already see Ukraine in dire terms, as marking an official end of the American era and the start of a more contested, multipolar moment.
  • Almost universally, from leaders in Europe and Asia to current and former American officials, Ukraine is being viewed as a test for the survival of a 75-year-old idea: that liberal democracy, American military might and free trade can create the conditions for peace and global prosperity.
  • “But it is still on the road, rolling along, and, ironically enough, Vladimir Putin has done more in a week to energize it than anything I can remember.”
  • For at least a decade, liberal democracies have been disappearing. Their numbers peaked in 2012 with 42 countries, and now there are just 34, home to only 13 percent of the world population, according to V-Dem, a nonprofit that studies governments
  • In many of those, including the United States, “toxic polarization” is on the rise.
  • Mr. Biden, in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, spoke bluntly of the future risk, saying, “When dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos.” He insisted that the free world was holding Mr. Putin accountable.
  • One lesson seems to be that alliances matter. But for many, the most important lesson echoes what Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman concluded about World War II: America cannot retreat into isolationism; its own prosperity depends on actively trying to keep the world’s major powers at peace.
Javier E

Putin's Invasion of Ukraine Is a Terrible Sin That All Russians Will Bear - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...in-that-all-russians-will-bear

putin invasion ukraine sin russia

shared by Javier E on 07 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • Even in his speech announcing the invasion, Putin referred to his oft-stated belief that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. This, of course, was never true — even when they lived side by side in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The two identities and cultures are distinct. But Russians and Ukrainians are the closest of kin. Even when we speak different languages, as we have increasingly done since Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, we understand each other. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy made the most of his eloquent speech on the eve of the invasion by speaking in Russian, directly appealing to Russian citizens with the ease of someone who shares a cultural code with them. It runs thick as blood and has nothing to do with official Soviet avowals of brotherhood.
  • A lot of evidence pointed to Putin's intention to invade. But I kept hoping he would stop at the last moment, because a full-scale attack on Ukraine, guaranteed to spill the blood of Ukrainian civilians, is the worst war crime a Russian can possibly commit. Even the inevitable parallels with Hitler’s 1938 Anschluss of Austria, which I drew before when Putin took Crimea and when he published his historical screed assailing Ukraine as an “anti-Russian project,” do not do justice to what happened in the early hours of Feb. 24.
  • To make the curse permanent, God marked Cain to make sure no one would kill him to end his suffering. Russia, with the nuclear arsenal Putin keeps bragging about, also bears a kind of Cain’s mark now. It is not Putin who is cursed now —  it’s all of us Russians. Our identity, wherever we are, will be tainted by this invasion, by our failure to stop the dictator long before he crossed this unspeakable line.
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  • From this point on, autarky is the only feasible economic choice for Russia, and a retreat into isolation is the only remaining cultural and political choice. At the same time, Russia's dependence on China, which has grown in recent years, is no longer a matter of choice. Any security benefits from turning Ukraine — and neighboring Belarus, from whose territory Putin also attacked — into a buffer state are illusory since Russia also borders actual NATO member states, which now will arm themselves as heavily as possible. 
  • This attack achieves no conceivable gain. It is the worst possible move from a rational standpoint, a petty man’s revenge on a grand scale. It seals Putin’s place in history — not as a nation builder but instead as someone whose entire legacy will need to be erased for Russia to go back to a semblance of normality.
Javier E

Once again, America is in denial about signs of a fresh Covid wave | Eric Topol | The G... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ut-signs-of-a-fresh-covid-wave

denial pandemic US response

shared by Javier E on 16 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • When it comes to Covid, the United States specializes in denialism. Deny the human-to-human transmission of the virus when China’s first cases were publicized in late 2019. Deny that the virus is airborne. Deny the need for boosters across all adult age groups.
  • here are many more examples, but now one stands out – learning from other countries.
  • In early 2020, with the major outbreak in the Lombardy region of Italy that rapidly and profoundly outstripped hospital resources and medical staffing, Americans expressed confidence that it won’t happen here. That it couldn’t happen here. And then it did.
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  • it is palpable: what happens in the UK and Europe doesn’t stay in the UK and Europe.
  • In the past couple of weeks, the UK and several countries in Europe, including Germany, France and Switzerland, are experiencing a new wave.
  • This is the sixth warning from the UK and Europe to the United States.
  • Wastewater surveillance is relatively sparse in the United States, but 15% of the 410 sites where it was conducted between 24 February to 10 March 2022 showed a greater than 1000% increase compared with the prior 15-day period
  • Now we are at a point with very low vaccination and booster rates, only 64% of the populations has had two shots, and 29% three shots. That puts the United States at 65th and 70th in the world ranking of countries, respectively.
  • Rather than focusing on what precisely is driving the new wave, the imperative is to drive some preventive action.
  • As with the first five warnings from the UK and Europe, the United States did not take heed. Instead of proactively gearing up with non-pharmaceutical interventions (masks, quality of masks, distancing, air filtration, ventilation, aggressive testing, etc.), it just reacted to the surges when they were manifest.
  • the BA.2 variant is gaining steam in the United States and is now accounting for more than 30% of new cases.
  • Not only is there a gaping hole in our immunity wall, but the $58bn budget of the American Pandemic Prepared Plan (AP3) advanced by the White House to comprehensively address the deficiencies was gutted by the Senate, reduced to $2bn, now threatening to cancel the order of more than 9.2m Paxlovid pills, the Test-to Treat program announced at the State of the Union address, along with better data, wastewater surveillance, efforts to develop a pan-coronavirus vaccine, research on long Covid, and many other critical public health measures.
  • We haven’t even seen a new, major variant yet, but there are too many reasons to believe that is likely in the months ahead, owing to extensive animal reservoirs and documented cases of spillover to humans, a large number of immunocompromised people in whom the virus can undergo accelerated evolution, rare but increasingly seen co-infections, and lack of containment of the virus globally.
  • Unfortunately, we have a mindset that the pandemic is over, which couldn’t be further than the truth
  • dd to all this is what is happening in China, which has fully relied on a zero-Covid policy, resulting in very little natural immunity, and vaccines that have weak efficacy against Omicron
Javier E

Opinion | The U.S. Is the Only Sanctions Superpower. It Must Use That Power Wisely. - T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...a-sanctions-power-economy.html

sanctions us economic crisis

shared by Javier E on 17 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • As much as we talk about multipolar politics, when it comes to global networks, there is just one superpower: the United States. Many global networks have centralized economic chokepoints, and the United States is able to seize these, turning them into tools of coercion. No other country can match this ability. America can now redeploy global networks to entangle and suffocate oligarchs, banks and even entire countries, as Russia has painfully discovered.
  • It is now up to the United States to determine how to steward this enormous power. If it overreaches, it might provoke a military response or create the incentive for its adversaries to create and foster their own alternative networks
  • Will we end up with a fragmented world economy where military and economic conflict become two sides of the same coin?
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  • While there are substitutes for Russian nickel, there’s no good substitute for the U.S. dollar and U.S. technology. It is very hard to get paid for things you sell if you can’t use SWIFT messaging and have been cut off by the U.S. regulated financial institutions that “clear” transactions in dollars. And it’s hard to build sophisticated machines without semiconductors that are made with U.S. intellectual property.
  • The barrier isn’t just that the payment networks of Russia and China are three or four decades behind. Others also fear how they would abuse these networks if they controlled them. The United States has its problems, but it at least provides some legal protections to businesses and countries that have fallen afoul of its harsh measures.
  • Often, U.S. officials treat these rules as an obstacle preventing them from taking strong actions. Yet these restrictions provide America with a strategic advantage: They give foreign countries and businesses some reason for trust.
  • Overreach, then, is the more immediate threat
  • they illustrate a deeper danger. As a new book by the historian Nicholas Mulder emphasizes, the “economic weapon” of sanctions and blockades doesn’t work nearly as predictably or effectively as its proponents imagine. The more powerful sanctions are, the greater the danger that they will lead to an unpredictable response. As Mr. Mulder demonstrates, fears of sanctions helped propel Nazi Germany’s territorial ambitions
  • measures should be just harsh enough to reach specific goals: to protect Ukrainian independence and to limit, to the greatest extent possible, Russia’s aggressive gains.
  • The United States should also explicitly lay out the circumstances under which the executive branch will apply such economic measures, the range of permissible goals that they can accomplish, the review procedures that will ensure they are proportionate and the circumstances under which they will be withdrawn.
Javier E

NATO should avoid learning the wrong lessons from Russia's blunder in Ukraine, says Mic... - 0 views

www.economist.com/...in-ukraine-says-michael-kofman

nato lessons russia ukraine europe military

shared by Javier E on 08 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • It may be tempting to believe that because Ukraine has done remarkably well against Russian forces, a NATO victory could be taken for granted in almost any scenario. That is the wrong lesson to take away from this war
  • The peculiarities of the situation in which a war occurs strongly determine how military power manifests and whether it can achieve political aims. An American defeat in Afghanistan offers few insights on how a war with China might go.
  • the Russian armed forces are not just suffering from a bad plan in Ukraine. From the perspective of training, leadership and discipline, their army has serious deficiencies. However, there is much about the war that we still do not know, and our early interpretations of it could be wrong
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  • Ultimately, a reassessment will be in order, not just of where the Russian armed forces are, but where they are going.
  • Another area where Russia fell flat was its inability to scale up operations. What its army could do on a lesser scale in 2014 and 2015, it could not replicate across Ukraine. From communications to logistics, combined arms and beyond, Russia’s armed forces lacked experience in large-scale operations prior to the invasion, and it showed.
  • The Russian armed forces will take years to recover from this blunder but, at the same time, failure is often a better teacher than success.
  • this shift in perceptions should not mislead NATO members into the belief that, in a different context, Russia would be easily defeated.
  • The conflict serves as a fresh reminder that sustained conventional war hinges on the availability of manpower, materiel, ammunition and defence industrial capacity to sustain it.
  • It follows that the alliance should not take a dismissive attitude towards Russia, or become complacent. Despite significant losses, the Russian army will rebuild sooner or later. Sanctions will affect Russia’s defence industry, but writing Russia off as a military power would be the wrong lesson to learn from this war.
peterconnelly

Analysis: Serbia's gas deal with Putin has created a fresh headache for Europe - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

CNN.com

shared by peterconnelly on 03 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • On Sunday, Serbia's president Aleksandar Vucic announced that his country had agreed to a new three-year gas supply deal with Russia's state energy provider, Gazprom. 
  • The news came at an awkward time, and in doing so, Vucic created a fresh headache for the Western anti-Putin alliance and, notably, for the European Union. 
  • The EU is set on expanding to the east and sees the Western Balkans as key to European security -- even more so in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 
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  • While Serbia is not an EU member state, it is part of an EU enlargement plan that also includes some of its neighbors.
  • "If concluded, the deal would dash hopes of those who saw an opportunity to reduce the Russian influence in the region," said Filip Ejdus, associate professor of international security at the University of Belgrade. 
  • Serbia is so big and important that it is crucial to the EU's enlargement project, which seeks to strengthen and expand European values, stability and security.
  • However, Serbia is also very reliant on Russia when it comes to gas. It is also militarily cooperative with Moscow. In short, Serbia benefits enormously from its relationship with Russia, and even if it obtains EU membership down the road, it will not want to burn its bridges with the Kremlin.
  • Steven Blockmans, director of research at the Centre for European Policy Studies, told CNN that ever since the start of the war, "the EU has been pressuring third countries, including China, to have a similar approach to sanctions. If even states currently trying to join the EU circumvent the sanctions, it lends credence to outliers within the bloc to withstand pressure from Brussels to support a strong common position on Russia."
  • "This whole situation is a major pain for us, because it ties in with the conversation about whether or not Ukraine should join the EU,"
  • Finally, some member states share a degree of Euroskepticism and would welcome another member state less enamored with calls from some countries, notably France, for the bloc to become more closely politically integrated.
  • The UK, no longer part of the EU, has worked well with its European allies and shown that -- despite Brexit -- it can still play a leading role in a united European front.
  • The EU has faced many difficulties since the Ukraine crisis began, and keeping all 27 of its member states on side has been no easy task.
Javier E

The un-celebrity president: Jimmy Carter shuns riches, lives modestly in his Georgia ho... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...destly-in-his-georgia-hometown

president role model retirement wealth service contribution

shared by Javier E on 20 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want to “capitalize financially on being in the White House.”
  • Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that Gerald Ford, Carter’s predecessor and close friend, was the first to fully take advantage of those high-paid post-presidential opportunities, but that “Carter did the opposite.”
  • Since Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, routinely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.
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  • “I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it,” Carter says over dinner. “It just never had been my ambition to be rich.”
  • Carter decided that his income would come from writing, and he has written 33 books, about his life and career, his faith, Middle East peace, women’s rights, aging, fishing, woodworking, even a children’s book written with his daughter, Amy Carter, called “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”
  • Carter costs U.S. taxpayers less than any other ex-president, according to the General Services Administration, with a total bill for him in the current fiscal year of $456,000, covering pensions, an office, staff and other expenses.
  • Carter is the only president in the modern era to return full-time to the house he lived in before he entered politics — a two-bedroom rancher assessed at $167,000, less than the value of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside.
  • Ex-presidents often fly on private jets, sometimes lent by wealthy friends, but the Carters fly commercial. Stuckey says that on a recent flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Carter walked up and down the aisle greeting other passengers and taking selfies.
  • “He doesn’t like big shots, and he doesn’t think he’s a big shot,” said Gerald Rafshoon, who was Carter’s White House communications director.
  • With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably. But his books have never fetched the massive sums commanded by more recent presidents.
  • The federal government pays for an office for each ex-president. Carter’s, in the Carter Center in Atlanta, is the least expensive, at $115,000 this year. The Carters could have built a more elaborate office with living quarters, but for years they slept on a pullout couch for a week each month. Recently, they had a Murphy bed installed.
  • Carter doesn’t even have federal retirement health benefits because he worked for the government for four years — less than the five years needed to qualify, according to the GSA. He says he receives health benefits through Emory University, where he has taught for 36 years.
  • Carter’s office costs a fraction of Obama’s, which is $536,000 a year. Clinton’s costs $518,000, George W. Bush’s is $497,000 and George H.W. Bush’s is $286,000, according to the GSA.
  • “He didn’t feel suited to the grandeur,” Eizenstat said. “Plains is really part of his DNA. He carried it into the White House, and he carried it out of the White House.”
  • “I am a great admirer of Harry Truman. He’s my favorite president, and I really try to emulate him,” says Carter, who writes his books in a converted garage in his house. “He set an example I thought was admirable.”
  • The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is essentially the entire town, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors a year and $4 million into the county’s economy.
  • Carter has used his post-presidency to support human rights, global health programs and fair elections worldwide through his Carter Center, based in Atlanta. He has helped renovate 4,300 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, and with his own hammer and tool belt, he will be working on homes for low-income people in Indiana later this month.
  • Carter’s gait is a little unsteady these days, three years after a diagnosis of melanoma on his liver and brain. At a 2015 news conference to announce his illness, he seemed to be bidding a stoic farewell, saying he was “perfectly at ease with whatever comes.”
  • In October, he will become the second president ever to reach 94; George H.W. Bush turned 94 in June. These days, Carter is sharp, funny and reflective.
  • The Carters walk every day — often down Church Street, the main drag through Plains, where they have been walking since the 1920s.
  • “I grew up in church with him,” says Maya Wynn. “He’s a nice guy, just like a regular person.”
  • “He’s a good ol’ Southern gentleman,” says David Lane.
  • Carter says this place formed him, seeding his beliefs about racial equality. His farmhouse youth during the Great Depression made him unpretentious and frugal. His friends, maybe only half-joking, describe Carter as “tight as a tick.”
  • That no-frills sensibility, endearing since he left Washington, didn’t work as well in the White House. Many people thought Carter scrubbed some of the luster off the presidency by carrying his own suitcases onto Air Force One and refusing to have “Hail to the Chief” played.
  • Stuart E. Eizenstat, a Carter aide and biographer, said Carter’s edict eliminating drivers for top staff members backfired. It meant that top officials were driving instead of reading and working for an hour or two every day.
  • That’s less than half the $952,000 budgeted for George H.W. Bush; the three other living ex-presidents — Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama — cost taxpayers more than $1 million each per year.
  • When Carter looks back at his presidency, he says he is most proud of “keeping the peace and supporting human rights,” the Camp David accords that brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and his work to normalize relations with China. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
  • “I always told the truth,” he says.
  • Carter says he thinks the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has “changed our political system from a democracy to an oligarchy. Money is now preeminent. I mean, it’s just gone to hell now.”
  • He says he believes that the nation’s “ethical and moral values” are still intact and that Americans eventually will “return to what’s right and what’s wrong, and what’s decent and what’s indecent, and what’s truthful and what’s lies.”
  • They are asked if there is anything they want but don’t have. “I can’t think of anything,” Carter says, turning to Rosalynn. “And you?” “No, I’m happy,” she says.
  • They watch Atlanta Braves games or “Law and Order.” Carter just finished reading “The Innovators” by Walter Isaacson. They have no chef and they cook for themselves, often together. They make their own yogurt.
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