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Javier E

The Dangers of Disruption - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-dangers-of-disruption.html

disruption nativism protectionism illiberal democracy liberalism politics culture crisis

shared by Javier E on 06 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • In Silicon Valley, where I live, the word “disruption” has an overwhelmingly positive valence: Thousands of smart, young people arrive here every year hoping to disrupt established ways of doing business — and become very rich in the process.
  • For almost everyone else, however, disruption is a bad thing. By nature, human beings prize stability and order. We learn to be adults by accumulating predictable habits, and we bond by memorializing our ancestors and traditions.
  • So it should not be surprising that in today’s globalized world, many people are upset that vast technological and social forces constantly disrupt established social practices, even if they are better off materially.
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  • globalization has produced enormous benefits. From 1970 to the 2008 financial crisis, global output quadrupled, and the benefits did not flow exclusively to the rich. According to the economist Steven Radelet, the number of people living in extreme poverty in developing countries fell from 42 percent in 1993 to 17 percent in 2011, while the percentage of children born in developing countries who died before their fifth birthday declined from 22 percent in 1960 to less than 5 percent by 2016.
  • statistics like these do not reflect the lived experience of many people. The shift of manufacturing from the West to low labor-cost regions has meant that Asia’s rising middle classes have grown at the expense of rich countries’ working-class communities
  • from a cultural standpoint, the huge movement of ideas, people and goods across national borders has disrupted traditional communities and ways of doing business. For some this has presented tremendous opportunity, but for others it is a threat.
  • This disruption has been closely associated with the growth of American power and the liberal world order that the United States has shaped since the end of World War II. Understandably, there has been blowback, both against the United States and within the nation.
  • Liberalism is based on a rule of law that maintains a level playing field for all citizens, particularly the right to private property
  • The democratic part, political choice, is the enforcer of communal choices and accountable to the citizenry as a whole
  • Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed revolts around the world of the democratic part of this equation against the liberal one
  • Vladimir Putin, perhaps the world’s chief practitioner of illiberal democracy. Mr. Putin has become very popular in Russia, particularly since his annexation of Crimea in 2014. He does not feel bound by law: Mr. Putin and his cronies use political power to enrich themselves and business wealth to guarantee their hold on power.
  • Mr. Orbán, Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan all came to power in countries with an electorate polarized between a more liberal, cosmopolitan urban elite — whether in Budapest, Moscow or Istanbul — and a less-educated rural voter base. This social division is similar to the one that drove the Brexit vote in Britain and Donald Trump’s rise in the United States..
  • Mr. Trump’s ascent poses a unique challenge to the American system because he fits comfortably into the trend toward illiberal democracy.
  • Like Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump seemsto want to use a democratic mandate to undermine the checks and balances that characterize a genuine liberal democracy. He will be an oligarch in the Russian mold: a rich man who used his wealth to gain political power and who would use political power to enrich himself once in office
  • The citizens of India and Japan have elected nationalist leaders who many say they believe champion a more closed form of identity than their predecessors
  • How far will this trend toward illiberal democracy go? Are we headed for a period like that of the early 20th century, in which global politics sank into conflict over closed and aggressive nationalism?
  • The outcome will depend on several critical factors, particularly the way global elites respond to the backlash they have engendered.
  • In America and Europe, elites made huge policy blunders in recent years that hurt ordinary people more than themselves.
  • Deregulation of financial markets laid the groundwork for the subprime crisis in the United States, while a badly designed euro contributed to the debt crisis in Greece, and the Schengen system of open borders made it difficult to control the flood of refugees in Europe. Elites must acknowledge their roles in creating these situations.
  • Now it’s up to the elites to fix damaged institutions and to better buffer those segments of their own societies that have not benefited from globalization to the same extent.
  • Above all, it is important to keep in mind that reversing the existing liberal world order would likely make things worse for everyone, including those left behind by globalization. The fundamental driver of job loss in the developed world, after all, is not immigration or trade, but technological change.
  • We need better systems for buffering people against disruption, even as we recognize that disruption is inevitable. The alternative is to end up with the worst of both worlds, in which a closed and collapsing system of global trade breeds even more inequality.
julia rhodes

Echoes of Palestinian partition in Syrian refugee crisis | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...tioninsyrianrefugeecrisis.html

palestinian refugee crisis policy history politics syria

shared by julia rhodes on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • With more than 2 million Syrians already living outside their war-torn country and 1 million more expected to flee in the coming months, there is a growing protection gap. Indeed, a report (PDF) released in November by Harvard University shows that even Canada, which prides itself on being hospitable to refugees, has been systematically closing its borders to asylum seekers. Without a doubt, development-related aid is an important incentive to host countries, and providing sanctuary for vulnerable populations is just as vital, but what refugees need most is a legal status, which can be achieved only through a regional framework of protection and national asylum policies. The Bangkok Principles are a good start because they highlight the commitment among these states to develop a regional framework and national solutions to protect refugees, with the support of the international community. The U.S. must do its part and encourage the Middle East to build on these principles. Syrians deserve an organized and effective framework, and the risk of turning our backs is that Syrians, along with the Palestinians, will be wandering without a homeland. Galya Benarieh Ruffer is the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies at the Buffett Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a public voices faculty fellow with the OpEd Project.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy. 180401 Join the Conversation Post a new commentLogin   c
  • Although the cause of Syrians fleeing their homeland today differs fundamentally from the flight of Palestinians in 1948, one crucial similarity is the harsh reception they are experiencing in neighboring countries. The tragedy of the Syrian refugee crisis is palpable in news stories and in the images of those risking their lives in rickety boats on Europe’s shores. More than one-third of Syria’s population has been displaced, and its effects are rippling across the Middle East. For months, more than 1,500 Syrians (including 250 children) have been detained in Egypt. Hundreds of adults are protesting grotesque conditions there with a hunger strike. Lebanon absorbed the most refugees but now charges toward economic collapse, while Turkey will house 1 million Syrians by the year’s end.
  • The surge of Syrians arriving in urban centers has brought sectarian violence, economic pressure and social tensions. As a result, these bordering countries, having already spent billions of dollars, are feeling less hospitable and are starting to close their borders to Syrians.
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  • A Dec. 13 Amnesty International report calls the Syrian refugee crisis an international failure, but this regional crisis necessitates a regional response — one that more systematically offers Syrian refugees legal protections. The Amnesty report rightly points out that it is not just the European Union that is failing the refugees. It is the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council that, in spite of their wealth and support for the military action in Syria, have not offered any resettlement or humanitarian admission places to refugees from Syria. 
  • After World War II, the European refugee crisis blotted out other partition crises across the globe as colonial powers withdrew in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Partitions at the time were about questions of borders and the forced un-mixing of populations.
  • The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — the international legal framework for the protection of refugees, which obligated states to not return refugees to their countries of origin (non-refoulement), to respect refugees’ basic human rights and to grant them freedoms equivalent to those enjoyed by foreign nationals living legally in the country — did not include those displaced from partitioned countries in its definition of a refugee.
  • Today, this largely leaves Syrian refugees entering those countries without legal recourse. It is also the most dangerous injustice that Syrian refugees face.
  • Turkey is heeding the call. In April it enacted a law establishing the country’s first national asylum system providing refugees with access to Turkish legal aid
  • The origins of the Middle East’s stagnation lie in the partition of Palestine in 1948. When half a million Arab refugees fled Jewish-held territory, seeking refuge in neighboring states, countries like Lebanon and Saudi Arabia moved to stop them. In the final days of the drafting of the United Nation General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the war in Palestine raging, Saudi Arabia persuaded many countries, including the U.S., to dilute the obligation of a state to grant asylum. The Middle Eastern countries feared that they would be required to absorb Palestinians and that Palestinians might lose a right of return to what is now Israel.
  • I am heartened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ recent call not just for financial and humanitarian assistance and emergency development in the Middle East to aid Syria but also for legal protection for refugees.
  • Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees. Formally adopted in 2001, the principles provide for a right of return, a broader definition of a refugee and a mandate that countries take up the responsibility of determining refugee status based on rule of law.
  • With more than 2 million Syrians already living outside their war-torn country and 1 million more expected to flee in the coming months, there is a growing protection gap. Indeed, a report (PDF) released in November by Harvard University shows that even Canada, which prides itself on being hospitable to refugees, has been systematically closing its borders to asylum seekers.
  • what refugees need most is a legal status, which can be achieved only through a regional framework of protection and national asylum policies.
  • The Bangkok Principles are a good start because they highlight the commitment among these states to develop a regional framework and national solutions to protect refugees, with the support of the international community. The U.S. must do its part and encourage the Middle East to build on these principles. Syrians deserve an organized and effective framework, and the risk of turning our backs is that Syrians, along with the Palestinians, will be wandering without a homeland.
grayton downing

So Close on Iran, Kerry Defends Continued Talks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-defends-continued-talks.html

iran kerry talks US politics policy

shared by grayton downing on 11 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Secretary of State John Kerry came up a few disputed words short of closing a landmark nuclear deal with Iran on Sunday in Geneva. Now he is defending the diplomacy that led to that near miss against a rising chorus of critics at home and abroad.
  • “Having the negotiation does not mean giving up anything,”
  • “It means you will put to the test what is possible and what is needed, and whether or not Iran is prepared to do what is necessary to prove that its program can only be a peaceful program.”
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  • “The French signed off on it; we signed off on it,” Mr. Kerry said. “There was unity, but Iran couldn’t take it.”
  • He offered familiar arguments as well: Without diplomacy, he said, Iran is much more likely to obtain a nuclear bomb, which would set off an arms race in the Middle East and leave everyone less secure.
  • On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry is to testify behind closed doors before the Senate Banking Committee to urge senators not to move ahead with a new, tougher set of sanctions on Iran
  • A 10-day pause before the next round of talks is an added danger, giving opponents time to marshal their ammunition and stoke enough doubt about a deal that the United States and its partners could have less flexibility to work out differences the next time.
  • Put simply, they worry that we are fair-weather friends who can’t be depended on to cover their backs,”
  • Standing next to Mr. Kerry in Abu Dhabi, the foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, said he was satisfied with the level of consultation with the United States on Iran. He offered Mr. Kerry polite encouragement to keep trying for a deal, though he left little doubt he would oppose any agreement that would give Iran the right to enrich uranium.
  • But given that Iran already has 19,000 centrifuges, many experts and former administration officials say that such an accommodation will inevitably have to be part of a final agreement.
  • “President Obama himself will have to step up and lead this effort,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. “U.S. assurance will have to come from the very top.”
Javier E

Russell Brand on revolution: "We no longer have the luxury of tradition" - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...russell-brand-on-revolution

revolution activism conservativism crisis politics spiritual

shared by Javier E on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
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  • The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.
  • This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.
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  • Biomechanically we are individuals, clearly. On the most obvious frequency of our known sensorial reality we are independent anatomical units. So we must take care of ourselves. But with our individual survival ensured there is little satisfaction to be gained by enthroning and enshrining ourselves as individuals.
  • For me the solution has to be primarily spiritual and secondarily political.
  • By spiritual I mean the acknowledgement that our connection to one another and the planet must be prioritised. Buckminster Fuller outlines what ought be our collective objectives succinctly: “to make the world work for 100 per cent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous co-operation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone”. This maxim is the very essence of “easier said than done” as it implies the dismantling of our entire socio-economic machinery. By teatime.
  • The price of privilege is poverty. David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”. Profit is the most profane word we have. In its pursuit we have forgotten that while individual interests are being met, we as a whole are being annihilated. The reality, when not fragmented through the corrupting lens of elitism, is we are all on one planet.
  • Suffering of this magnitude affects us all. We have become prisoners of comfort in the absence of meaning. A people without a unifying myth. Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist, says our global problems are all due to the lack of relevant myths.
Javier E

The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices - Derek ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...267255

rational choice rationality psychology consumer economics

shared by Javier E on 20 May 15 - No Cached
  • Atlantic.displayRandomElement('#header li.business .sponsored-dropdown-item'); Derek Thompson - Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for the website. More Derek has also written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. All Posts RSS feed Share Share on facebook Share on linkedin Share on twitter « Previous Thompson Email Print Close function plusOneCallback () { $(document).trigger('share'); } $(document).ready(function() { var iframeUrl = "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"; var toolsClicked = false; $('#toolsTop').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'top'; }); $('#toolsBottom').click(function() { toolsClicked = 'bottom'; }); $('#thanksForSharing a.hide').click(function() { $('#thanksForSharing').hide(); }); var onShareClickHandler = function() { var top = parseInt($(this).css('top').replace(/px/, ''), 10); toolsClicked = (top > 600) ? 'bottom' : 'top'; }; var onIframeReady = function(iframe) { var win = iframe.contentWindow; // Don't show the box if there's no ad in it if (win.$('.ad').children().length == 1) { return; } var visibleAds = win.$('.ad').filter(function() { return !($(this).css('display') == 'none'); }); if (visibleAds.length == 0) { // Ad is hidden, so don't show return; } if (win.$('.ad').hasClass('adNotLoaded')) { // Ad failed to load so don't show return; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('display', 'block'); var top; if(toolsClicked == 'bottom' && $('#toolsBottom').length) { top = $('#toolsBottom')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsBottom').height() - 310; } else { top = $('#toolsTop')[0].offsetTop + $('#toolsTop').height() + 10; } $('#thanksForSharing').css('left', (-$('#toolsTop').offset().left + 60) + 'px'); $('#thanksForSharing').css('top', top + 'px'); }; var onShare = function() { // Close "Share successful!" AddThis plugin popup if (window._atw && window._atw.clb && $('#at15s:visible').length) { _atw.clb(); } if (iframeUrl == null) { return; } $('#thanksForSharingIframe').attr('src', "\/ad\/thanks-iframe\/TheAtlanticOnline\/channel_business;src=blog;by=derek-thompson;title=the-irrational-consumer-why-economics-is-dead-wrong-about-how-we-make-choices;pos=sharing;sz=640x480,336x280,300x250"); $('#thanksForSharingIframe').load(function() { var iframe = this; var win = iframe.contentWindow; if (win.loaded) { onIframeReady(iframe); } else { win.$(iframe.contentDocument).ready(function() { onIframeReady(iframe); }) } }); }; if (window.addthis) { addthis.addEventListener('addthis.ready', function() { $('.articleTools .share').mouseover(function() { $('#at15s').unbind('click', onShareClickHandler); $('#at15s').bind('click', onShareClickHandler); }); }); addthis.addEventListener('addthis.menu.share', function(evt) { onShare(); }); } // This 'share' event is used for testing, so one can call // $(document).trigger('share') to get the thank you for // sharing box to appear. $(document).bind('share', function(event) { onShare(); }); if (!window.FB || (window.FB && !window.FB._apiKey)) { // Hook into the fbAsyncInit function and register our listener there var oldFbAsyncInit = (window.fbAsyncInit) ? window.fbAsyncInit : (function() { }); window.fbAsyncInit = function() { oldFbAsyncInit(); FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); }; } else if (window.FB) { FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { // to hide the facebook comments box $('#facebookLike span.fb_edge_comment_widget').hide(); onShare(); }); } }); The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices By Derek Thompson he
  • First, making a choice is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced to make a number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb.
  • Second, having too many choices can make us less likely to come to a conclusion. In a famous study of the so-called "paradox of choice", psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar found that customers presented with six jam varieties were more likely to buy one than customers offered a choice of 24.
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  • neurologists are finding that many of the biases behavioral economists perceive in decision-making start in our brains. "Brain studies indicate that organisms seem to be on a hedonic treadmill, quickly habituating to homeostasis," McFadden writes. In other words, perhaps our preference for the status quo isn't just figuratively our heads, but also literally sculpted by the hand of evolution inside of our brains.
  • The third check against the theory of the rational consumer is the fact that we're social animals. We let our friends and family and tribes do our thinking for us
  • Many of our mistakes stem from a central "availability bias." Our brains are computers, and we like to access recently opened files, even though many decisions require a deep body of information that might require some searching. Cheap example: We remember the first, last, and peak moments of certain experiences.
  • The popular psychological theory of "hyperbolic discounting" says people don't properly evaluate rewards over time. The theory seeks to explain why many groups -- nappers, procrastinators, Congress -- take rewards now and pain later, over and over again. But neurology suggests that it hardly makes sense to speak of "the brain," in the singular, because it's two very different parts of the brain that process choices for now and later. The choice to delay gratification is mostly processed in the frontal system. But studies show that the choice to do something immediately gratifying is processed in a different system, the limbic system, which is more viscerally connected to our behavior, our "reward pathways," and our feelings of pain and pleasure.
  • the final message is that neither the physiology of pleasure nor the methods we use to make choices are as simple or as single-minded as the classical economists thought. A lot of behavior is consistent with pursuit of self-interest, but in novel or ambiguous decision-making environments there is a good chance that our habits will fail us and inconsistencies in the way we process information will undo us.
  • Our brains seem to operate like committees, assigning some tasks to the limbic system, others to the frontal system. The "switchboard" does not seem to achieve complete, consistent communication between different parts of the brain. Pleasure and pain are experienced in the limbic system, but not on one fixed "utility" or "self-interest" scale. Pleasure and pain have distinct neural pathways, and these pathways adapt quickly to homeostasis, with sensation coming from changes rather than levels
  • Social networks are sources of information, on what products are available, what their features are, and how your friends like them. If the information is accurate, this should help you make better choices. On the other hand, it also makes it easier for you to follow the crowd rather than engaging in the due diligence of collecting and evaluating your own information and playing it against your own preferences
katyshannon

In Flint, Mich., there's so much lead in children's blood that a state of emergency is ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ate-of-emergency-in-flint-mich

lead water detroit children blood levels poison US crisis

shared by katyshannon on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?
  • To find out, all it takes is a prick of the finger, a small letting of blood. If tests come back positive, the potentially severe consequences are far more difficult to discern.
  • That’s how lead works. It leaves its mark quietly, with a virtually invisible trail. But years later, when a child shows signs of a learning disability or behavioral issues, lead’s prior presence in the bloodstream suddenly becomes inescapable.
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  • According to the World Health Organization, “lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”
  • The Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, released a study in September that confirmed what many Flint parents had feared for over a year: The proportion of infants and children with above-average levels of lead in their blood has nearly doubled since the city switched from the Detroit water system to using the Flint River as its water source, in 2014.
  • The crisis reached a nadir Monday night, when Flint Mayor Karen Weaver declared a state of emergency. “The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” Weaver said in a declaratory statement. 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × fa fa
  • The mayor — elected after her predecessor, Dayne Walling, experienced fallout from his administration’s handling of the water problems — said in the statement that she was seeking support from the federal government to deal with the “irreversible” effects of lead exposure on the city’s children. Weaver thinks that these health consequences will lead to a greater need for special education and mental health services, as well as developments in the juvenile justice system.
  • To those living in Flint, the announcement may feel as if it has been a long time coming. Almost immediately after the city started drawing from the Flint River in April 2014, residents began complaining about the water, which they said was cloudy in appearance and emitted a foul odor.
  • Since then, complications from the water coming from the Flint River have only piled up. Although city and state officials initially denied that the water was unsafe, the state issued a notice informing Flint residents that their water contained unlawful levels of trihalomethanes, a chlorine byproduct linked to cancer and other diseases.
  • Protesters marched to City Hall in the fierce Michigan cold, calling for officials to reconnect Flint’s water to the Detroit system. The use of the Flint River was supposed to be temporary, set to end in 2016 after a pipeline to Lake Huron’s Karegnondi Water Authority is finished.
  • Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system.
  • That call was finally made by Snyder (R) on Oct. 8. He announced that he had a plan for coming up with the $12 million to switch Flint back to the Detroit system. On Oct. 16, water started flowing again from Detroit to Flint.
Javier E

Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture (Roger J. Davies and Osamu I... - 0 views

DIIGO_FILE_HOME/7ui9/27e0f1978b39d4041a3510efda2c0c8b

Japan history culture language book notes values

shared by Javier E on 18 Dec 18 - No Cached
  • Japan, the need for strong emotional unity has also resulted in an inability to criticize others openly. As a consequence, the development of ambiguity can be viewed as a defining characteristic of the Japanese style of communication: Japanese conversation does not take the form of dialectic development. The style of conversation is almost always fixed from beginning to end depending on the human relationship. It is one-way, like a lecture, or an inconclusive argument going along parallel lines or making a circle round and round, and in the end still ending up mostly at the beginning. This style
  • To express oneself distinctly carries the assumption that one’s partner knows nothing, so clear expression can be considered impolite.
  • own customs. Japanese people, too, have their own opinions, but they tend to wait their turn to speak out. If they completely disagree with a speaker, they will usually listen with an air of acceptance at first, then disagree in a rather vague and roundabout way. This is considered the polite way to do things in Japan. On
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  • In Japan, however, if you go against someone and create a bad atmosphere, your relations may break off completely. People tend to react emotionally, and most are afraid of being excluded from the group.
  • For the Japanese, silence indicates deep thinking or consideration, but too much silence often makes non-Japanese uncomfortable. Whereas the Japanese consider silence as rather good and people generally feel sympathetic toward it, non-Japanese sometimes feel that it is an indication of indifference or apathy.
  • The concept of amae greatly affects all aspects of Japanese life because it is related to other characteristics of the Japanese way of thinking, such as enryo (restraint), giri (social obligation), tsumi (sin), haji (shame) (Doi, 1973, pp. 33–48).
  • In other words, in the inner circle, amae is at work and there is no enryo, in the middle zone enryo is present, and in the outer circle, which is the world of strangers, there is neither amae nor enryo.
  • they feel giri (obligation) when others, toward whom they have enryo (restraint), show kindness to them. However, they do not express their appreciation as much to people they are close to and with whom they can amaeru
  • Japanese have difficulty saying no, in contrast to Westerners, who are able to do so more easily. The reason for this is that Japanese relationships, which are based on amae, are unstable (Doi; cited in Sahashi, 1980, p. 79); that is, people hesitate to refuse others for fear of breaking this bond. Doi insists that Westerners can refuse easily because amae is not at work in their relationships
  • Hirayama and Takashina (1994, pp. 22–23) state, for example, that the Japanese sense of beauty is based on a concept known as mono no aware, a kind of aesthetic value that comes from feelings, while in Western art, people try to construct something of beauty with a logic of what is beautiful. In contrast, Japanese art focuses not on what is logically considered beautiful, but on what people feel is beautiful. The Japanese aesthetic is very subjective, and there are no absolute criteria as to what this should be.
  • Aware is thus connected to feelings of regret for things losing their beauty, and paradoxically finding beauty in their opposite. Moreover, anything can ultimately be appreciated as beautiful in Japan, and what is beautiful depends upon people’s subjective point of view.
  • ma is an empty space full of meaning, which is fundamental to the Japanese arts and is present in many fields, including painting, architecture, music, and literature.
  • The Japanese have long treated silence as a kind of virtue similar to “truthfulness.” The words haragei and ishin denshin symbolize Japanese attitudes toward human interactions in this regard. The former means implicit mutual understanding; the latter suggests that people can communicate with each other through telepathy. In short, what is important and what is true in Japan will often exist in silence, not in verbal expression.
  • uchi-soto, or inner and outer duality. Lebra (1987, p. 345) provides an explanation: [The Japanese] believe that the truth lies only in the inner realm as symbolically located in the heart or belly. Components of the outer self, such as face, mouth, spoken words, are in contrast, associated with cognitive and moral falsity. Truthfulness, sincerity, straightforwardness, or reliability are allied to reticence. Thus a man of few words is trusted more than a man of many words.
  • Zen training is designed to teach that truth cannot be described verbally, but can exist only in silence. Traditional Japanese arts and the spirit of dō (the “way” or “path”) reflect this characteristic silence.
  • Otoko-masari means a woman who is superior to men physically, spiritually, and intellectually. However, despite this literal meaning of “a woman who exceeds men,” it often sounds negative in Japanese because it carries a connotation of lacking femininity, and such women are usually disliked.
  • Zen emphasizes that all human beings originally possess the Buddha-nature within themselves and need only the actual experience of it to achieve enlightenment (satori). This is a state that is seen as a liberation from man’s intellectual nature, from the burden of fixed ideas and feelings about reality: “Zen always aims at grasping the central fact of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect” (Suzuki, 1964,
  • For the Zen master, the best way to express one’s deepest experiences is by the use of paradoxes that transcend opposites (e.g., “Where there is nothing, there is all” or “To die the great death is to gain the great life”). These sayings illustrate two irreducible Zen dilemmas—the inexpressibility of truth in words, and that “opposites are relational and so fundamentally harmonious” (Watts, 1957, p. 175).
  • In all forms of activity, Zen emphasizes the importance of acting naturally, gracefully, and spontaneously in whatever task one is performing, an attitude that has greatly influenced all forms of cultural expression in Japan.
  • All practice takes place in an atmosphere of quietude, obedience, and respect, mirroring the absolute obedience and respect of the master-student relationship.
  • Common expressions in Japanese reflect these steps: kata ni hairu (follow the form), kata ni jukutatsu suru (perfect the form), and kata kara nukeru (go beyond the form).
  • moves must be repeated thousands of times and perfected before new techniques may be learned. The purpose of such discipline is “not only to learn new skills but also to build good character and a sense of harmony in the disciple” (Niki et al., 1993, p.
  • Japanese mothers, who “apparently do not make explicit demands on their children and do not enforce rules when children resist. Yet, diverse accounts suggest that Japanese children strongly internalize parental, group, and institutional values”
  • Sen no Rikyu transformed the tea ceremony in the sixteenth century with an aesthetic principle known as wabi, or the contrast of refinement, simplicity, and rusticity. He advocated the use of plain, everyday Japanese utensils rather than those imported from China in the tea ceremony. Proportions and sizes were carefully chosen to harmonize perfectly with the small tearooms. Not only the utensils but the styles of the buildings and tea gardens, the order and etiquette of the ceremony were designed to be in accord with an atmosphere in which the goal was to perfect one’s existence without self-indulgence. Thus, the ideas of simplicity, perfection, discipline, and harmony with nature, which are central to the Zen way of life, are also reflected in sadō.
  • Reischauer (1988, p. 200) concurs: The Japanese have always seemed to lean more toward intuition than reason, to subtlety and sensitivity in expression rather than to clarity of analysis, to pragmatism rather than to theory, and to organizational skills rather than to great intellectual concepts. They have never set much store by clarity of verbal analysis and originality of thought. They put great trust in nonverbal understanding and look on oral or written skills and on sharp and clever reasoning as essentially shallow and possibly misleading. They value in their literature not clear analysis, but artistic suggestiveness and emotional feeling. The French ideal of simplicity and absolute clarity in writing leaves them unsatisfied. They prefer complexity and indirection as coming closer to the truth.
  • Gambaru is a frequently used word in Japan, with the meaning of doing one’s best and hanging on.
  • a discussion on the subject, scholars, journalists, and graduate students from other countries who know the Japanese and Japanese culture well provided expressions that are close to gambaru in their mother tongues, such as a ushalten, beharren, and beharrung in German; tiens bon in French; a guante in Spanish; and chā yo in Chinese.
  • Both Chinese and Korean have the characters that make up gambaru, but they do not have expressions that possess the same nuances. This suggests that gambaru is an expression that is unique to Japan and expresses certain qualities of the Japanese character.
  • There are some expressions that are often used in America but seldom in Japan, such as “take it easy.” Americans say to a person who is busy working, “take it easy” or “don’t work too hard”; in contrast, the Japanese say “gambatte ” (or work hard) as a sign of encouragement. Americans, of course, also think that it necessary to be diligent, but as the proverb says, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” suggesting that working too hard is not good for you.
  • giri involves caring for others from whom one has received a debt of gratitude and a determination to realize their happiness, sometimes even by self-sacrificing. (Gillespie & Sugiura, 1996, p. 150)
  • Giri can perhaps best be understood as a constellation of related meanings, the most important of which are as follows: (1) moral principles or duty, (2) rules one has to obey in social relationships, and (3) behavior one is obliged to follow or that must be done against one’s will (Matsumura, 1988, p.
  • the cost of ochūgen and oseibo gifts is almost equivalent to the cost of justice in the USA, meaning that the cost of keeping harmony in human relations and that of mediating legal disputes is almost the same.
  • A Japanese dictionary (cited in Matsumoto, 1988, p. 20) describes haragei as follows: (1) the verbal or physical action one employs to influence others by the potency of rich experience and boldness, and (2) the act of dealing with people or situations through ritual formalities and accumulated experience. In other words, haragei is a way of exchanging feelings and thoughts in an implicit way among the Japanese.
  • Honne and tatemae are another related set of concepts that are linked to haragei. “These terms are often used as contrasting yet complementary parts of a whole, honne being related to the private, true self, and tatemae typifying the public persona and behavior. Honne then has to do with real intentions and sincere feelings, while tatemae conveys the face the world sees” (Matsumoto, 1988, p. 18). People in Japan are implicitly taught from a young age how to use honne and tatemae properly, and these concepts are important in maintaining face and not hurting the feelings of others; therefore, what a speaker says is not always what he or she really means. intentions and sincere feelings, while tatemae conveys the face the world sees” (Matsumoto, 1988, p. 18). People in Japan are implicitly taught from a young age how to use honne and tatemae properly,
  • those who cannot use these concepts effectively are not considered to be good communicators, because they may hurt others or make a conversation unpleasant by revealing honne at the wrong moment.
  • In high-context cultures most of the information lies either in the setting or people who are part of the interaction. Very little information is actually contained in a verbal message. In low-context cultures, however, the verbal message contains most of the information and very little is embedded in the context or the participants. (Samovar & Porter, 1995,
  • Personal space in Japanese human relationships can be symbolized by two words that describe both physical and psychological distance between individuals: hedataru and najimu. Hedataru means “to separate one thing from another, to set them apart,” and it is also used in human relationships with such nuances as “to estrange, alienate, come between, or cause a rupture between friends.” A relationship between two persons without hedatari means they are close. On the other hand, najimu means “to become attached to, become familiar with, or used to.” For instance, if one says that students “najimu ” their teacher, it means that they become attached to and have close feelings for the teacher.
  • Relationships are established through hedataru and then deepened by najimu, and in this process, three stages are considered important: maintaining hedatari (the noun form of the verb hedataru), moving through hedatari, and deepening friendship by najimu.
  • Underlying these movements are the Japanese values of restraint and self-control. In Japan, relationships are not built by insisting strongly on one’s own point of view but require time, a reserved attitude, and patience.
  • In the seventh century, Prince Shotoku, who was a nephew of Emperor Suiko, occupied the regency and discovered a way of permitting Buddhism and the emperor system to coexist, along with another belief system adopted from China, Confucianism. He stated that “Shinto is the trunk, Buddhism is the branches, and Confucianism is the leaves” (Sakaiya, 1991, p. 140). By following this approach, the Japanese were able to accept these new religions and philosophies, and the cultural values and advanced techniques that came with them, in such a way that they were able to reconcile their theoretical contradictions.
  • Iitoko-dori, then, refers specifically to this process of accepting convenient parts of different, and sometimes contradictory, religious value systems, and this practice has long been widespread in Japan. In modern times, Sakaiya (ibid., p. 144) notes that the number of Japanese people who do not admit to following some form of iitoko-dori is only about 0.5 percent of the population.
  • However, the process of iitoko-dori, which has given rise to relative rather than absolute ethical value systems, has also resulted in serious negative consequences. For example, many Japanese students will not oppose bullies and stop them from hurting weaker students.
  • In other words, in Japan, even if people know that something is wrong, it is sometimes difficult for them to defend their principles, because rather than being absolute, these principles are relative and are easily modified, depending on the situation and the demands of the larger group to which people belong.
  • The characteristics most often associated with the traditional Japanese arts are keishikika (formalization), kanzen shugi (the beauty of complete perfection), seishin shūyō (mental discipline), and tōitsu (integration and rapport with the skill). The steps that are followed are as follows: The establishment and formalization of the pattern or form (kata): every action becomes rule-bound (keishikika) The constant repetition of the pattern or form (hampuku) Mastering the pattern or form, as well as the classification of ability en route to mastery, resulting in licensing and grades (kyū and dan) Perfecting the pattern or form (kanzen shugi): the beauty of perfection Going beyond the pattern or form, becoming one with it (tōitsu)
  • It is also interesting to note the differences in this concept of “good-child identity” between Japan and America. As far as expectations for children’s mental development are concerned, Japanese mothers tend to place emphasis on manners, while with American mothers the stress is on linguistic self-expression.
  • In other words, the ideal of the “good child” in Japan is that he or she should not be self-assertive in terms of rules for living together in society, while American “good children” should have their own opinions and be able to stand by themselves.
  • In other words, Japanese mothers tend to refer to people’s feelings, or even to those of inanimate objects, to modify their child’s behavior, and this establishes the basis for making judgments for the child: Children who are taught that the reason for poor behavior has something to do with other people’s feelings tend to place their basis for judgments, or for their behavior, on the possibility of hurting others.
  • As a result, there is a constant emphasis on other people’s feelings in Japan, and parents try to teach their children from a very early age to be sensitive to this information. In Japan, people are expected to consider others first and foremost, and this is a prerequisite for proper behavior in society. It
  • A senior or an elder is called a sempai; one who is younger or subordinate is a kōhai. This sempai-kōhai dichotomy exists in virtually all Japanese corporate, educational, and governmental organizations.
  • The Japanese language has one of the most complicated honorific (keigo) systems in the world. There are basically three types of keigo: teineigo (polite speech), sonkeigo (honorific speech), and kenjōgo (humble speech). Teineigo is used in both
  • Although keigo is used to address superiors or those whom one deeply respects, it is also widely employed in talking to people one does not know well, or who are simply older than oneself. Moreover, it is common for company employees to use keigo in addressing their bosses, whether or not they feel any respect for the other on a personal level. As
  • Recently, it has been said that the younger generation cannot use keigo properly. In fact, children do not use it in addressing their parents at home, nor do students in addressing their teachers in modern Japan. Furthermore, humble forms seem to be disappearing in colloquial language and can be found today only in formal speeches, greetings, and letters.
  • Dictionaries usually suggest kenkyo as the equivalent of modesty. One Japanese dictionary states that kenkyo means sunao to hikaeme. Hikaeme gives the impression of being reserved, and sunao has a variety of meanings, including “gentle, mild, meek, obedient, submissive, docile, compliant, yielding,” and so on. Many of these adjectives in English connote a weak character, but in Japanese sunao is always seen as a compliment. Teachers often describe good students as sunaona iiko. This means that they are quiet, listen to what the teacher says, and ask no questions in class.
  • The Japanese ideal of the perfect human being is illustrated in these folktales, and this is generally a person who has a very strong will.
  • Dentsu Institute reported that only 8 percent of Japanese people surveyed said that they would maintain their own opinion even if it meant falling out with others, which was the lowest percentage in all Asian countries (“Dour and dark outlook,” 2001, p. 19).
brickol

Trump impeachment trial: Democrats warn Trump 'will do it again' if acquitted | US news... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...chment-trial-closing-arguments

politics US trump

shared by brickol on 04 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • the Democratic representative Adam Schiff mounted an impassioned closing argument in the Senate impeachment trial on Monday, urging the chamber to hold the president to account
  • The House impeachment managers, who are prosecuting Trump, pleaded with Senate Republicansto find Trump guilty of the charges in the two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
  • Schiff blasted Trump in personal terms, warning that Trump had tried to cheat in the 2020 election and will keep trying if acquitted.
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  • But a mostly party-line vote on Friday not to call witnesses in the trial signaled a lack of interest on the Republican side.
  • Trump maintains that his conduct has been irreproachable, and all but a handful of the 53 senators in the majority have seamlessly agreed.
  • The closing arguments set the stage for a vote to acquit Trump on Wednesday afternoon. The senators will hold separate votes on each article of impeachment, with an out-of-reach two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump and remove him from office.
  • the members of the upper chamber finally had the chance to make speeches about the charges against Trump starting on Monday afternoon, when the trial adjourned temporarily for regular Senate business.
  • Trump’s defense focused their closing argument on the urgency, they said, of keeping Trump’s name on the ballot in 2020.
  • But Trump’s defense also continued to offer a blanket defense of Trump’s conduct. “The president has done nothing wrong,” Cipollone said. “These types of impeachment must end.” Schiff said Republican partisanship had blinded them to Trump’s wrongdoing.
  • Trump directed his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pursue conspiracy theories on the ground in Ukraine tied to former vice-president Joe Biden and the 2016 election. That plot set in motion the character assassination of a US ambassador, a perceived regional retreat by the US, the suspension of a promised White House meeting and military aid to Ukraine, a direct demand by Trump himself that the Ukrainian president do him a “favor” and a whistleblower complaint.
Javier E

Americans Are Paying the Price for Trump's Failures - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...609532

trump response presidency

shared by Javier E on 08 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • don’t take responsibility at all,” said President Donald Trump
  • Those words will probably end up as the epitaph of his presidency
  • Trump now fancies himself a “wartime president.” How is his war going?
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  • On the present trajectory, it will kill, by late April, more Americans than Vietnam. Having earlier promised that casualties could be held near zero, Trump now claims he will have done a “very good job” if the toll is held below 200,000 dead.
  • The United States is on trajectory to suffer more sickness, more dying, and more economic harm from this virus than any other comparably developed country.
  • The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault
  • That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too
  • Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.
  • The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him
  • The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time.
  • The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities.
  • The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.
  • sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying.
  • Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.
  • Those lost weeks also put the United States—and thus the world—on the path to an economic collapse steeper than any in recent memory.
  • It’s a good guess that the unemployment rate had reached 13 percent by April 3. It may peak at 20 percent, perhaps even higher, and threatens to stay at Great Depression–like levels at least into 2021, maybe longer.
  • This country—buffered by oceans from the epicenter of the global outbreak, in East Asia; blessed with the most advanced medical technology on Earth; endowed with agencies and personnel devoted to responding to pandemics—could have and should have suffered less than nations nearer to China
  • Through the early weeks of the pandemic, when so much death and suffering could still have been prevented or mitigated, Trump joined passivity to fantasy. In those crucial early days, Trump made two big wagers. He bet that the virus could somehow be prevented from entering the United States by travel restrictions. And he bet that, to the extent that the virus had already entered the United States, it would burn off as the weather warmed.
  • If Trump truly was so trustingly ignorant as late as January 22, the fault was again his own. The Trump administration had cut U.S. public-health staff operating inside China by two-thirds, from 47 in January 2017 to 14 by 2019, an important reason it found itself dependent on less-accurate information from the World Health Organization. In July 2019, the Trump administration defunded the position that embedded an epidemiologist inside China’s own disease-control administration, again obstructing the flow of information to the United States.
  • Yet even if Trump did not know what was happening, other Americans did. On January 27, former Vice President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about a global pandemic in an op-ed in USA Today.
  • Because Trump puts so much emphasis on this point, it’s important to stress that none of this is true. Trump did not close the borders early—in fact, he did not truly close them at all.
  • Trump’s actions did little to stop the spread of the virus. The ban applied only to foreign nationals who had been in China during the previous 14 days, and included 11 categories of exceptions. Since the restrictions took effect, nearly 40,000 passengers have entered the United States from China, subjected to inconsistent screenings, The New York Times reported.
  • At a House hearing on February 5, a few days after the restrictions went into effect, Ron Klain—who led the Obama administration’s efforts against the Ebola outbreak—condemned the Trump policy as a “travel Band-Aid, not a travel ban.”
  • The president’s top priority through February 2020 was to exact retribution from truth-tellers in the impeachment fight.
  • Intentionally or not, Trump’s campaign of payback against his perceived enemies in the impeachment battle sent a warning to public-health officials: Keep your mouth shut
  • Throughout the crisis, the top priority of the president, and of everyone who works for the president, has been the protection of his ego
  • Denial became the unofficial policy of the administration through the month of February, and as a result, that of the administration’s surrogates and propagandists.
  • That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scolded a House committee for daring to ask him about the coronavirus. “We agreed that I’d come today to talk about Iran, and the first question today is not about Iran.”
  • The president’s lies must not be contradicted. And because the president’s lies change constantly, it’s impossible to predict what might contradict him.
  • During the pandemic, this psychological deformity has mutated into a deadly strategic vulnerability for the United States.
  • For three-quarters of his presidency, Trump has taken credit for the economic expansion that began under President Barack Obama in 2010. That expansion accelerated in 2014, just in time to deliver real prosperity over the past three years
  • The harm done by Trump’s own initiatives, and especially his trade wars, was masked by that continued growth.
  • The economy Trump inherited became his all-purpose answer to his critics. Did he break laws, corrupt the Treasury, appoint cronies, and tell lies? So what? Unemployment was down, the stock market up.
  • On February 28, very few Americans had heard of an estimated death toll of 35,000 to 40,000, but Trump had heard it. And his answer to that estimate was: “So far, we have lost nobody.” He conceded, “It doesn’t mean we won’t.” But he returned to his happy talk. “We are totally prepared.” And as always, it was the media's fault. “You hear 35 and 40,000 people and we’ve lost nobody and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.”
  • on February 28, it was still not too late to arrange an orderly distribution of medical supplies to the states, not too late to coordinate with U.S. allies, not too late to close the Florida beaches before spring break, not too late to bring passengers home from cruise lines, not too late to ensure that state unemployment-insurance offices were staffed and ready, not too late for local governments to get funds to food banks, not too late to begin social distancing fast and early
  • Stay-at-home orders could have been put into effect on March 1, not in late March and early April.
  • So much time had been wasted by the end of February. So many opportunities had been squandered. But even then, the shock could have been limited. Instead, Trump and his inner circle plunged deeper into two weeks of lies and denial, both about the disease and about the economy.
  • Kudlow repeated his advice that it was a good time to buy stocks on CNBC on March 6 after another bad week for the financial markets. As late as March 9, Trump was still arguing that the coronavirus would be no worse than the seasonal flu.
  • The overwhelmed president responded by doing what comes most naturally to him at moments of trouble: He shifted the blame to others.
  • Trump’s instinct to dodge and blame had devastating consequences for Americans. Every governor and mayor who needed the federal government to take action, every science and medical adviser who hoped to prevent Trump from doing something stupid or crazy, had to reckon with Trump’s psychic needs as their single biggest problem.
  • Governors got the message too. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” Trump explained at a White House press briefing on March 27. The federal response has been dogged by suspicions of favoritism for political and personal allies of Trump. The District of Columbia has seen its requests denied, while Florida gets everything it asks for.
  • The Trump administration is allocating some supplies through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but has made the deliberate choice to allow large volumes of crucial supplies to continue to be distributed by commercial firms to their clients. That has left state governments bidding against one another, as if the 1787 Constitution had never been signed, and we have no national government.
  • Around the world, allies are registering that in an emergency, when it matters most, the United States has utterly failed to lead
  • s the pandemic kills, as the economic depression tightens its grip, Donald Trump has consistently put his own needs first. Right now, when his only care should be to beat the pandemic, Trump is renegotiating his debts with his bankers and lease payments with Palm Beach County.
  • He has never tried to be president of the whole United States, but at most 46 percent of it, to the extent that serving even the 46 percent has been consistent with his supreme concerns: stealing, loafing, and whining.
  • Now he is not even serving the 46 percent. The people most victimized by his lies and fantasies are the people who trusted him, the more conservative Americans who harmed themselves to prove their loyalty to Trump.
  • Governments often fail. From Pearl Harbor to the financial crisis of 2008, you can itemize a long list of missed warnings and overlooked dangers that cost lives and inflicted hardship. But in the past, Americans could at least expect public spirit and civic concern from their presidents.
  • Trump has mouthed the slogan “America first,” but he has never acted on it. It has always been “Trump first.” His business first. His excuses first. His pathetic vanity first.
  • rump has taken millions in payments from the Treasury. He has taken millions in payments from U.S. businesses and foreign governments. He has taken millions in payments from the Republican Party and his own inaugural committee. He has taken so much that does not belong to him, that was unethical and even illegal for him to take. But responsibility? No, he will not take that.
  • Yet responsibility falls upon Trump, whether he takes it or not. No matter how much he deflects and insults and snivels and whines, this American catastrophe is on his hands and on his head.
izzerios

How US leaks upset two allies in one week - CNNPolitics.com - 1 views

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

shared by izzerios on 25 May 17 - No Cached
  • With multiple high-profile intelligence leaks in recent weeks, the US has now managed to upset two of its closest allies by allowing the disclosure of sensitive information
  • Trump was reported to have revealed highly sensitive, likely Israeli-shared intelligence to Russian officials in the Oval Office, the United Kingdom is voicing its frustration over leaked information coming from US sources.
  • President reportedly sharing sensitive information with a foreign power in one instance and US law enforcement sources providing information to the media in the other
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  • UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd slammed US leaks on the investigation into the attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, as "irritating" on Wednesday after a string of details emerged from US law enforcement sources before they were released by British police or officials
  • The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment on Rudd's remarks
  • was greeted warmly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who showed no indication that Trump's interaction with the Russians posed a problem between the two nations.
  • the leaking of the suspect's name was more disruptive because it might have tipped off other suspects,"
  • "We've got a very close intelligence and defense partnership with the UK, and that news ... suggests that we have even more close allies who are questioning whether we can be trusted with vital intelligence," Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware
  • Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to Democratic and Republican secretaries of state, who added that the leaks may reflect a lack of structure within the Trump administration itself.
  • "I will make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure," she said following a cabinet-level security meeting.
  • Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman insisted there would be no effect on the close relations between the United States and Israel due to the apparent leak
  • "The intel community is probably beside themselves and worried about what they can confide now, if the President is going to be as careless as he was," Miller said
  • "If we will assess that our sources of intelligence are in danger due to the way it will be handled by the United States, then we will have to keep the very sensitive information close to our chests," Yatom
  • "You are not going to have the best capabilities to defend the nation if other countries aren't going to share as much with you."
  • Stern words will likely be directed to the US side, he said, but "on balance, it's probably not going to change intelligence-sharing arrangements all that much."
mattrenz16

Opinion: Why Biden must stop Erdogan's abuse of counterterrorism rhetoric - CNN - 0 views

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

shared by mattrenz16 on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • After 13 Turkish hostages were found dead in Northern Iraq on Feb. 14, Turkey arrested hundreds of people, including prominent members of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). The government even opened investigations into HDP members of parliament and human rights activists Hüda Kaya and Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, who had actively fought alongside the victims' families to bring the hostages home safely.
  • According to the Turkish Association of Journalists' Annual Media Monitoring Report, one in six journalists are currently on trial in Turkey. Since 2016, at least 160 media outlets have been closed. The Turkey representative of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Erol Önderoğlu, responsible for monitoring and advocating for press freedom in the country, is currently on trial and facing up to 14 years in prison on charges of "propagandizing for a terrorist organization," "openly inciting to commit crimes" and "praising the crime and the criminal."
  • His organization says Önderoğlu and his co-defendants face these "spurious charges" solely for guest editing a newspaper that was forced to close after the attempted coup. Can Dündar, another prominent veteran journalist and editor of a paper that has seen nearly half of its staff imprisoned, was sentenced in December to more than 27 years in prison on terrorism charges. In November, an appeals court upheld a life sentence against Hidayet Karaca, a journalist and president of a now-closed TV broadcasting group. On Feb. 15, three former staffers of a shuttered newspaper, along with co-chief editor and human rights lawyer Eren Keskin, were sentenced to a combined 20 years and 10 months in prison on terrorism charges.
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  • The remaining platforms for discussion in Turkey are rapidly shrinking. The government is cracking down on social media, and thousands could be arrested and charged with insulting the President or spreading terrorist propaganda. Human Rights Watch notes that hundreds are being investigated or detained by police for social media posts deemed to "create fear and panic" about Covid-19, some of which included criticism of the government's response to the pandemic.
  • Turkey is now expanding its powers to crush civil society under the guise of "combatting terrorism" with a new bill authorizing the government to block the donations and assets of non-government organizations like human rights groups and close them if members are charged with terrorism. The law was introduced after Turkey already shut down and seized the assets of at least 1,500 NGOs between 2016 and 2019.
  • The US cannot cooperate on security matters with a country that has justified human rights abuses under the banner of counterterrorism and lost all credibility on real terror threats -- thereby undermining the broader NATO alliance. Biden should also press for the release of political prisoners at the forefront of the struggle for freedom in Turkey.
  • As a bipartisan majority of the Senate put it in a recent letter to the President, Biden should urge the Turkish government to "end their crackdown on dissent... release political prisoners... and reverse their authoritarian course." Otherwise, Turkey will continue to exploit tragedies like the deaths of hostages to further entrench Erdogan's rule through the guise of "counterterrorism" to the detriment of its citizens.
hannahcarter11

He Is Israel's 'Prince of Torah.' But to Some, He Is the King of Covid. - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rael-virus-rabbi-orthodox.html

israel Prince of Torah covid judaism

shared by hannahcarter11 on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Yet despite his seeming detachment from worldly life, Rabbi Kanievsky has become one of the most consequential and controversial people in Israel today.
  • The spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews, Rabbi Kanievsky has landed at the center of tensions over the coronavirus between the Israeli mainstream and its growing ultra-Orthodox minority.
  • Throughout the pandemic, the authorities have clashed with the ultra-Orthodox over their resistance to antivirus protocols, particularly their early refusal to close schools or limit crowds at religious events
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  • Twice, during the first and second waves of the pandemic in Israel, he rejected state-imposed antivirus protocols and would not order his followers to close their yeshivas, independent religious schools where students gather in close quarters to study Jewish Scripture.
  • If anything, he said, the pandemic made prayer and study even more essential.
  • Both times he eventually relented, and it is unlikely that he played as big a role in spreading the virus as he was accused of, but the damage was done.
  • Many public health experts say that the ultra-Orthodox — who account for about 12 percent of the population but 28 percent of the coronavirus infections, according to Israeli government statistics — have undermined the national effort against the coronavirus.
  • Ultra-Orthodox society is not monolithic, and other prominent leaders were far quicker to comply with antivirus regulations. Ultra-Orthodox leaders say the majority of their followers have obeyed the rules although their typically large families, living in tight quarters under what is now the third national lockdown, have inevitably contributed to the spread of the contagion.
  • It is usually Yanki who shapes the way questions are put to the rabbi, potentially influencing the way that he might answer them.
  • In the past, he said, ultra-Orthodox leaders have tried to avoid direct confrontation with the state.
  • His pedigree adds to his prestige: His father and uncle were legendary spiritual leaders. But it is his relentless Torah study that gives the rabbi his authority — his followers believe his encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish teachings endows him with a near-mystical ability to offer religious guidance.
  • It is this devotion to religious study that made Rabbi Kanievsky — sometimes nicknamed the ‘Prince of Torah’ — so reluctant to tell his followers to close their yeshivas at the start of the pandemic.
  • “There is now a great epidemic in the world, a disease called corona and it affects many people,” one grandson shouted in the rabbi’s ear last year, following a question from a visitor, according to a video of the conversation. “He asks what they should take upon themselves so this disease does not get to them and there are no problems.”
  • Several weeks into the pandemic, the rabbi ordered his followers to obey social distancing guidelines, even equating scofflaws to murderers. In June, he said face masks were a religious obligation. In December, he gave his blessing to the vaccine, not long after recovering from the virus himself. In recent days he condemned a group of Haredi youths who clashed with police officers trying to enforce coronavirus regulations.
  • But he has contributed to one of the biggest-ever showdowns between the Israeli mainstream and the ultra-Orthodox, also known as Haredim.
  • But without speaking to the rabbi directly, it is hard to know exactly what he thinks.
anonymous

Researchers Create 'Model Embryos' To Study Human Fertility : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...closely-resemble-human-embryos

shared by anonymous on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • For decades, science has been trying to unlock the mysteries of how a single cell becomes a fully formed human being and what goes wrong to cause genetic diseases, miscarriages and infertility.Now, scientists have created living entities in their labs that resemble human embryos; the results of two new experiments are the most complete such "model embryos" developed to date.
  • The blastoids appear to have enough differences from naturally formed embryos to prevent them ever becoming a viable fetus or baby. But they appear to be very close.
  • Crucial periods of embryonic development are hidden inside women's bodies during pregnancies and therefore inaccessible to study. And conducting experiments on human embryos in the laboratory is difficult and controversial.
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  • So in recent years, scientists started creating structures that resemble human embryos in the lab by using chemical signals to coax cells into forming themselves into entities that look like very primitive human embryos.
  • Now, Wu's team and another international team of scientists have gone further than ever before. They created hollow balls of cells that closely resemble embryos at the stage when they usually implant in the womb, which are known as blastocysts. The new laboratory-made embryos have been dubbed "blastoids."
  • Now with this technique we can make hundreds of these structures. So this will allow us to scale up our understanding of very early human development. We think this will be very important." Some other scientists are hailing the research.
  • The goal of the experiments is to gain important insights into early human development and find new ways to prevent birth defects and miscarriages and treat fertility problems.But the research, which was published in two separate papers Wednesday in the journal Nature Portfolio, raises sensitive moral and ethical concerns.
  • The two experiments started with different cells to get similar results. Wu's group created his blastoids from human embryonic stem cells, and from "induced pluripotent stem cells," which are made from adult cells. Polo's group started with adult skin cells.
  • Hyun agrees the research is very important and could lead to a many other advances. But Hyun says it's important to come up with clear guidelines about how scientists can responsibly be permitted to pursue this kind of research.
  • Hyun favors revising a guideline known as the 14-day rule, which prohibits experiments on human embryos in the lab beyond two weeks of their existence. Hyun says exceptions should be allowed under certain carefully reviewed conditions.
  • But others worry about easing the 14-day rule.That could mean "we could just keep growing these sort-of humans in a test tube and not even considering the fact that they're so close to being human, right?"
  • In fact, another team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel figured out how to grow mouse embryos outside the womb — a step toward creating an "artificial womb," according to report published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
ethanshilling

The Pandemic's Silver Lining? This Village May Have Been Saved by It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pain-coronavirus-pyrenees.html

pandemic spain village

shared by ethanshilling on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The castle that crowns the hill above the village of Gósol used to be among the grandest along Spain’s border with France, with views of fertile farms and forests rich in timber that stretched up to the cloudy mountaintops.
  • But the castle is in ruins now, and until last year, Gósol had fallen on hard times, too. The town census had gone down in nearly every count since the 1960s.
  • It took a pandemic for Spaniards to heed his call.Among those who packed their bags was Gabriela Calvar, a 37-year-old who once owned a bar in a beach town near Barcelona, but watched it go under during last year’s lockdowns and decamped to the town in the mountains for a new start.
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  • It was the rare silver lining of a troubled time: About 20 or 30 newcomers to a dwindling town of 140 souls, where even the tiny school on the town plaza got a second chance after parents started enrolling their children there.
  • “If it weren’t for Covid, the school would have closed,” said Josep Tomás Puig, 67, a retired mail carrier in Gósol who spent his life watching the younger generation depart to Spain’s cities.
  • Rafael López, a former renewable energy entrepreneur whose business collapsed in Spain’s 2008 financial crisis, was interested. “My mom said she saw this on TV,” said Mr. López. “And I said, ‘Well, what do you say if we take the car and go have a look, see what’s there?’”
  • For decades in Spain, a landscape of walled cities, stone bridges and ancient winding roads has become mostly abandoned as generations of young people left for cities. La España Vacía, or “the Empty Spain,” is the phrase that was coined to describe the blight.
  • Yet tiny Gósol had fared better than many others, residents say.It sits in the wealthy autonomous region of Catalonia, in a majestic valley in the Pyrenees Mountains that brought tourists and part-time residents in the summer months.
  • By 2015, the situation had gotten critical. The number of permanent residents was 120 and falling. The mayor went on television warning, among other things, that the school was about to close because it was down to five students.
  • “And if the school closed, the town might as well have closed too.”
  • Over the next months, hundreds of people came to Gósol to kick the tires. They said they were impressed by the quaint homes and the ruined castle atop the hill.
  • As the coronavirus began to spread last year, Spain entered another economic crisis, this one on a scale even greater than the collapse that had brought Mr. López in 2008.
  • In Castelldefels, a seaside town southwest of Barcelona, life was starting to look upside-down for Ms. Calvar, the bar owner who came to Gósol in September.
  • The path seemed clear when, passing through Gósol one day, Ms. Calvar learned that the owner of the grocery store on the plaza was at looking to sell the business.
  • The schoolhouse sits along the plaza, a place of kid-sized chairs and tables, paper planets hanging from the ceiling and an incubator warming eggs.
  • Classes ended at 5 p.m. and Ms. Otero, the telecommuting web designer who had moved to Gósol from Barcelona last June, was waiting for two of her children, 6 and 7.
  • There was a note of regret in her voice when she thought about the end of the pandemic, and the pressure that she knew would inevitably build to return to Barcelona. She didn’t want Gósol to disappear yet, she said.
katherineharron

Pence and Trump finally speak after post-riot estrangement - CNNPolitics - 0 views

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

pence

shared by katherineharron on 12 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Vice President Mike Pence received a memento from his aides the other day: the engraved chair set aside for him in the White House Cabinet Room, hauled over-the-shoulder from the West Wing and delivered to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for one of his final staff meetings.
  • Instead of applause, many of Trump's aides -- even those who have stuck with him through myriad scandals and embarrassments -- were voicing shame and disappointment. His circle has shrunk. Many have resigned and others are still considering it.
  • On Monday, after an extended period of silence, Trump and Pence spoke for the first time after a deadly riot of Trump supporters broke out at the US Capitol with Pence inside, according to two administration officials.
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  • "They reiterated that those who broke the law and stormed the Capitol last week do not represent the America First movement backed by 75 million Americans, and pledged to continue the work on behalf of the country for the remainder of their term," the senior official said.
  • Trump had spent the weekend largely in isolation, as aides either distanced themselves from him or limited their time in his presence. Trump canceled a planned trip to Camp David, where his closest aides were hoping he would get into a good mindset ahead of his final stretch in office.
  • The mob event, and Trump's fury at Pence in the lead-up to it, left their relationship in tatters. Before their Oval Office meeting Monday, the pair had not spoken since before Trump's rally on the Ellipse last week. Their last conversation was punctuated by a vulgarity the President uttered after Pence informed him, for a final time, that he could not unilaterally reject the results of the election, something he had already told Trump in previous meetings that often dragged on for hours.
  • Pence finally got "a glimpse of POTUS' vindictiveness," one source familiar with the situation said, using the acronym for President of the United States.
  • And while Pence now appears unlikely to entertain invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, he has not weighed in on it publicly, allowing the idea to persist, which people close to him described as intentional.
  • Pence, who is often internally mocked for how deferential he is toward Trump, has taken a quiet but defiant stance in their final days in office.
  • The attempted insurrection that Trump incited at the US Capitol last week prompted the permanent suspension of his Twitter account, a looming second impeachment and a wave of administration resignations
  • It was the first time in their more than four years as political partners that Trump's vengeance had been trained on a man known mostly for his fealty. Even as others once close to Trump -- from his personal attorney Michael Cohen to his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to any manner of former aides -- met similar fates, Pence was spared.
  • The final conversation left Trump irate, and his anger emerged during the rally itself, when he told the crowd he hoped "Mike has the courage to do what he has to do" and ignores "the stupid people that he's listening to."
  • Pence also recently learned that pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell was involved in the lawsuit filed by Trump's Republican allies against him. Trump was not only aware, but had encouraged the effort, people close to the situation said.
  • Even when the President returned to the White House while his crowd set off for the Capitol, Trump's anger at Pence did not abate. And as the crowd broke down doors, mobbed the building, and in some cases appeared to be hunting Pence himself, Trump remained focused on the perceived disloyalty.
  • After Wednesday's events, Pence allies were aghast the President did not call to ensure the vice president's safety, or the safety of his wife and daughter, who had accompanied him as he performed the ceremonial role of overseeing the Electoral College tally.
  • "Was he concerned at all that an angry mob that he commanded to march on the Capitol might injure the vice president or his family?" a person familiar with the matter asked.
  • Pence's actions earned him praise within the administration, including from national security adviser Robert O'Brien, who tweeted on Wednesday that Pence "is a genuinely fine and decent man. He exhibited courage today."
  • Democrats, however, remain frustrated at Pence's unwillingness to move on the 25th Amendment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
  • Other Democrats are skeptical that after four years of standing by Trump -- including through his attempts to cast doubt on the election results using false claims of voter fraud -- Pence can recover his moral standing now.
  • A day later, an attempt by House Democrats to bring up a resolution urging Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power was blocked by Republicans. If that resolution ends up failing, Democrats plan to to vote Wednesday to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riot.
  • Advisers have said Pence hopes to provide a bridge to the next administration and do as much as possible to assist Biden's team in preparing for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Pence and Biden consulted regularly in the early days of the Trump administration, including on foreign policy matters.
  • On Monday, Pence's schedule listed a coronavirus task force meeting -- one of the final times the group meets before the end of the administration. Pence did not bring up the siege at the Capitol during the discussion, a person close to the task force said.
anonymous

What Does a More Contagious Virus Mean for Schools? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ronavirus-variant-schools.html

shared by anonymous on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Initial reports were tinged with worry that children might be just as susceptible as adults, fueling speculation that schools might need to pre-emptively close to limit the variant’s spread.
  • Based on detailed contact-tracing of about 20,000 people infected with the new variant — including nearly 3,000 children under 10 — the report showed that young children were about half as likely as adults to transmit the variant to others.
  • The report estimated that the new variant is about 30 percent to 50 percent more contagious than its predecessors — less than the 70 percent researchers had initially estimated, but high enough that the variant is expected to pummel the United States and other countries, as it did Britain.
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  • Other European countries put a premium on opening schools in September and have worked to keep them open, though the variant already has forced some to close.
  • If community prevalence rises to unmanageable levels — a likely proposition, given the surge in most states — even elementary schools may be forced to close.
  • Adolescents and teenagers between ages 10 and 19 were more likely than younger children to spread the variant, but not as likely as adults.
  • Over all, though, the variant was more contagious in each age group than previous versions of the virus.
  • In France, where the new variant has not resulted in a surge of infections so far, schools reopened earlier this month after the winter break.
  • In the United States, the variant has only been spotted in a handful of states, and still accounts for less than 0.5 percent of infections.
  • “When we look at what’s happened in the U.K. and think about this new variant, and we see all the case numbers going up, we have to remember it in the context of schools being open with virtually no modification at all,” Dr. Jenkins said. “I would like to see a real-life example of that kind of country or state or location, which has managed to control things in schools.”
  • The school Dr. Bromage’s children attend took additional precautions. For example, administrators closed the school a few days before Thanksgiving to lower the risk at family gatherings, and operated remotely the week following the holiday.Officials tested the nearly 300 students and staff at the end of that week, found only two cases, and decided to reopen.
Javier E

Australia almost eliminated the coronavirus by putting faith in science - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-ad53-4c1fda49907d_story.html

australia pandemic response history culture politics Policy crisis

shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • SYDNEY — The Sydney Opera House has reopened. Almost 40,000 spectators attended the city's rugby league grand final. Workers are being urged to return to their offices.
  • Australia has become a pandemic success story.
  • The nation of 26 million is close to eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, having defeated a second wave just as infections surge again in Europe and the United States.
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  • America's daily new cases topped 100,000 on Wednesday, and its death toll exceeds 234,000, a staggering figure even accounting for its greater population than Australia, which has recorded 907 deaths.
  • Meanwhile, in the United States, 52,049 people are hospitalized and 10,445 are in an ICU
  • No new cases were reported on the island continent Thursday, and only seven since Saturday, besides travelers in hotel quarantine. Eighteen patients are hospitalized with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. One is in an intensive care unit. Melbourne, the main hotbed of Australia's outbreak that recently emerged from lockdown, has not reported a case since Oct. 30.
  • Australia provides a real-time road map for democracies to manage the pandemic. Its experience, along with New Zealand's, also shows that success in containing the virus isn't limited to East Asian states (Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan) or those with authoritarian leaders (China, Vietnam).
  • Several practical measures contributed to Australia's success
  • The country chose to quickly and tightly seal its borders, a step some others, notably in Europe, did not take.
  • Health officials rapidly built up the manpower to track down and isolate outbreaks.
  • And unlike the U.S. approach, all of Australia's states either shut their domestic borders or severely limited movement for interstate and, in some cases, intra­state travelers.
  • Perhaps most important, though, leaders from across the ideological spectrum persuaded Australians to take the pandemic seriously early on and prepared them to give up civil liberties they had never lost before, even during two world wars.
  • "We told the public: 'This is serious; we want your cooperation,' 
  • A lack of partisan rancor increased the effectiveness of the message
  • The conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, formed a national cabinet with state leaders — known as premiers — from all parties to coordinate decisions
  • Political conflict was largely suspended, at least initially, and many Australians saw their politicians working together to avert a health crisis.
  • "Regardless of who you vote for, most Australians would agree their leaders have a real care for their constituents and a following of science," McLaws said. "I think that helped dramatically.
  • Australians' willingness to conform — especially in Melbourne, where residents endured a lengthy state-ordered lockdown — reflects political attitudes that differ from those in parts of the United States
  • In a nation where compulsory voting produces conventionally center-left or center-right political leaders, governments tend to be regarded as the solution to society's problems rather than the cause.
  • Australia's national response was led by Health Minister Greg Hunt, a former McKinsey & Co. management consultant and a Yale University graduate. Hunt and Morrison worked with the state premiers, who hold responsibility for on-the-ground health policy, to develop a common approach to the pandemic.
  • The government closed Australia's borders to travelers from China on Feb. 1, the same day as the Trump administration in the United States. But unlike the Trump administration, which has criticized its primary infectious-disease adviser, Anthony S. Fauci, Hunt relied heavily on health experts from the start.
  • "In January and February, we were focused on containing the risk of a catastrophic outbreak," Hunt said in an interview. "We had a clear strategic plan, which was the combination of containment and capacity-building."
  • "We closed the border and concentrated on testing, tracing and social distancing," he added. "We built up our capacity to fight the virus in primary and aged care and hospitals. We invested in ventilators, and vaccine and treatment research."
  • Hunt's department oversaw the purchase of huge amounts of protective equipment and clothing, including masks, which became mandatory on Aug. 2 in the state of Victori
  • After a sick doctor in his 70s treated more than 70 people in the city before being diagnosed, Hunt accelerated a 10-year plan to phase in video consultations with physicians. Within 10 days, almost anyone in Australia could see a doctor over the Internet under Australia's highly subsidized health-care system, including psychiatrists.
  • When private hospitals said they were in danger of going broke because non-urgent surgery had been canceled, the government stepped in with emergency funding, securing beds that could be used for coronavirus patients.
  • In private, Hunt swapped ­practical stories with his wife, Paula Hunt, a former infectious-diseases nurse who kept a 1995 bestseller by U.S. science journalist Laurie Garrett, "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance," on her bedside table, he said.
  • While opinion polls show strong support for the tough measures, many people have been badly affected. Australia entered its first recession in 29 years, small businesses have closed, and reports of depression are up. On Tuesday, an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne turned violent. Police arrested 404 people.
  • for a time, it appeared Australia's early success was imperiled, after lax security at hotels in Melbourne that were housing returned travelers led to a second outbreak in July. By August, more than 700 cases a day were diagnosed. It looked like Australia could lose control of the virus.
  • Almost all public life in Melbourne ended. After 111 days of lockdown, the number of average daily cases fell below five. On Oct. 28, state officials allowed residents to leave their homes for any reason.
  • Australia currently bans its citizens and residents from overseas travel, a decision that has been particularly tough on its 7.5 million immigrants.
  • Most Australians will have access to a vaccine by the middle of next year, Hunt said, a major step toward allowing them to travel.
Javier E

'Out of Control': When Schools Opened in a Virus Hot Spot - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...chools-reopening-outbreak.html

schools pandemic response Culture politics us

shared by Javier E on 18 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • “We’ve forced every school district to figure out how to respond to a pandemic on its own, and it’s insane,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.“There should be clear guidance — whether it’s Department of Education, or C.D.C., or ideally a combination — so that you don’t have every school district in America with different thresholds, different approaches, different measures.”
  • Over the summer, Canyons said it would adhere to the state health department’s standard for closing schools. But when Corner Canyon reached 15 cases the school board decided to ignore the guidance, shifting the school to a hybrid schedule instead of going fully remote.The board ultimately adopted its own standard, which stipulated that it would shift high schools to remote learning when positive cases represented 2 percent of the students attending in-person classes — mostly, one board member suggested, because at that point the number of students quarantined from possible exposure would become unmanageable.
  • In a Canyons board meeting on Sept. 15, when Corner Canyon was at 42 cases, one board member, Steve Wrigley, said he had looked in vain for national standards. “There really is not many guidelines out there right now — everybody is sort of flying by their seat,” Mr. Wrigley said.
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  • Another board member, Clareen Arnold, cited a C.D.C. statement about the importance of in-person school to children’s mental health and development, inserted at the behest of the White House, as an argument for keeping Corner Canyon open.
  • In a community that parents and teachers described as deeply divided over whether the virus represents a real threat, the board’s decision left parents on both sides angry. Some were upset that the board had ignored the health department’s guidance, while others thought that schools should not close until 10 percent of the students had tested positive.
  • Mr. Walker said he had heard from some Corner Canyon parents that there was an agreement among mothers at the school — he called it a “mom code” — not to get their children tested for the virus even if they became ill, to avoid adding to the school’s case count and contributing to it being shut down. (He said he told these parents he did not agree with this approach.)
  • She had become a high school teacher because she loved the social rituals of high school — “the dances and the football games and the assemblies and the extracurricular things” — and it made her sad, she said, that her students were missing out on some of those traditions.There are these things I want these kids to be able to experience in life,” she said. “But then, is it worth it — for life, you know?”
  • In September, as the Canyons board put off closing Corner Canyon High School, district officials and board members said that a vast majority of cases in the district’s schools were the result of exposures outside of school and that there was minimal spread within schools themselves.But a spokesman for the Salt Lake County Health Department, Nicholas Rupp, said it was very difficult to definitively determine in most cases where someone was infected.
  • In any event, once Corner Canyon shut its doors, cases among students and staff fell sharply. After a month of being closed, the school is set to reopen on Monday. As of last Wednesday, according to the district’s dashboard, it had between one and five cases.
Javier E

5 Rules to Live By During a Pandemic - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...emic-infection-prevention.html

pandemic responses strategies personal

shared by Javier E on 10 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • because life on permanent lockdown isn’t sustainable, public health experts are beginning to embrace a “harm reduction” approach, giving people alternatives to strict quarantine. These options — like forming a “bubble” with another household or moving social activities outdoors — don’t eliminate risk, but they minimize it as people try to return to daily life.
  • 1. Check the health of your state and community
  • pay attention to two important indicators of Covid-19 in your area: the percentage of tests that are positive, and the trend in overall case rates.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 2. Limit the number of your close contactsYou’re safest with members of your household, but if you want to widen your circle to extended family or friends, keep the number of close contacts as low and as consistent as possible.
  • Next, use our maps and case count pages to stay informed of the Covid-19 trends in your area.
  • When positive test rates stay at 5 percent or lower for two weeks, that suggests there’s adequate testing in your state to get virus transmission under control, and you’re less likely to cross paths with the virus. The closer the number is to 2 percent, the better.
  • Face-to-face contact: Wear a mask, and keep close conversations short. We don’t know the level of exposure required to make you sick, but estimates range from a few hundred to 1,000 copies of the virus.
  • 4. Keep higher risk activities as short as possibleEvery time you make plans, ask yourself, “If an infected person happens to be nearby, how much time could I be spending with them?”
  • 3. Manage your exposure budgetRisk is cumulative. Going forward, you’ll need to make trade-offs,
  • Indoor exposure: In an enclosed space, like an office, at a birthday party, in a restaurant or in a church, you can still become infected from a person across the room if you share the same air for an extended period of time
  • it’s best to keep indoor activities, like shopping or haircuts, to less than an hour. Even shorter is better.
  • in the coming months you would be wise to adopt the following habits.
  • Keep a mask handy. Wear a mask in enclosed spaces, when you shop or go to the office and anytime you are in close contact with people outside your household.
  • Practice social distancing — staying six feet apart — when you are with people who live outside your household. Keep social activities outdoors.
  • Wash hands frequently, and be mindful about touching public surfaces
  • Adopt stricter quarantine practices if you or someone in your circle is at higher risk.
dytonka

Harris to travel to Texas Friday after polls show tie between Trump, Biden | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...as-biden-closes-in-on-trump-in

shared by dytonka on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Texas on Friday as recent polls have shown former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHarris to travel to Texas Friday after polls show tie between Trump, Biden Florida heat sends a dozen Trump rally attendees to hospital Harris more often the target of online misinformation than Pence: report MORE closing in on President Trump in the Lone Star State.
  • Biden's campaign is eyeing Houston's Harris County for a potential victory, which has become more Democratic in recent years and has already cast 1.1 million early ballots
  • "Harris visiting this close to the election is a game-changer and exactly what Texas Democrats need to get us over the top,"
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