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Javier E

Opinion | The Israel-Hamas War Was Not Inevitable - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...israel-hamas-war.html

israel gaza choices history policy politics crisis

shared by Javier E on 30 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • For the last few years, though, I’ve felt the opposite — that so much of my work was decrying bad choices made by big players
  • Vladimir Putin’s tightening dictatorship and aggression, culminating in his brutal invasion of Ukraine; Xi Jinping’s reversal of China’s opening; Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history; the cascading effects of climate change; the loss of control over America’s southern border; and, maybe most ominously, an authoritarian drift, not only in European countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary but in America’s own Republican Party as well.
  • If I think about the three pillars that have stabilized the world since I became a journalist in 1978 — a strong America committed to protecting a liberal global order with the help of healthy multilateral institutions like NATO, a steadily growing China always there to buoy the world economy, and mostly stable borders in Europe and the developing world — all three are being shaken by big choices by big players over the last decade
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  • This is triggering a U.S.-China cold war, mass migrations from south to north and an America that has become more unreliable than indispensable.
  • that’s not the half of it. Because now that advanced military technologies like drones are readily available, smaller players can wield much more power and project it more widely than ever before, enabling even their bad choices to shake the world
  • This is why I referred to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as our first true world war, and why I feel that Hamas’s war with Israel is in some ways our second true world war.
  • They are being fought on both physical battlefields and digital ones, with huge global reach and implications.
  • Indeed, in today’s tightly wired world, it is possible that the war over the Gaza Strip — which is roughly twice the size of Washington, D.C. — could decide the next president in Washington, D.C., as some young Democrats abandon President Biden because of his support for Israel.
  • before we become too pessimistic, let us remember that these choices are just that: choices. There was nothing inevitable or foreordained about them
  • Gorbachev, Deng, Anwar el-Sadat, Menachem Begin, George H.W. Bush and Volodymyr Zelensky, to name but a few, faced excruciating choices, but they chose forks in the road that led to a safer and more prosperous world, at least for a time
  • What is the essential ingredient that Dubai has and Gaza lacks? Because both began, in one sense, as the convergence of sand and seawater at crucial intersections of the world.
  • The short answer is visionary leadership.Dubai has benefited from two generations of monarchs in the United Arab Emirates who had a powerful vision of how the U.A.E. in general and the emirate of Dubai in particular could choose to be Arab, modern, pluralistic, globalized and embracing of a moderate interpretation of Islam
  • Their formula incorporates a radical openness to the world, an emphasis on free markets and education, a ban on extremist political Islam, relatively little corruption, a strong rule of law promulgated from the top down and a relentless commitment to economic diversification, talent recruitment and development.
  • Any of Dubai’s neighbors — Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Iran and Saudi Arabia — could have done the same with their similar coastlines, but it was the U.A.E. that pulled it off by making the choices it made.
  • Compare that with Gaza, where the role models today are Hamas martyrs in its endless war with Israel.
  • Among the most ignorant and vile things that have been said about this Gaza war is that Hamas had no choice — that its wars with Israel, culminating on Oct. 7 with a murderous rampage, the kidnappings of Israelis as young as 10 months and as old as 86 and the rape of Israeli women, could somehow be excused as a justifiable jailbreak by pent-up males.
  • Let’s go to the videotape: In September 2005, Ariel Sharon completed a unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli forces and settlements from Gaza, which Israel occupied in the 1967 war. In short order, Hamas began attacking the crossing points between Gaza and Israel to show that even if Israel was gone, the resistance movement wasn’t over; these crossing points were a lifeline for commerce and jobs, and Israel eventually reduced the number of crossings from six to two.
  • In January 2006, the Palestinians held elections hoping to give the Palestinian Authority legitimacy to run Gaza and the West Bank. There was a debate among Israeli, Palestinian and Bush administration officials over whether Hamas should be allowed to run in the elections — because it had rejected the Oslo peace accords with Israel.
  • Yossi Beilin, one of the Israeli architects of Oslo, told me that he and others argued that Hamas should not be allowed to run, as did many members of Fatah, Arafat’s group, who had embraced Oslo and recognized Israel. But the Bush team insisted that Hamas be permitted to run without embracing Oslo, hoping that it would lose and this would be its ultimate refutation.
  • Fatah ran unrealistically high numbers of candidates in many districts, dividing the vote, while the more disciplined Hamas ran carefully targeted slates and managed to win the parliamentary majority.
  • Hamas then faced a critical choice: Now that it controlled the Palestinian parliament, it could work within the Oslo Accords and the Paris protocol that governed economic ties between Israel, Gaza and the West Bank — or not.
  • Hamas chose not to — making a clash between Hamas and Fatah, which supported Oslo, inevitable
  • That led to the first Israeli economic blockade of Gaza — and what would be 22 years of on-and-off Hamas rocket attacks, Israeli checkpoint openings and closings, wars and cease-fires, all culminating on Oct. 7.
  • These were fateful choices. Once Sharon pulled Israel out of Gaza, Palestinians were left, for the first time ever, with total control over a piece of land. Yes, it was an impoverished slice of sand and coastal seawater, with some agricultural areas. And it was not the ancestral home of most of its residents. But it was theirs to build anything they wanted.
  • Hamas had a choice: to replicate Dubai in 2023 or replicate Hanoi in 1968. It chose to replicate Hanoi, whose Củ Chi tunnel network served as the launchpad for the ’68 Tet offensive.
  • Hamas is not simply engaged in some pure-as-the-driven-snow anticolonial struggle against Israel. Only Hamas’s useful idiots on U.S. college campuses would believe that.
  • Hamas is engaged in a raw power struggle with Fatah over who will control Gaza and the West Bank, and it’s engaged in a power struggle in the region — alongside other pro-Muslim Brotherhood parties and regimes (like Turkey and Qatar) — against pro-Western monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and the U.A.E. and military-led regimes like Egypt’s.
  • In that struggle, Hamas wanted Gaza isolated and in conflict with Israel because that allowed Hamas to maintain its iron-fisted political and Islamist grip over the strip, foregoing elections and controlling all the smuggling routes in and out, which funded its tunnels and war machine and the lifestyle of its leaders and loyalists
  • The only exit from this mutually assured destruction is to bring in some transformed version of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — or a whole new P.L.O.-appointed government of Palestinian technocrats — in partnership with moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. But when I raise that with many Israelis right now, they tell me, “Tom, it’s not the time. No one wants to hear it.”
  • please, spare me the Harvard Yard nonsense that this war is all about the innocent, colonized oppressed and the evil, colonizing oppressors; that Israel alone was responsible for the isolation of Gaza; and that the only choice Hamas had for years was to create an underground “skyline” of tunnels up to 230 feet deep (contra Dubai) and that its only choice on Oct. 7 was martyrdom.
  • But our story about agency and choices does not stop there. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister — 16 years — also made choices. And even before this war, he made terrible ones — for Israel and for Jews all over the world.
  • Before this war, Netanyahu actively worked to keep the Palestinians divided and weak by strengthening Hamas in Gaza with billions of dollars from Qatar, while simultaneously working to discredit and delegitimize the more moderate Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, committed to Oslo and nonviolence in the West Bank.
  • Netanyahu’s goal has always been to destroy the Oslo option once and for all. In that, Bibi and Hamas have always needed each other: Bibi to tell the United States and Israelis that he had no choice, and Hamas to tell Gazans and its new and naïve supporters around the world that the Palestinians’ only choice was armed struggle led by Hamas.
  • This is now a common strategy for consolidating and holding power forever by a single political faction and disguising it with an ideology of resistance. It’s no wonder they all support one another.
  • Don’t they get it? Netanyahu’s greatest political achievement has been to persuade Israelis and the world that it’s never the right time to talk about the morally corrosive occupation and how to help build a credible Palestinian partner to take it off Israel’s hands.
  • He and the settlers wore everyone down. When I covered the State Department in the early 1990s, West Bank settlements were routinely described by U.S. officials as “obstacles to peace.” But that phrase was gradually dropped. The Trump administration even decided to stop calling the West Bank “occupied” territory.
  • Israel is being surrounded by what I call Iran’s landcraft carriers (as opposed to our aircraft carriers): Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq. Iran is squeezing Israel into a multifront war with its proxies. I truly worry for Israel.
  • But Israel will have neither the sympathy of the world that it needs nor the multiple allies it needs to confront this Iranian octopus, nor the Palestinian partners it needs to govern any post-Hamas Gaza, nor the lasting support of its best friend in the world, Joe Biden, unless it is ready to choose a long-term pathway for separating from the Palestinians with an improved, legitimate Palestinian partner.
  • For all these reasons, if Netanyahu keeps refusing because, once again, politically, the time is not right for him, Biden will have to choose, too — between America’s interests and Netanyahu’s.
  • In sum, this war is so ugly, deadly and painful, it is no wonder that so many Palestinians and Israelis want to just focus on survival and not on any of the choices that got them here
  • The Haaretz writer Dahlia Scheindlin put it beautifully in a recent essay:The situation today is so terrible that people run from reality as they run from rockets — and hide in the shelter of their blind spots. It’s pointless to wag fingers. The only thing left to do is try and change that reality.
lilyrashkind

How Educators Around the World Are Teaching the Russia-Ukraine War - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ng-the-russia-ukraine-war.html

educators world teaching war

shared by lilyrashkind on 31 May 22 - No Cached
  • Please note: This is a special Lesson of the Day that brings together many different sources and ideas. Unlike our usual format, this is written to teachers, not students.
  • Then, in an extensive Going Further section, we have rounded up many contributions from teachers in the United States across subjects and levels who describe ways they are helping their students understand this conflict and its roots and effects.We hope that no matter what you teach, there is something here you can use.
  • Do Volodymyr’s actions surprise you? Why do you think The Times might have included this specific detail of this family’s story? What do you think it says about the power and importance of education, and the role it plays in young people’s lives, even amidst an ongoing war?
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  • Now, students will participate in a jigsaw activity. Below are three articles about three different student populations that have been affected by the war in Ukraine. Assign each student, or have them choose, one of the articles to become an “expert” in. Make sure there are about an even number of students reading each article.
  • 5. What are some of the fears or challenges teachers themselves are facing because of the war?6. You’ve read one of three articles about what education is like for a specific group of students. What role is school serving for the group you read about? Is there anything more schools could be doing to support these young people? If so, what and why?
  • What role can schools serve, even during war? How important do you think education is in a time like this? Do you believe educators should teach about what is happening in Ukraine? How do you think they should handle this sensitive subject?
  • Many teachers answered our call in mid-March to tell us how they were addressing the war in their classrooms. Here are some responses that show the many ways, large and small, that educators have sought to help their students understand the conflict and its roots, the plight of the Ukrainian people, the role of the United States and more. They have been edited for length and clarity.
  • I was shocked at how hungrily they soaked up the information, especially once Russia officially invaded Ukraine. These 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds wanted to learn more about what was happening in their world in the “right way” — via vetted news sources, exactly as you mentioned. After each episode, we discussed positives that we heard, we shared “wonders” (the things that we want to find more information on), and we shared one word to summarize the new information.
  • That day, my students’ remarks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine fit into five categories: empathy for the people of Ukraine, fear of World War III, criticism of Putin, criticism of memes that treat the invasion as a joke, and geopolitical curiosity.
  • Students then created infographics on Canva to illustrate their learning. Synthesizing that learning into smaller, digestible data bites helped them to make sense of such large, challenging concepts. Here are four examples of their work.
  • When discussing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that consisted of orienting everyone to where this conflict is happening geographically and what cities and countries are involved. We spoke about the history of NATO, key leaders, the concept of trade and supply chains — basically defining the common vocabulary and giving everyone the same tools for discussion.
  • Teaching about Russia and Ukraine this spring encompassed history, vocabulary, maps, graphs, and photo analysis. We began with a brainstorm about what students had heard about what was happening with Ukraine and Russia. Then students moved on to define terms like Soviet Union, Cold War and NATO, and worked together to combine their definitions into one “best definition.” This vocabulary work set them up to read the Times article about what was happening in Ukraine as Russia invaded, annotating in the
  • As part of a larger project on the theme of “nostalgia,” students were asked to think of a family recipe that made them nostalgic. But we also talked about the food that brings us comfort no matter where we find ourselves. To help students connect to the Ukrainian people, we talked about the comforts of borscht with information from this article about a chef who is leading a drive to recognize the soup as a Ukrainian cultural heritage.
  • That’s how I realized that my students needed to talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result, I took the following steps the next day, with positive results.
  • Part of what has made the coverage of the war in Ukraine compelling is my students seeing visual inversions of their own lives. There’s a photo of a grandmother, but she’s holding an assault rifle. There are teenagers, not much older than they are, running drills. There’s a teacher, but instead of trying to manage a class, she’s barely managing to hold it together.
  • What do you notice about how the person is framed in the photograph?What is the posture? Where is their gaze?Imagine what they might be thinking as they gaze out of the frame.
  • This is an excellent piece to use when considering primary and secondary audiences, purpose, appeals, and overall effectiveness. It is also a story we can track to see if the speech moves anyone in Congress to change their position on the type of support to provide Ukraine.
  • Does the American government favor any countries over other countries? What is the policy that guides the American government when dealing with other countries?How does the American government handle disagreements with other countries?Which countries are American allies, or friends?Which are America’s traditional enemies? How is this determined? Does that history matter?
  • How does President Biden “create the enemy?” Why should America follow this course of action? What is he suggesting will happen if America does not? What does America stand to gain from this plan? Are potential losses discussed?Note patterns in rhetorical appeals, diction, values and themes. What assumptions does President Biden make about the American character or national identity? In what ways do American mythologies seem to bolster a “single story” of foreign policy?
  • Begins.” Students took notes on the use of ethos, pathos and logos in the construction of the podcast. They also responded to the importance of having free and independent journalists report on the war.
  • “We Lived Happily During the War,” “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Dancing.”
  • E.I.H.R. cultivates partnerships among educators globally to create materials and deliver training based on best practices in Holocaust and human rights education. Together we deliver content and strategies for teaching conflict history and prevention, and sustainable peace. They have been building resources for teachers about Ukraine since Feb. 24, including this webinar on Understanding the Crisis in Ukraine from March 19.
criscimagnael

Why China Is Miles Ahead in a Pacific Race for Influence - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ina-united-states-pacific.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Eight years after Xi Jinping visited Fiji, offering Pacific Island nations a ride on “China’s express train of development,” Beijing is fully entrenched, its power irrepressible if not always embraced. And that has left the United States playing catch-up in a vital strategic arena.
  • All over the Pacific, Beijing’s plans have become more ambitious, more visible — and more divisive. China is no longer just probing for opportunities in the island chains that played a critical role in Japan’s strategic planning before World War II
  • hina is seeking to bind the vast region together in agreements for greater access to its land, seas and digital infrastructure, while promising development, scholarships and training in return.
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  • From Papua New Guinea to Palau, the countries of the region have jurisdiction over an area of ocean three times as large as the continental United States, stretching from just south of Hawaii to exclusive economic zones butting up against Australia, Japan and the Philippines.
  • Chinese fishing fleets already dominate the seas between the area’s roughly 30,000 islands, seizing huge hauls of tuna while occasionally sharing intelligence on the movements of the U.S. Navy. If China can add ports, airports and outposts for satellite communications — all of which are edging closer to reality in some Pacific Island nations — it could help in intercepting communications, blocking shipping lanes and engaging in space combat.
  • Mr. Wang signed several new agreements, including a security deal that gives China the power to send security forces to quell unrest or protect Chinese investments, and possibly to build a port for commercial and military use.
  • Chinese officials deny that’s the plan. But the deal — along with others in the Solomons and Kiribati whose details have not been disclosed — has been made possible because of something else that’s visible and much-discussed in the Pacific: a longstanding lack of American urgency, innovation and resources.
  • “There’s a lot of talk,” said Sandra Tarte, the head of the government and international affairs department at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. “And not much real substance.”
  • The Yanks, it is often said, used to be more productive. Many of the airports and hospitals still in use across the Pacific were built by the United States and its allies during World War II.
  • “The United States doesn’t have a significant presence in the Pacific at all,” said Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University in New Zealand. “I’m always shocked that in Washington they think they have a significant presence when they just don’t.”
  • American officials point out that the United States does have big military bases in Guam, along with close ties to countries like the Marshall Islands. And in February, Antony J. Blinken became the first secretary of state in 36 years to visit Fiji, where he announced that the United States would reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands and engage more on issues like illegal fishing and climate change.
  • Mr. Blinken said last week that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” He promised that the United States would “shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”
  • The start-up embassy in the Solomons also looks less impressive on closer inspection. Replacing an embassy that closed in the 1990s during America’s post-Cold War withdrawal, the outpost will begin in leased office space with two U.S. staff members and five local hires.
  • The American Embassy, by contrast, sits on a hillside far from downtown Suva in a heavily fortified compound. It covers five nations (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu), doesn’t have a full-time ambassador — President Biden nominated someone only last week — and is known for being understaffed.
  • Joseph Veramu, a former U.N. consultant who runs Integrity Fiji, which focuses on values like transparency, said in an interview in Suva that he had invited U.S. embassy officials to events five or six times in recent years. Only once did someone come — without saying much, and refusing to allow photos.
  • But what they do want, and what China seems better at providing right now, is consistent engagement and capacity building.
  • While the United States has shown off Coast Guard vessels it is using to police illegal fishing, China is planning to build maritime transportation hubs and high-tech law enforcement centers where Chinese officers can provide expertise and equipment.
  • “China has always maintained that big and small countries are all equals,” Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader, said in a written message to Pacific foreign ministers on Monday. “No matter how international circumstances fluctuate, China will always be a good friend.”
  • Clearly, China intends to keep emphasizing that friendship means building stuff and offering promises of prosperity, while expecting news censorship, resource access and security opportunities in exchange.
  • The pressing question in this part of the world is: What does friendship mean to America?
lilyrashkind

Russia Says U.S. 'Adding Fuel to the Fire' by Sending Rockets to Ukraine | World News |... - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...nced-arms-shipments-to-ukraine

russia

shared by lilyrashkind on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • LONDON (Reuters) - Russia on Wednesday sharply criticised a U.S. decision to supply advanced rocket systems and munitions to Ukraine, warning of an increased risk of direct confrontation with Washington.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters: "We believe that the United States is purposefully and diligently adding fuel to the fire."
  • U.S. President Joe Biden has agreed to provide Ukraine with advanced rocket systems that can strike with precision at long-range Russian targets as part of a new U.S. package to help Kyiv defend itself in the three-month-old war that began with Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.Washington agreed to supply the rockets, which are capable of hitting targets as far away as 80 km (50 miles), after Ukraine gave "assurances" they will not use the missiles to strike inside Russia itself, senior U.S. officials said.
  • Ukrainian officials have been asking allies for longer-range missile systems that can fire a barrage of rockets hundreds of miles away, in the hopes of turning the tide of the war.U.S. President Joe Biden wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times: "We have moved quickly to send Ukraine a significant amount of weaponry and ammunition so that it can fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table."Earlier, state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying, when asked about the prospect of a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia: "Any arms shipments that continue, that are on the rise, increase the risks of such a development."
criscimagnael

U.S. Aims to Constrain China by Shaping Its Environment, Blinken Says - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...china-policy-biden.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,”
  • “We can’t rely on Beijing to change its trajectory,” he said. “So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”
  • On Feb. 4, almost three weeks before the invasion, President Vladimir V. Putin met with President Xi Jinping in Beijing as their two governments issued a 5,000-word statement announcing a “no limits” partnership that aims to oppose the international diplomatic and economic systems overseen by the United States and its allies. Since the war began, the Chinese government has given Russia diplomatic support by reiterating Mr. Putin’s criticisms of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories that undermine the United States and Ukraine.
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  • In private conversations, Chinese officials have expressed concern about the emphasis on regional alliances under Mr. Biden and their potential to hem in China.
  • Mr. Blinken’s speech revolved around the slogan for the Biden strategy: “Invest, Align and Compete.” The partnerships fall under the “align” part. “Invest” refers to pouring resources into the United States — administration officials point to the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year as an example. And “compete” refers to the rivalry with China, a framing the Trump administration also promoted.
  • “Beijing wants to put itself at the center of global innovation and manufacturing, increase other countries’ technological dependence, and then use that dependence to impose its foreign policy preferences,” Mr. Blinken said. “And Beijing is going to great lengths to win this contest — for example, taking advantage of the openness of our economies to spy, to hack, to steal technology and know-how to advance its military innovation and entrench its surveillance state.”
  • Mr. Blinken also noted the human rights abuses, repression of ethnic minorities and quashing of free speech and assembly by the Communist Party in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. In recent years, those issues have galvanized greater animus toward China among Democratic and Republican politicians and policymakers. “We’ll continue to raise these issues and call for change,” he said.
  • Mr. Blinken said it was China’s recent actions toward Taiwan — trying to sever the island’s diplomatic and international ties and sending fighter jets over the area — that are “deeply destabilizing.”
  • “Arguably no country on earth has benefited more from that than China,” he said. “But rather than using its power to reinforce and revitalize the laws, agreements, principles and institutions that enabled its success, so other countries can benefit from them too, Beijing is undermining it.”
  • “For too long, Chinese companies have enjoyed far greater access to our markets than our companies have in China,” Mr. Blinken said.” This lack of reciprocity is unacceptable and it’s unsustainable.”
  • But skeptics have said Washington’s ability to shape trade in the Asia-Pacific region may be limited because the framework is not a traditional trade agreement that offers countries reductions in tariffs and more access to the lucrative American market — a move that would be politically unpopular in the United States.
  • “We can stay vigilant about our national security without closing our doors,” he said. “Racism and hate have no place in a nation built by generations of immigrants to fulfill the promise of opportunity for all.”
criscimagnael

Kevin McCarthy hammers Biden admin's agenda as gas prices surge: 'Create more supply' |... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...carthy-biden-energy-gas-prices

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed the Biden administration amid rampant inflation, arguing the White House caused the surge in prices as Americans battle sky-high costs at the pump.
  • It weakens America. Think about, this is our reserves. In case we got in trouble, we can actually create more diesel. We can create more natural gas. It not only harms America, it harms the world by not being safe.
  • He emboldened Putin because Putin got more money to put into his own war.
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  • If America has more jobs, America energy independent, America supplying our allies with natural gas. And also think of this: American natural gas is 41% cleaner than Russian natural gas, so the environment would be safer if America was able to produce it.
  • He has done every decision wrong in the process of going and to use our reserves now for in the future, why doesn't he create more supply to make the price go down? That would be the answer.
lilyrashkind

Biden Struggles to Defend His Presidency Amid Setbacks | Politics | US News - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...d-his-presidency-amid-setbacks

biden presidency US politics

shared by lilyrashkind on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • But those plans, experts say, may be just that – plans and proposals, many of which need unlikely approval by an uncooperative Congress or are subject to the whims of hostile foreign leaders, unpredictable markets or other forces beyond any president's control.
  • "Did you anticipate that the closure of the Abbott facility, because it was not producing the quality that was necessary, that it would have this profound effect immediately, or did it take a little time?" Biden asked. The question appeared directed at criticisms that the administration did not work better, earlier, to head off shortages when Abbott was forced to recall contaminated formula.The public relations effort, however, may not be enough to boost Biden's low approval ratings in time to help Democrats in a challenging midterm election season this fall. And in many cases, Biden's ability to fix the problems bedeviling the administration is limited.
  • On COVID-19, Biden has indeed ramped up testing and vaccinations during his term, Perry says. But he can't fight Mother Nature and human nature, she adds, noting that public impatience with masking and the virus's mutations aren't things he can control.On Ukraine, Biden has repeatedly noted his success in strengthening the NATO alliance. But "has he ended the war? No. That's something a president can't do," Perry adds. Aside from the threat of the war itself, the ongoing Russian invasion means higher gas prices as well, since the U.S. and its allies have imposed embargoes on Russian energy.
criscimagnael

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nts-in-the-war-in-ukraine.html

shared by criscimagnael on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • As the United States moved to ship ever more advanced weapon systems to Ukraine to aid it in its fight to thwart Russia’s eastern offensive, Moscow said the latest move by President Biden threatened to escalate the war in dangerous ways.
  • the most powerful provided since the start of the war — was the United States “deliberately and painstakingly pouring gasoline on the fire.”
  • “What it boils down to is we’re going to probably give Ukraine the most limited of the options as far as range,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the retired supreme allied commander for Europe, said at a virtual security event on Wednesday, referring to the rocket system. “That’s unfortunate.”
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  • On Wednesday, Russian forces advanced in street fighting in the ruins of the city of Sievierodonetsk, a target of their offensive.
  • Germany on Wednesday promised to supply Ukraine with two more potentially significant donations of heavy weapons
criscimagnael

The Race to Free Ukraine's Stranded Grain - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ukraine-grain-shortages.html

shared by criscimagnael on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • The Baltic Sea port has silos to store plenty of grain, railway lines to transport it there from Ukraine, where it has been trapped by the war, and a deep harbor ready for ships that can take it to Egypt, Yemen and other countries in desperate need of food.
  • “Starvation is near,
  • Belarus controls the railway lines offering the most direct, cheapest and fastest route for large volumes of grain out of Ukraine to Klaipeda and other Baltic ports.
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  • But using them would mean cutting a deal with a brutal leader closely allied with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, underscoring the painful moral and political decisions that now confront Western leaders as they scramble to avert a global food crisis.
  • The Lithuania route appears to be the most promising for getting food quickly to areas like the Middle East and Africa that need it the most, even if it is also a long shot.
  • “This is a decision that politicians need to take not me,” Mr. Latakas, the Klaipeda port director, said. “It is up to them to decide what is most important.”
  • Western nations like the United States, as well as Ukraine, oppose lifting sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion but have not ruled out a deal with Belarus.
  • The war has halted those shipments, leaving around 25 million tons of grain, according to U.N. estimates, from last year’s harvest stranded in silos and at risk of rotting if it is not moved soon. A further 50 million tons is expected to be harvested in coming months. The grain elevators in Ukraine that have not been damaged or destroyed by shelling are quickly filling up. Soon, there will be no room left to store the incoming harvest.
  • Ukraine’s foreign minister, said severe bottlenecks meant that the existing routes through Poland and Romania “can provide only limited alleviation of the food crisis” given the volumes that need to be moved.
  • Warning of an approaching “hurricane of hunger,” the head of the United Nations, António Guterres, has sought to negotiate a deal under which Ukrainian grain would be transported out of the country by ship or train, and in exchange Russia and Belarus would sell fertilizer products to the global market without the threat of sanctions.
  • That means that Western governments and Ukraine are left to try out a range of possible solutions fraught with problems. Test runs of trains carrying grain from Ukraine through Poland to Lithuania, for example, have taken three weeks because of different track gauges in neighboring countries, requiring cargos to be loaded and unloaded multiples times.
  • Turkey has proposed using its ships to transport grain from Odesa, which, in addition to getting Ukraine to demine the port, would require an agreement from Russia not to hinder vessels.
  • But faced with the considerable challenges of executing such a plan, the best option for getting large quantities of Ukrainian grain to hungry people is probably by rail through Belarus to Klaipeda and other Baltic ports in Latvia and Estonia.That “won’t solve everything, but it would significantly alleviate the situation,”
  • Ukraine is opposed to any easing of sanctions against Russia but, increasingly desperate to move grain trapped by the war, is more open to the idea of a temporary easing of sanctions against Belarusian potash.
  • Roman Slaston, the head of Ukraine’s main agricultural lobby, said one challenge was that many rail connections through Belarus had been blown up by Belarusian railway employees sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.
  • “Given that the Russian Army is still in Belarus, who is going to pay to repair that now?” Mr. Slaston asked. “This is like some kind of madness.”
  • We don’t grow food to store it,” he said. “People in Africa won’t be fed by our grain sitting in bags in our fields.”
Javier E

David Frum: The Enduring Lessons of the 'Axis of Evil' Speech - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...621397

axis speech iraq

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • four core ideas in the speech have survived as enduring foundations of U.S. security policy.
  • The speech’s first key idea was that even after 9/11, the most important threats to the United States still came from hostile states.
  • A second idea was that these hostile states and their terrorist allies presented an overlapping threat.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Bush’s third big idea in the 2002 speech was to downgrade the importance of Afghanistan to the United States
  • The fourth core idea in the speech was a determination to regard terrorism as a tool of power.
kennyn-77

Ukraine-Russia crisis: What to know about rising fear of war | AP News - 0 views

apnews.com/...ccc883cce24b0199118549911013cc

war ukraine russia

shared by kennyn-77 on 04 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • The U.S. has obtained intelligence indicating that the Russian government has developed a plan to stage a fake Ukrainian attack to establish a pretext for military action, according to a senior Biden administration official.
  • U.S. intelligence indicates that the Russian government has developed a plan to stage a false attack that would depict the Ukrainian military or its intelligence forces assaulting Russian territory, a senior Biden administration official said Thursday.
  • Erdogan has again offered to host talks between Moscow and Kyiv aimed at easing tensions that have sparked fears of war.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The plan includes production of a graphic propaganda video that would show staged explosions and would use corpses and actors depicting grieving mourners, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.The plan, which was revealed in declassified intelligence shared with Ukrainian officials and European allies in recent days, is the latest allegation by the U.S. and Britain that Russia is plotting to use a false pretext to go to war against Ukraine.
  • He reiterated Turkey’s commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
  • Meanwhile, Putin met with Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez in Moscow and then spoke by phone to Macron, who had a call Wednesday night with U.S. President Joe Biden. Macron then spoke with Zelenskyy.
  • The NATO chief said Russian forces in Belarus are likely to rise to 30,000, including special forces, supported by fighter jets and missiles.
  • French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed Thursday that Paris is sending troop reinforcements to Romania under NATO command, as part of France’s commitment to the alliance and its member states in Eastern Europe.
  • He did not say how many French soldiers will be deployed. The announcement came a day after the U.S. said it was moving troops stationed in Germany to Romania.
  • Ukraine’s defense minister is urging calm, saying the likelihood of a Russian invasion was “low.”Oleksii Reznikov said the threat of attack has loomed over the country since 2014, the year Russia seized Crimea, but he added: “There are no grounds for panic, fear, flight or packing of bags.”The minister said there are about 115,000 Russian troops near Ukraine’s border, including those deployed to Belarus for war games, but he said no battle groups have been detected along Ukraine’s border with Belarus. He also reiterated earlier assurances that Kyiv doesn’t plan to attack rebel-held areas in the war-torn east of Ukraine or Crimea — something the Kremlin has accused Kyiv of plotting.
  • An ice hockey fan, Putin will also attend Friday’s opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.His talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday will be their first face-to-face since 2019 and will help cement a strong personal relationship that has been a key factor behind a growing partnership between the two former Communist rivals.
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.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • 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

Putin Seems to Sideline Advisers on Ukraine, Taking a Political Risk - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...putin-ukraine-advisers.html

putin power base

shared by Javier E on 27 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • There was low public support for war in Ukraine even before casualties began to mount. A long-running academic survey found in December that only 8 percent of Russians supported a military conflict against Ukraine, and only 9 percent thought that Russia should arm Ukrainian separatists.
  • Public anger over war can also increase elites’ perception that a leader is no longer an effective protector of their interests. And if the United States and Europe manage to impose effective sanctions on members of Mr. Putin’s elite coalition, that could make the war costly for them as individuals, as well as risky for Russia.
  • Elite dissatisfaction could affect his responsiveness to targeted sanctions, for instance, or the constraints he might face on resources for the conflict in Ukraine. It also could affect whether he has the political capital to stay the course if domestic opposition grows.
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  • “Two-thirds of authoritarian leaders are removed by their own allies,” Dr. Popova said. “If he tightens the screws too much, if he tries to really increase his power at the expense of the ruling authoritarian coalition, then he is threatening his own position.”
Javier E

Putin's war and the Chaos Climbers - by Noah Smith - 0 views

noahpinion.substack.com/...ins-war-and-the-chaos-climbers

opportunism careerism ambition elite rivalry crisis culture politics right-wing leftist

shared by Javier E on 21 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The title of this post is a reference to a line from the TV show Game of Thrones, where the scheming nobleman Littlefinger declares that “Chaos is a ladder.” By disrupting the stability of the current regime, he intends to create space to move up in the world.
  • I see many of the above-mentioned figures on both the Right and the Left as Chaos Climbers — people who believe that the travails of the liberal order built after World War 2 represent an opening for their own fringe ideologies to advance their power.
  • it’s just a description of what has been actually happening over the last decade.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • If Putin defeats the Ukrainians, the conservatives that are standing against Putin will look ineffectual and weak. The Trumpists will then be able to solidify their control over the GOP.
  • Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, the socialist Left that started to revive itself with the antiwar movement and Occupy blossomed into a full-blown generational movement with the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign that revived the DSA, spawned a new generation of activist orgs like the Sunrise movement, and created a new (though still modest) socialist medi
  • So far, despite fierce factionalism, the socialists have not yet succeeded in taking over the Democratic party like Trump took over the GOP. But in highlighting the failures of centrist Dems to curb inequality, revive unions, fix health care, or save the welfare state, they clearly hope to be able to pull off a takeover at some point.
  • Establishment failures equal insurgent opportunities. That shouldn’t be too controversial.
  • Both the liberal center-Left and the conservative center-Right are basically committed to upholding the global liberal order. Putin, by invading and attempting to conquer a sovereign state, challenges that order. If Putin succeeds, even modestly, it represents a failure for the U.S. establishment figures who tried to stop him.
  • It was the failure of conservatism that gave rise to the Trumpist movement and the alt-right. Bush’s muscular interventionism ran aground in Iraq, laissez-faire economics crashed the economy in 2008, and Christian conservatism failed to halt the gay rights movement. The conservative paradigm that had taken over the GOP in the 70s and 80s failed all at once, and fringe elements — the alt-right, conspiracy theorists, Trump — sort of took over the party.
  • it also means a victory for raw power and will (perhaps implying that efforts like the January 6th putsch are the preferred method for attaining power).
  • But if Putin loses, then Trump and his allies who for years praised and defended Putin’s regime will be discredited. Success has a thousand fathers; failure is an orphan.
  • Even more damningly, if Putin loses, it’ll be a success for the globalist order — sanctions and aid to Ukraine will represent a triumph of international cooperation. Exactly the kind of world order the Trumpists want so badly to smash.
  • If Putin defeats Ukraine, it’ll be a debacle for Biden and the establishment, and perhaps a socialist candidate will be a little closer to winning the next primary.
  • So Chaos Climbers on the Right and Left both have some incentive to want Putin to win — or at least for the war to be perceived as a NATO loss.
  • What these people all fear is the return of the order of the 1990s — a return to the idea of liberal internationalism as the least bad of all possible systems of human organization.
  • many people all over the ideological spectrum allowed themselves to see the chaos of the last decade as a high and beautiful wave that would carry them to power…and now, if Putin is ejected from Ukraine by a triumphant international liberal West, the various Chaos Climbers may see their waves break and roll back.
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. 
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • 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

UN calls for immediate Russian withdrawal from Ukraine | Ukraine | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ussian-withdrawal-from-ukraine

UN resolution ukraine war

shared by Javier E on 24 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • The resolution on Thursday night saw 141 countries in favour with seven against and 32 abstentions, including China.
  • Ukraine’s allies failed to improve on numbers seen in the last vote on the issue in October immediately after Russia annexed republics in the east of Ukraine. In that vote 143 countries backed the resolution, with five against and 35 abstentions.
  • Among the big countries abstaining on Thursday, Thailand said it did not want to become involved in a morality play, adding that billions of bystanders were bearing the brunt of the war.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • South Africa stressed that the principles of territorial integrity in the UN Charter were sacrosanct, and applied in the case of Ukraine, but claimed the resolution would not advance the cause of peace.
  • The Chinese deputy envoy to the UN, Dai Bing, said the west was throwing fuel on to the fire by arming Ukraine. That would only exacerbate tensions, he said.
  • Leading the abstention camp, he claimed: “One year into the Ukraine crisis, the conflict is still grinding on and growing in scale, wreaking havoc to countless lives. A spillover effect is intensifying. We are deeply worried about this. China’s position on the Ukraine issue is consistent and clear. The sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected. The purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be observed. The legitimate security concerns of all countries should be taken seriously.”
  • Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister – one of many European foreign ministers to travel to New York for the debate prior to the vote – warned that those that abstained would in fact be siding with the aggressor
  • he said none could sleep easy in a world in which a great power – one with nuclear weapons and a permanent Security Council member – could, at its own discretion, decide to attack its neighbours.
  • “Russia is trying to convince some of you that its attempts to upset the world order and impose a strength-based order will work in their favour. This is an illusion. The facts bear this out. It was Russia and Russia alone that wanted the war.”
Javier E

A Russian Mole in Germany Sows Suspicions at Home, and Beyond - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...germany-russia-spies.html

germany mole russia spies

shared by Javier E on 24 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • The coach, a 52-year-old former German soldier, worked for Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, or B.N.D., as a director of technical reconnaissance — the unit responsible for cybersecurity and surveilling electronic communications. It contributes about half of the spy agency’s daily intelligence volume.
  • As a Russian mole, he would have had access to critical information gathered since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. He may have obtained high-level surveillance, not only from German spies, but also from Western partners, like the C.I.A.
  • For years, as German politicians pushed economic ties with Moscow — in particular, buying its gas — they closed down many intelligence units focused on Russia.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who started his career as a K.G.B. agent in Communist East Germany, took the opposite tack: He made Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, a priority target.
  • The only hints of potential motives are his apparent far-right sympathies. A search of his home and offices, two people familiar with the investigation said, found fliers from the far-right AfD party. At work, Mr. Linke had openly told colleagues he felt the country was deteriorating, and he was particularly disdainful of its new center-left government, one of those following the inquiry said.
  • Over the years, far-right groups have grown increasingly sympathetic to Russia, enamored of Mr. Putin’s nationalistic rhetoric. Germany has struggled to root out far-right sympathizers in its security services, including in the military, even dismantling part of its special forces.
  • A Google account of his, using the alias “Steen von Ottendorf,” first found by Germany’s Der Spiegel newsmagazine, has one YouTube subscription: a channel that collects nationalist tunes. The channel’s icon bears an eagle — and the red, white and black of Germany’s old imperial colors, often used by the far right.
  • “It’s a kind of conviction, wanting to cooperate with Russia — it’s a romantic belief,” the official said. “I worry there are many others who hold that conviction in our security services.”
  • Since the days of the Cold War, Germany’s intelligence agency suffered from Russian infiltration, said Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a historian who has written several books on the agency and keeps a list of all of the B.N.D. agents who were “turned,” exposing hundreds of operatives.
  • Among them was the 1961 case of Heinz Felfe, a K.G.B. mole who revealed B.N.D. operations across Europe. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Germany learned that a top director, Gabriele Gast, who worked closely with the chancellery, spied for the Stasi, the East German secret police, for 17 years.
  • According to Mr. Schmidt-Eenboom, the information available to Mr. Linke was vast: internet espionage, German surveillance stations, mobile listening devices in southern Ukraine, and the German Navy’s reconnaissance ships observing the war from the Baltic Sea.
  • On top of that, Mr. Linke would have had access to reports from allied American services like the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, as well as from Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters.
Javier E

The world has become a toxic prison - and a volcanic winter lurks on the horizon | The ... - 0 views

www.spectator.co.uk/...ic-winter-lurks-on-the-horizon

environment history crisis culture global

shared by Javier E on 26 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • Peter Frankopan’s story of our relationship to the world across all planetary space and human time is necessarily vast – 660 pages of text, with footnotes relegated to 212 pages online – in which the grand cycle is enacted again and again
  • Volcanoes are the unexpected killers. Their spewing of ash into an atmosphere whose winds distribute it around the globe has repeatedly destroyed summers, devastated crops, induced famines and collapsed societies
  • From the very beginning, human beings have been actors in their own drama and responsible for large parts of their fate. Elasticity and inventiveness always win. Rigidity always fails, and so, for example, when the Qing dynasty began to collapse in late 18th-century China, beset by climate-induced crop failures, hunger and massive popular discontent, the contemporary administration in Japan, experiencing the same physical conditions, survived with no such difficulty.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Riding the waves of mutability has always been possible if the frame of mind in government and society is adequately supple and responsive. Reliance on ancient nostrums, and expectations that old solutions will remain good enough, are almost inevitably fatal.
  • Civilisations that become dependent on large, widespread and complex supply networks and reciprocal markets usually generate their own fragilities. If one part of such a network fails, the effects cascade in a series of chain reactions through all apparently powerful participants in the system
  • The end of the Bronze Age c.1200 BC, perhaps triggered by drought in Anatolia, may have precipitated one such domino collapse, as the Hittite empire, the Mycenaeans, the Mesopotamian states and Pharaonic Egypt all either fell apart or shrank to an unrecognisable impotence.
  • The stability and good weather of the 18th century had allowed Qing, Mughal, Bourbon and Hanoverian regimes all to thrive, but China and India, more settled and less anxiously aggressive than Europe, did not take off in the way that the Continent’s empires did.
  • In his hands, the triumph of the West, with the unconscionable horrors of the Atlantic slave trade at its heart, takes on the appearance of an alarming fusion of Faust and Midas. For centuries, Europeans felt they could do no wrong. They could use the world, its people and beauties. They could transform it as they wished, shifting its plants, animals and populations where they wanted, and there would be no consequences. Or at least, as in those two myths of the cult of ‘entitlement’ – a word Frankopan repeatedly uses of the transforming empires – the consequences were hidden from the perpetrators.
  • His story of destruction over the past two centuries is one of arrogant myopia which led in the 20th century to ‘a sequence of catastrophes unparalleled both in human history and in that of the natural world. The suffering of the past 100 years has been by far the greatest in recorded history in terms of its scale and its horror’.
  • The assumption that man must conquer nature was allied to the capital and industrialised capacity to bring it about. Humanity became its own climate. Its own actions created the world in which it lived
  • The value of this book is as an act of deep understanding, recognising not only scientifically but culturally and philosophically that we are epiphenomena – not dominators of the Earth but products of it
  • Bleakly and soberingly, Frankopan recognises from the long line of precedents that the prospects are for a world of war and suffering. The destructive changes are already ‘baked in’. Success does not breed success, he says, but more often than not ‘sows the seeds of ruin’.
Javier E

Russia's Strike Changes Not Just Ukraine but the World - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...aine-but-the-world-11645711391

russia china ukraine world order world disruption history

shared by Javier E on 25 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • Russia’s military incursion deeper into Ukraine is one of those rare events that won’t merely affect the world. It will change the world.
  • By moving further into a sovereign state to bring it under his thumb, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shattered the security architecture that has prevailed in Europe since the end of the Cold War, and no one knows what will take its place.
  • fissures that have been lying just beneath the surface in American politics, separating internationalists and neo-isolationists, are becoming more visible, particularly in the Republican Party.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The ability of the U.S. to do what three consecutive presidents have pledged to do—clear away other international entanglements to focus on competition with China—has been undercut again. Military expenditures will likely increase in the West. Economic globalization will be set back.
  • American liquefied-natural-gas exports have begun to fill the gap left by declining Russian exports, suggesting the possibility of a new energy relationship with European allies.
  • China and Russia share a motivation to work together to build a kind of parallel international financial system apart from the dollar-denominated, American-dominated one that currently exists.
criscimagnael

Biden Will Call for More Limits on Social Media in State of the Union Address - The New... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-union-biden-social-media.html

shared by criscimagnael on 03 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • President Biden will call in his Tuesday night address for limits on potentially harmful interactions between children and social media platforms.
  • He will ask Congress to ban targeted ads aimed at children on social media sites,
  • In turn, the critics say that young people can be fed increasingly extreme content or posts that diminish their self-worth.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the platforms “should be required to prioritize and ensure” the safety and health of young people, including when they make design choices for their product, according to a fact sheet. And he will call for more research into how social media affects mental health and new scrutiny of the algorithms that often determine what someone sees online.
  • One of the guests joining the first lady, Jill Biden, for the speech will be Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who leaked documents that, among other things, showed that some teenagers said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.
  • But the United States lags behind many of its allies in taking concrete steps to shield children from extreme posts, addicting content and data collection online. Last year, new guidelines took effect in the United Kingdom that push platforms to limit the data they gather on young people, prompting several companies to implement more child safety features.
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