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alexdeltufo

#Frisco5 protest: US 'police racism' hunger strike ends in San Francisco - BBC News - 0 views

  • Dubbed the Frisco Five, they accuse Greg Suhr of heading a racist force following the shootings by officers of three men from ethnic minority groups.
  • They said their cause would be better served by "staying and fighting" than by "starving and dying".
  • They remain in hospital where they were admitted on Friday to be monitored.
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  • A statement on the Hunger For Justice #Frisco5 Facebook page said that "the whole community" had asked for Sellassie Blackwell, Ilyich Sato, Edwin Lindo, Maria Cristina Gutierrez and Ike Pinkston to end their hunger strike on Saturday so they could "return to the front lines and help shape this movement and the pursuit of justice for the black and brown citizens of San Francisco".
  • Ed Lee was not in his office, but spoke to the hunger strikers by phone on Thursday, saying he had no plans to fire Mr Suhr.
  • There are more than 1,000 fatal shootings by police in the US each year, and those killed are disproportionately African-American.
sarahbalick

BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and team expelled from North Korea - BBC News - 0 views

  • BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and team expelled from North Korea
  • Wingfield-Hayes was questioned for eight hours by North Korean officials and made to sign a statement.
  • Our correspondent, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard were stopped by officials on Friday as they were about to leave North Korea.
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  • The BBC team was in North Korea ahead of the Workers' Party Congress, accompanying a delegation of Nobel prize laureates conducting a research trip.
  • "Four BBC staff, who were invited to cover the Workers Party Congress, remain in North Korea and we expect them to be allowed to continue their reporting."
malonema1

Advocates: Trump's Immigrant Crime Office Is Political Bait - NBC News - 0 views

  • Advocates: Trump’s Immigrant Crime Office Is Political Bait
  • Trump said he has ordered the creation of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, or VOICE to provide "a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests."
  • "The concern is there seems to be a repeated pattern of the Trump administration to link immigrants with criminality, using the emotions that come along with family members who have lost a loved one," Kelley said. "It's bait we don't want to take."
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  • Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, said Trump's speech was "the same dog whistle politics that got him elected."
  • The Office for Victims of Crime already exists in the Department of Justice. It was created by Ronald Reagan to focus on all types of crimes and all types of victims.
  • "I'm not sure why President Trump is creating a new office in a different department," she said. "I think that's going to create more bureaucracy."
Javier E

The Montessori Mafia - Ideas Market - WSJ - 0 views

  • Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were famous life-long tinkerers, who discovered new ways of doing things by constantly improvising, experimenting, failing, and retesting.  Above all they were voraciously inquisitive learners.
  • Hal Gregersen of globe-spanning business school INSEAD surveyed over 3,000 executives and interviewed 500 people who had either started innovative companies or invented new products.
  • they learned to follow their curiosity
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  • being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently.”
  • We can change the way we’ve been trained to think.  That begins in small, achievable ways, with increased experimentation and inquisitiveness. 
  • most highly creative achievers don’t begin with brilliant ideas, they discover them.
  • Will Wright, inventor of bestselling “The Sims” videogame series, heaps similar praise.  “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery,” Mr. Wright said, “It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you.  SimCity comes right out of Montessori…”
  • Barbara Walters, who interviewed Google founders Messrs. Page and Brin in 2004, asked if having parents who were college professors was a major factor behind their success, they instead credited their early Montessori education.  “We both went to Montessori school,” Mr. Page said, “and I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders, and
Javier E

A Military Manual for Nonviolent War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • These two Serbs start with the concepts of the American academic Gene Sharp, the Clausewitz of the nonviolent movement. But they have refined and added to those ideas. In a new book, “Blueprint for Revolution,” Popovic recounts Canvas’s strategies and how people use them.
  • Otpor’s methods and signature — a stylized graphic clenched fist — have been adopted by democracy movements around the world. The Egyptian opposition used them to topple Hosni Mubarak. In Lebanon, the Serbs helped the Cedar Revolution extricate the country from Syrian control. In Maldives, their methods were the key to overthrowing a dictator who had held power for 30 years. In many other countries, people have used what Canvas teaches to accomplish other political goals, such as fighting corruption or protecting the environment.
  • “We’re here to plan a war.” Nonviolent struggle, Djinovic explained, is a war — just one fought with means other than weapons. It must be as carefully planned as a military campaign.
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  • Myth: Nonviolent struggle’s major tactic is amassing large concentrations of people. This idea is widespread because the big protests are like the tip of an iceberg: the only thing visible from a distance. Did it look like the ousting of Mubarak started with a spontaneous mass gathering in Tahrir Square? Actually, the occupation of Tahrir Square was carefully planned, and followed two years of work.
  • You can start with tactics of dispersal, such as coordinated pot-banging, or traffic slowdowns in which everyone drives at half speed. These tactics show that you have widespread support, they grow people’s confidence, and they’re safe.
  • Myth: Nonviolence might be morally superior, but it’s useless against a brutal dictator. Nonviolence is not just the moral choice; it is almost always the strategic choice. “My biggest objection to violence is the fact that it simply doesn’t work,” Popovic writes. Violence is what every dictator does best.
  • The scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan analyzed campaigns of violent and nonviolent revolution in the last century (their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” uses Otpor’s fist as its cover image) and found that nonviolence has double the success rate of violence — and its gains have been more likely to last.
  • laughter is 10 ten times more powerful than scream. Nothing breaks people’s fear and punctures a dictator’s aura of invincibility like mockery — Popovic calls it “laughtivism.”
  • Most people don’t care about human rights. They care about having electricity that works, teachers in every school and affordable home loans. They will support an opposition with a vision of the future that promises to make their lives better.
  • on a tactical level, decentralization was critical. Otpor had only two rules: You had to be anti-Milosevic and absolutely nonviolent. Follow those rules, and you could do anything and call yourself Otpor. This kept activists feeling busy, useful and important.
  • Myth: Police, security forces and the pro-government business community are the enemy. Maybe, but it’s smarter to treat them like allies-in-waiting. Otpor never taunted or threw stones at the police. Its members cheered them and brought flowers and homemade cookies to the police station.
  • I lived in Chile when the opposition to Augusto Pinochet made mistake after mistake; advice from Otpor might have shortened the dictatorship by years. Had the Occupy movement in the United States adopted these tactics, it might still be a relevant force.
redavistinnell

EU proposals will force multinationals to disclose tax arrangements | World news | The ... - 0 views

  • EU proposals will force multinationals to disclose tax arrangements
  • The European commission is to table legislation in early April aimed at making the world’s largest multinational corporations open their tax arrangements with EU governments to full public scrutiny.
  • The commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, is said to be in favour of the initiative. A consensus has formed around making the rules apply to the world’s biggest conglomerates, including those from the US, the officials said.
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  • “It will likely target the large multinationals, all multinationals and not just EU ones,”
  • The commission was heavily criticised last month when it proposed that corporations report only to national tax authorities in Europe without making the information public.
  • However, the sources said the new rules would be effected by amending one of two existing directives, meaning they can be passed by a qualified majority, or 16 of the 28.
  • Juncker was Luxembourg’s finance minister and prime minister between 1995 and 2009.
  • The revenue threshold for companies ordered to report their earnings and taxes publicly has not yet been agreed. However, officials said the new rules will apply only to all “large” global multinationals, meaning US companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook will fall under its scope.
  • Tove Maria Ryding, tax justice coordinator for the European Network on Debt and Development , a group of 46 NGOs fighting for a fairer global financial system, said that if the commission chooses to limit public reporting to large companies – those with more than €750m in annual turnover – then 85% of the world’s multinationals would be unaffected.
  • “For a very long time big companies have been saying their tax affairs are a matter of competitive confidentiality,” he said. “We think it is incredibly important as a matter of principle that this information is made public.”
maddieireland334

How Texas's Campus-Carry Law Poses a Threat to Students' and Professors' Freedom of Spe... - 0 views

  • A faculty working group at the University of Houston recently offered these recommendations to professors preparing for Texas’s new campus-carry law, set to take effect August 1.
  • The situation to which these recommendations are alluding—gun violence in response to controversial or otherwise difficult classroom discussions—is at this point only a hypothetical worst-case scenario. But critics of the legislation are still appalled: To abide by the law, and keep everyone safe in classrooms with armed students, faculty may ultimately have to resort to self-censorship.
  • In the eight states that have already enacted such a law, none of the predicted nightmares have taken place—students drawing their weapons on professors who fail them, for example, or students firing on one another in heated classroom arguments.
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  • In fact, campus-carry supporters maintain that the law will keep the peace, enabling students and faculty to defend themselves effectively, and deter would-be shooters.
  • It turns out, for example, there were armed students at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on the day of its shooting last fall. Their presence did not deter the attack, nor did they halt it; the students wisely decided not to jump into the fray for fear it would compound the mayhem.
  • Stand Your Ground laws protect citizens from prosecution in cases where they feel threatened in public, and fire their weapons.
  • It’s unclear whether campus carry does and will in fact undermine the freedom of expression, but if there’s one place in society where the citizenry must not tolerate such threats, it’s the college classroom.
  • Few young adults have put significant thought into these kinds of issues; they must experiment with them to understand them properly and deeply, and to develop mature and critical views.
  • Will guns encourage speech and invite people to discussion and debate in the classroom?
  • In short, they argued that guns in the classroom pose an intolerable threat to free speech.
  • Gun owners have shot and killed unarmed citizens—and sought Stand Your Ground protections—in cases in which they misjudged or overestimated the threats before them.
  • In 2014, a Montana man invoked Stand Your Ground after he shot and killed an unarmed German exchange student trespassing in his garage.
  • One University of Houston professor, Maria Gonzalez, expressed her concerns over campus carry in the context of her own classes, which cover Marxist and Queer Theory.
  • Expansions of civil rights are almost always deeply unpopular at first; this was the case in the fight for women’s rights, suffrage for African Americans, and marriage equality for gays and lesbians.
  • I fear that campus carry will make students and faculty less inclined to engage in the critical intellectual work that must take place in the classroom, the courageous inquiry and experimentation American democracy requires.
  • It’s impossible to measure the cost of campus carry. But I wager that the cost will be evidenced in the mounting silence on college campuses, and the trepidation, timidity, and lack of creativity among new generations of voters. American democracy will be the poorer for it.
redavistinnell

David Bowie Dies at 69; He Transcended Music, Art and Fashion - The New York Times - 0 views

  • David Bowie Dies at 69; He Transcended Music, Art and Fashion
  • He died after an 18-month battle with cancer, according to a statement on Mr. Bowie’s social-media accounts.
  • He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,” that was a surreal sequel to his definitive 1976 film role, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”
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  • Mr. Bowie earned admiration and emulation across the musical spectrum — from rockers, balladeers, punks, hip-hop acts, creators of pop spectacles and even classical composers like Philip Glass, who based two symphonies on Mr. Bowie’s albums “Low” and “ ‘Heroes’.”
  • Yet throughout Mr. Bowie’s metamorphoses, he was always recognizable. His voice was widely imitated but always his own; his message was that there was always empathy beyond difference.
  • He was Ziggy Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.”
  • he arrival of MTV in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality and fashion. “Ashes to Ashes,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed “we know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “Let’s Dance,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.
  • He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and “Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.
  • Mr. Bowie largely left the spotlight after a heart attack in 2004 brought an abrupt end to a tour supporting his album “Reality.” The singer experienced pain during a performance at a German festival and sought treatment for what he believed was a shoulder injury; doctors then discovered a blocked artery.
  • And he collaborated with musicians like Brian Eno in the Berlin years and, in his final recordings, with the jazz musicians Maria Schneider and Donny McCaslin, introducing them to many new listeners.
malonema1

Puerto Rico to audit power contract for Montana firm - BBC News - 0 views

  • Storm-ravaged Puerto Rico has promised a full audit of a $300m (£227m) deal won by a small electrical firm with Trump administration connections.A US House of Representatives committee is also scrutinising the contract.The chief executive of Whitefish Energy Holdings in Montana knows US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, while one of its investors has donated to Donald Trump.
  • Puerto Rico, a US territory whose 3.4 million residents are US citizens, was struck by two hurricanes in September - Irma and, later, the more-destructive Maria. The second storm all but wiped out the island's power grid.
  • The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) placed the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in charge of "the immediate power restoration effort".When asked by BBC News about the contract, USACE spokeswoman Catalina Carrasco said on Monday "the US Army Corps of Engineers does not have any involvement with the contract between the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and Whitefish". She referred further questions to Prepa.
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  • A review of federal election data showed that a founding partner in HBC Investments, one of the two Texas firms that backs Whitefish Energy Holdings - had donated $2,700 to Mr Trump's presidential campaign, as well as $20,000 to a group that supported the White House bid. According to election data, the investor also gave $30,700 to the Republican National Committee in 2016 - after Mr Trump became the party's presumptive nominee.
  • When will power be restored?About 18% of customers have electricity as of Tuesday, according to the Pentagon.The Puerto Rican governor's goal is to have 30% restored by 30 October, 50% by 15 November and 95% a month later.
oliviaodon

Russian Women Muster for a 'Battalion of Death' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “When at last in the fever of change the Russian Revolution made anything possible,” the Mid-Week Pictorial reported 100 years ago, “a band of girls of adventurous disposition and endowed with the high courage of youth came forward and joined a ‘Battalion of Death’ to try to infuse the Russian Army with a new desire for victory.”
  • Their commander was Maria Bochkareva (spelled “Botchkareva” by The Times). Already a decorated soldier, she met in May 1917 with Alexander Kerensky, the head of the provisional government. To solve the problem of rampant desertion she proposed the creation of all-women battalions that “would shame the men into continuing the fight,”
  • It has been found that there is absolutely no kind of work, skilled or unskilled, that women cannot do; and it has been amazing how they have learned in months trades which were formerly supposed to require years to learn
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  • Three years later, after ratification of the 19th Amendment, universal suffrage was a reality.
jayhandwerk

Senate Approves $36.5 Billion Aid Package as Hurricane Costs Mount - The New York Times - 0 views

  • As the costs of this year’s hurricanes continue to rise, the Senate gave final approval on Tuesday to a $36.5 billion disaster relief package that includes a bailout of the financially troubled National Flood Insurance Program.
  • In addition to providing hurricane and wildfire funding, it would help Puerto Rico’s government avoid running out of cash in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
  • The measure approved on Tuesday is intended in part to prop up the National Flood Insurance Program, which is facing an influx of claims from this year’s hurricanes
anonymous

Leptospirosis: Suspected cases on rise in Puerto Rico - CNN - 0 views

  • Suspected leptospirosis cases rising in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria
  • The bacterial infection can be transmitted through drinking water or open wounds
  • Doctors on the island have expressed concerns about burgeoning health crises amid hospitals that are overwhelmed, undersupplied and sometimes burning hot
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  • people were drinking water from whatever sources they could find, such as rivers and creeks. If that water contains urine from an infected rat, those people will be at risk
manhefnawi

Spain | Facts, Culture, History, & Points of Interest - The early Bourbons, 1700-53 | B... - 0 views

  • Spain’s central problem in the 17th century had been to maintain what remained of its European possessions and to retain control of its American empire
  • In the 17th century the greatest threat had come from a land power, France, jealous of Habsburg power in Europe; in the 18th it was to come from a sea power, England, while the Austrian Habsburgs became the main continental enemy of Spain
  • In 1700 (by the will of the childless Charles II) the duc d’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, became Philip V of Spain
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  • Austria refused to recognize Philip, a Bourbon
  • a Bourbon king in Spain would disrupt the balance of power in Europe in favour of French hegemony
  • Spain under a Bourbon king as a political and commercial appendage of France
  • He wished to regenerate and strengthen his ally by a modern centralized administration
  • the allied armies of Britain and Austria invaded Spain in order to drive out Philip V and establish the “Austrian” candidate, the archduke Charles (later the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI), on the throne
  • An efficient administration had to be created in order to extract resources from Spain for the war effort and thus relieve pressure on the French treasury
  • Castile was ferociously loyal to the new dynasty throughout the war. The support of Castile and of France (until 1711) enabled Philip V to survive severe defeats
  • Spanish lawyer-administrators such as Melchor de Macanaz
  • They were supported by the queen, María Luisa of Savoy
  • The opponents of reform were those who suffered by it
  • Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia
  • a Castilian centralizing imposition in conflict with the local privileges, or fueros
  • the church, whose position was threatened by the ferocious and doctrinaire regalism of Macanaz
  • The disaffection of all these elements easily turned into opposition to Philip V as king
  • war taxation and war levies drove Catalonia and Aragon to revolt
  • When Philip V tried to attack Catalonia through Aragon, the Aragonese, in the name of their fueros, revolted against the passage of Castilian troops
  • When the archbishop of Valencia resisted attempts to make priests of doubtful loyalty appear before civil courts, the regalism of Macanaz was given full course
  • This was the last direct triumph of the reformers. With the death of Queen María Luisa in 1714
  • Macanaz was condemned by the Inquisition
  • the fueros were abolished and Catalonia was integrated into Spain
  • The “Italian” tendency was influenced by Philip V’s second wife, Isabella, and her desire to get Italian thrones for her sons.
  • The attempt to recover the possessions in Italy involved Spain in an unsuccessful war with Austria, which was now the great power in Italy
  • Nevertheless, Isabella’s persistence was rewarded when her son, the future King Charles III of Spain, became the duke of Parma in 1731 and king of Naples in 1733, relinquishing his claims to Parma
  • The “Italian” and “Atlantic” tendencies existed side by side in the late years of Philip V’s reign
  • It made possible an alliance of France and Spain against Austria, giving Isabella the opportunity to settle her second son, Philip, in an Italian duchy
  • Ferdinand VI (1746–59) was concerned with the domestic recovery of Spain rather than the extension of its power in Europe
  • the treaty merely strengthened Spain’s position in Italy when Philip became duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The Atlantic tendency became dominant under Ferdinand VI
  • Because Britain was Spain’s most significant enemy in the Americas (as Austria had been in Italy), Spain’s “natural” ally was France
  • hence a series of family pacts with France in 1733 and 1743
  • The American interest was reflected in increased trade
  • Charles III, Ferdinand’s successor, implemented dramatic reforms that followed along the path set by Ferdinand.
malonema1

FEMA Will Aid Hurricane-Ravaged Churches - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Tucked among the provisions in the budget bill passed by Congress on Friday are new rules about how FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works with houses of worship. According to the new law, religious nonprofits can’t be excluded from disaster aid just because of their religious nature, which had been the agency’s policy in certain contexts prior to January.
  • Last summer, when Hurricane Harvey ripped across islands in the Caribbean, Louisiana, and Texas, it left roughly $125 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—second in cost only to Hurricane Katrina. Worse, it was followed almost immediately by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which further devastated Florida, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and other areas.
  • While these new guidelines changed the situation for houses of worship, they were ultimately impermanent and vulnerable to revision under a new administration. That’s where Congress’s new budget bill comes in: It revised the text of the Stafford Act itself. Under the new law, which was signed by Trump on Friday, houses of worship can’t be excluded from aid provided to other nonprofits, including schools, hospitals, and elder-care facilities, just because they’re led by people “who share a religious faith or practice.” This includes money for the “repair, restoration, and replacement of damaged facilities.”
jayhandwerk

Death of investigative journalist sparks mass protests in Slovakia | World news | The G... - 0 views

  • Tens of thousands of Slovaks have rallied to demand the resignation of prime minister Robert Fico’s government following the murder of a journalist that has shocked the central European nation and stoked anger over sleaze in public life.
  • Organisers demanded a thorough investigation of Kuciak’s death and a “new trustworthy government”. “Politicians in power have lost our trust,” said protester Maria Kuliovska, a 30-year-old mother on maternity leave. “We don’t trust them to guarantee an independent investigation. They have failed to investigate all previous scandals.”
  • Kiska, Fico and parliamentary speaker Andrej Danko – the country’s three highest officials – failed to agree a planned written declaration to help defuse tensions in talks on Friday.
oliviaodon

A Very German Love Story: When Old Left and Far Right Share a Bedroom - The New York Times - 0 views

  • VIENNA — When she says identity, he hears exclusion.When he says diversity, she hears Islamization.He accuses her of forgetting history. She accuses him of obsessing with history. He calls her a racist. She calls him a national masochist.Helmut Lethen, 79, and Caroline Sommerfeld, 42, are both writers. They represent two generations and two intellectual camps in an ever more divided Germany. They are political enemies.And they are married.
  • It is a very German love story (though the couple reside in Austria, where the husband teaches), one neatly pegged to the 50th anniversary of the counterculture movement that remains a touchstone of global postwar history — and to the ascent of the counter-counterculture movement of today.
  • May 1968 was as important in Europe as it was in the United States, fueled similarly by a youth bulge, sexual liberation, disgust with the Vietnam War and general discontent with the era’s political establishment.And it spawned much the same trajectory for its baby boomers, from budding student revolutionaries to button-down liberal elites.Germany was no exception. And neither was Mr. Lethen.
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  • Ms. Sommerfeld, a philosopher in her own right, was swept up in another countercultural movement: In the summer of 2015, as hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived in Germany, she discovered the “New Right,” the intellectual spearhead of a nationalist movement that considers Islam and globalization existential threats.Her husband had celebrated the arrival of the refugees: “I think it is the first time in our cultural history that we have welcomed the foreign in this way,” he said.Ms. Sommerfeld, though, felt “anxious” and “repelled.”Today, she hopes her own fringe movement is tapping into a shifting zeitgeist that will reverberate in Germany and beyond, just as her husband’s did in its day.“We are the megaphone of a silent majority,” she claims.Mr. Lethen dismisses the analogy.“We were moved by a yearning for the world, we looked to the future,” he said. “They are moved by the yearning to go back to the womb of Teutonic tradition. It is a nostalgia for a past that never was.”
  • One recent evening Mr. Lethen called his wife and her far-right friends “spongers.”Their attack on liberal democracy was only possible because of liberal democracy, he reasoned. Fantasizing about an authoritarian regime like that in Hungary was akin to “sawing off the branch you’re sitting on.”Ms. Sommerfeld countered that the liberal mainstream consensus was itself authoritarian and did not even realize it. “You preach openness,” she said, “but you aren’t open to opinions you don’t like.”
  • Even the methods of the New Right borrow heavily from 1968: provoking with language; staging sit-ins; infiltrating book fairs with far-right publishing houses; breaking taboos like throwing a burqa over the statue of the Empress Maria Theresa in Vienna; forging international links to similar movements.And feeding in large part off the outrage and reaction of the other side.“Revolutionizing perceptions,” Ms. Sommerfeld calls it.The first time they really fought was in 2016 after a far-right politician insulted the German soccer player Jérôme Boateng, who is black.
  • “People consider Boateng a good footballer, but they don’t want to have him as a neighbor,” Alexander Gauland of the Alternative for Germany party had said. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story
  • Ms. Sommerfeld remarked she would not want him as a neighbor either. Her husband exploded and called her a racist. Advertisement Continue reading the main story It was a key moment in their relationship. “That is the biggest conflict,” he said.Once, Mr. Lethen was so exasperated that he wrote down five conditions as a basis for discussion between them. Three of them had to do with acknowledging the Holocaust and the crimes of Germans during World War II.She rejected them all. Not, she says, because she denies the Holocaust, but because she rejects the notion that it should define modern German identity.
  • She wants to move on from “this extreme collective pathological obsession with the Holocaust which informs the entire moral discourse of the ’68 generation,” she said.(If he was really so concerned about anti-Semitism, she added, he might want to look at refugees from Syria who were taught in school that the Holocaust never happened.)“I want to say: ‘Dear lefties, this obsession with those 12 years is all yours. You can stew in it but it’s something we don’t want to deal with every minute of the day,’” she said.
runlai_jiang

Boko Haram's Violent Push Puts New Heat on Nigerian President - WSJ - 0 views

  • Boko Haram’s abduction of more than 100 Nigerian schoolgirls last week is sending political shock waves through a key U.S. counterterrorism ally in Africa as President Muhammadu Buhari weighs whether to seek re-election.
  • won 2015 elections on a campaign to defeat the Islamist insurgency and liberate more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls, whose 2014 abduction prompted a global outcry.
  • The kidnapping of 110 girls from the Dapchi Government Girls Science and Technical College in northeastern Yobe state has emboldened his critics, who draw parallels to the Chibok abductions and the potential political fallout in Africa’s most-populous nation and biggest economy.
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  • None of the Dapchi girls has been found. Nigeria’s government on Tuesday said it had set up a probe led by senior security officials to investigate the abductions.
  • The U.S. State Department last week condemned the attack and emphasized its support for Nigeria’s efforts to counter terror groups.
  • The abduction could have an equally detrimental effect on Buhari’s electoral fortunes as Chibok had on his predecessor.”
  • But revelations after the abductions that the government recently withdrew security forces stationed to protect the town, saying they were needed elsewhere, has deepened anger in Dapchi.
  • The security situation is in a shambles—Boko Haram are calling the shots,” said Maria Urgbashi, who runs a food stall close to the Hilton hotel. Another trader, Umar Danjuma, agreed: “Buhari has done his best, but I don’t think his best is good enough to take Nigeria out this present hardship.”
  • remains the front-runner if he is healthy and popular enough to secure his governing APC party’s nomination.
  • The APC—which on Monday opened its annual congress—is deeply divided, as is the opposition PDP
  • The APC has the political and economic advantages of incumbency, and the president isn’t seen as personally corrupt.
  • Buhari has governed more like a king than a leader at the center of a sophisticated political structure,”
  • Buhari has repeatedly claimed to have technically defeated appears to be stubbornly resilient. After losing hundreds of square miles of territory to government forces, the jihadists have increased attacks in the past year, sending more than 90 children strapped with bombs into public places.
manhefnawi

Charles III of Spain: an Enlightened Despot, Part I | History Today - 0 views

  • there is one man who stands out from the general level of mediocrity, a King who tried with some success to arrest the decadence—Charles III, King of Spain, 1759-1788
  • This zeal for the general welfare of his people brought him into rough conflict with the two main powers in the land; the nobility and the clergy
  • Philip had to withdraw his abdication; but the bouts of insanity continued, and Isabella Farnese became de facto ruler of the country
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  • the Two Sicilies were happier under Charles than they had been for many a long century
  • he reversed his predecessor’s policy of neutrality and involved Spain in two expensive wars against Britain, for which she was ill-prepared; and he committed the country’s pride and strength to a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to recover Gibraltar
  • Born in Madrid in 1716, the son of Spain’s first Bourbon King, Philip V, and of his second wife, Isabella Farnese, he enjoyed in some respects a happy and normal childhood
  • to bend the foreign policy of Spain solely for the purpose of providing kingdoms for her offspring
  • I would like to deserve to be called Charles the Wise
  • Philip V inherited the melancholy, the longing for seclusion that at times overcame all reason
  • the King had become so deranged that he had to abdicate in favour of Louis
  • In October 1731 he set off for Italy to take over the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and to garrison Tuscany, an inheritance arranged for him by Isabella
  • the Austrians had to withdraw and Naples was ensured a separate existence under the Bourbons. Charles returned to his regime of hunting, building and reform.
  • Taking advantage of Austria’s preoccupations elsewhere in the war of the Polish Succession, Isabella decided to attack in Italy. The aim was to recover for Spain the provinces of the Two Sicilies which had been Spanish for two centuries until 1713 when they had been handed over to Austria under the Treaty of Utrecht. Spain declared war on Austria in December 1733, and Charles was made titular commander-in-chief of the 30,000 Spanish troops that landed at Leghorn
  • Austria withdrew without a fight and in 1734 Charles became King of the Two Sicilies, a territory now independent for the first time. But as part of the general settlement he had to give up his rights in the Duchies; and a commitment was made, which for him cast a shadow before, that the crowns of Spain and of the Two Sicilies would never be united
  • As in Spain later, Charles challenged and reduced the powers and privileges of the aristocracy and clergy. He reformed the archaic legal and economic systems. His aim was ‘to sweep away feudalism’,
  • Naples before him had been without industry or trade
  • Naples rose and flourished, a European capital of the arts
  • he astounded the aristocracy of Madrid by the purity of his life
  • His mother was once again meddling in Italian affairs, trying this time to exploit Vienna’s preoccupation with the war of the Austrian Succession to recover the central Italian duchies for Philip, her second surviving son. Charles was forced to send troops north to support his brother’s Spaniards who had landed under the Duke of Montemar
  • he nourished a grievance against Britain
  • he helped to defeat the Austrian troops at Velletri. He showed courage and leadership in the battle, having survived an attempt at capture
  • identify government not only with order and tradition, but with reform, and thereby helped to avert revolution.
  • This routine was shattered in 1759 by the death of his childless half-brother Ferdinand VI who had been King of Spain since 1746; a King who, true to family tradition, had gone mad
  • For months the kingdom of Spain languished under this rule
  • From the moment of his arrival in Madrid in December 1759, Charles showed that he was not prepared to follow in Ferdinand’s easy-going footsteps. Government was a serious business, and would be conducted by himself in the interests of the people
  • Italian influence came in with him like a tidal wave, sweeping over muph of Spanish life
  • But it was in administrative reform that the sharpest note of change was stock. The economy of the country was sagging, yet Charles badly needed more money—among other things to pay off his father’s debts, and to strengthen the almost non-existent defences of Spain and the Indies. A flow of decrees poured forth regulating commerce and providing for the collection of revenue.
  • cleaning as was done was carried out by private enterprise, by troops of sweepers
  • Charles set about a radical clean-up
  • Since reaching Madrid, Charles had been under pressure from both sides to join in the war between Britain and Prussia on the one hand, and France and Austria on the other, which had broken out in 1756
  • Ferdinand VI had managed to stay neutral and Maria Amalia had been a strong influence for peace, but after her death, Charles changed his policy
  • life-long grudge against the British for having taken Gibraltar from his father—a feeling compounded by Commodore Martin’s insult
  • if he joined the French alliance, might help him to recover Minorca and Gibraltar. So in August 1761 he agreed to the Family Compact with Louis XV which brought him into war against Britain
  • Spain was heavily defeated by the British fleet which captured Havana and Manila
  • British power had greatly increased, partly at the expense of Spain
  • The country was exhausted, and there was much resentment against the French. Charles personally would have liked to have shaken himself out of the family straight-jacket
  • But Louis XV dismissed Choiseul and wrote to Charles in his own hand: ‘My minister would have war, but I will not
  • Charles had no alternative but to capitulate to the British
  • the Madrid mutiny of 1766
  • The favour he had shown early on towards the bourgeoisie, his concern for the poor, and the reforming zeal of his Ministers had all helped to generate distrust amongst the nobility and clergy
  • the discontent did not stop with the rich
  • There was widespread public unrest caused by the effects of the war, prolonged drought and high prices. Far from assuaging this, Charles had aggravated it, particularly in Madrid
  • public indignation
  • Squillace was the main target of public wrath
  • Within a week the King capitulated and agreed to everything
  • the Jesuits the scapegoat for the mutiny. In 1767 they were expelled from Spain with ruthless efficiency
manhefnawi

Charles III | king of Spain | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • Charles was the first child of Philip V’s marriage with Isabella of Parma. Charles ruled as duke of Parma, by right of his mother, from 1732 to 1734 and then became king of Naples
  • he became king of Spain and resigned the crown of Naples to his third son, Ferdinand I
  • Charles III was convinced of his mission to reform Spain and make it once more a first-rate power
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  • His religious devotion was accompanied by a blameless personal life and a chaste loyalty to the memory of his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony, who died in 1760. On the other hand, he was so highly conscious of royal authority that he sometimes appeared more like a tyrant than an absolute monarch
  • Charles III improved the agencies of government through which the will of the crown could be imposed. He completed the process whereby individual ministers replaced the royal councils in the direction of affairs
  • He particularly resented the Jesuits, whose international organization and attachment to the papacy he regarded as an affront to his absolutism
  • But Charles’s opposition to papal jurisdiction in Spain also led him to curb the arbitrary powers of the Inquisition, while his desire for reform within the church caused him to appoint inquisitors general who preferred persuasion to force in ensuring religious conformity
  • Fearing that a British victory over France in the Seven Years’ War would upset the balance of colonial power, he signed the Family Compact with France—both countries were ruled by branches of the Bourbon family—in August 1761
  • By the end of his reign, Spain had abandoned its old commercial restrictions and, while still excluding foreigners, had opened up the entire empire to a commerce in which all its subjects and all its main ports could partake
  • Within these limits he led his country in a cultural and economic revival, and, when he died, he left Spain more prosperous than he had found it
Javier E

The Roots of Muslim Rage - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Islam is one of the world's great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that
  • Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance
  • It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period
  • At times this hatred goes beyond hostility to specific interests or actions or policies or even countries and becomes a rejection of Western civilization as such, not only what it does but what it is, and the principles and values that it practices and professes. These are indeed seen as innately evil, and those who promote or accept them as the "enemies of God.
  • It must surely be clear that what won support for such totally diverse doctrines was not Nazi race theory, which can have had little appeal for Arabs, or Soviet atheistic communism, which can have had little appeal for Muslims, but rather their common anti-Westernism
  • In the classical Islamic view, to which many Muslims are beginning to return, the world and all mankind are divided into two: the House of Islam, where the Muslim law and faith prevail, and the rest, known as the House of Unbelief or the House of War, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam
  • But the greater part of the world is still outside Islam, and even inside the Islamic lands, according to the view of the Muslim radicals, the faith of Islam has been undermined and the law of Islam has been abrogated. The obligation of holy war therefore begins at home and continues abroad, against the same infidel enemy.
  • Like every other civilization known to human history, the Muslim world in its heyday saw itself as the center of truth and enlightenment, surrounded by infidel barbarians whom it would in due course enlighten and civilize.
  • Among the components in the mood of anti-Westernism, and more especially of anti-Americanism, were certain intellectual influences coming from Europe
  • One of these was from Germany, where a negative view of America formed part of a school of thought by no means limited to the Nazis but including writers as diverse as Rainer Maria Rilke, Ernst Junger, and Martin Heidegger. In this perception, America was the ultimate example of civilization without culture
  • German philosophy, and particularly the philosophy of education, enjoyed a considerable vogue among Arab and some other Muslim intellectuals in the thirties and early forties, and this philosophic anti-Americanism was part of the message.
  • sophy, even more anti-American, took its place—the Soviet version of Marxism, with a denunciation of Western capitalism
  • Not all the ideas imported from the West by Western intruders or native Westernizers have been rejected. Some have been accepted by even the most radical Islamic fundamentalists, usually without acknowledgment of source, and suffering a sea change into something rarely rich but often strange
  • The cause most frequently adduced for anti-American feeling among Muslims today is American support for Israel. This support is certainly a factor of importance
  • Despite this monotheism, Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, was at various stages influenced, especially in Iran, by the dualist idea of a cosmic clash of good and evil, light and darkness, order and chaos, truth and falsehood, God and the Adversary, variously known as devil, Iblis, Satan, and by other names.
  • More than ever before it is Western capitalism and democracy that provide an authentic and attractive alternative to traditional ways of thought and life. Fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing in Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain or restore for their people.
  • Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States.
  • The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries.
  • Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.
  • The instinct of the masses is not false in locating the ultimate source of these cataclysmic changes in the West and in attributing the disruption of their old way of life to the impact of Western domination, Western influence, or Western precept and example.
  • And since the United States is the legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West, the United States has inherited the resulting grievances and become the focus for the pent-up hate and anger.
  • It should by now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them.
  • This is no less than a clash of civilizations—the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both
  • It is crucially important that we on our side should not be provoked into an equally historic but also equally irrational reaction against that rival.
  • Another explanation, more often heard from Muslim dissidents, attributes anti-American feeling to American support for hated regimes, seen as reactionary by radicals, as impious by conservatives, as corrupt and tyrannical by both. This accusation has some plausibility
  • One such was political freedom, with the associated notions and practices of representation, election, and constitutional government. Even the Islamic Republic of Iran has a written constitution and an elected assembly
  • Muslim states have also retained many of the cultural and social customs of the West and the symbols that express them, such as the form and style of male (and to a much lesser extent female) clothing, notably in the military.
  • The movement nowadays called fundamentalism is not the only Islamic tradition. There are others, more tolerant, more open, that helped to inspire the great achievements of Islamic civilization in the past, and we may hope that these other traditions will in time prevail
  • But before this issue is decided there will be a hard struggle, in which we of the West can do little or nothing
  • To this end we must strive to achieve a better appreciation of other religious and political cultures, through the study of their history, their literature, and their achievements
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