Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged compatibility

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

A Million First Dates - Dan Slater - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The positive aspects of online dating are clear: the Internet makes it easier for single people to meet other single people with whom they might be compatible, raising the bar for what they consider a good relationship. But what if online dating makes it too easy to meet someone new? What if it raises the bar for a good relationship too high? What if the prospect of finding an ever-more-compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, in which we keep chasing the elusive rabbit around the dating track?
  • the rise of online dating will mean an overall decrease in commitment.
  • I often wonder whether matching you up with great people is getting so efficient, and the process so enjoyable, that marriage will become obsolete.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Historically,” says Greg Blatt, the CEO of Match.com’s parent company, “relationships have been billed as ‘hard’ because, historically, commitment has been the goal. You could say online dating is simply changing people’s ideas about whether commitment itself is a life value.” Mate scarcity also plays an important role in people’s relationship decisions. “Look, if I lived in Iowa, I’d be married with four children by now,” says Blatt, a 40‑something bachelor in Manhattan. “That’s just how it is.”
  • “I think divorce rates will increase as life in general becomes more real-time,” says Niccolò Formai, the head of social-media marketing at Badoo, a meeting-and-dating app with about 25 million active users worldwide. “Think about the evolution of other kinds of content on the Web—stock quotes, news. The goal has always been to make it faster. The same thing will happen with meeting. It’s exhilarating to connect with new people, not to mention beneficial for reasons having nothing to do with romance. You network for a job. You find a flatmate. Over time you’ll expect that constant flow. People always said that the need for stability would keep commitment alive. But that thinking was based on a world in which you didn’t meet that many people.”
  • “You could say online dating allows people to get into relationships, learn things, and ultimately make a better selection,” says Gonzaga. “But you could also easily see a world in which online dating leads to people leaving relationships the moment they’re not working—an overall weakening of commitment.”
  • Explaining the mentality of a typical dating-site executive, Justin Parfitt, a dating entrepreneur based in San Francisco, puts the matter bluntly: “They’re thinking, Let’s keep this fucker coming back to the site as often as we can.” For instance, long after their accounts become inactive on Match.com and some other sites, lapsed users receive notifications informing them that wonderful people are browsing their profiles and are eager to chat. “Most of our users are return customers,” says Match.com’s Blatt.
  • The market is hugely more efficient … People expect to—and this will be increasingly the case over time—access people anywhere, anytime, based on complex search requests … Such a feeling of access affects our pursuit of love … the whole world (versus, say, the city we live in) will, increasingly, feel like the market for our partner(s). Our pickiness will probably increase.” “Above all, Internet dating has helped people of all ages realize that there’s no need to settle for a mediocre relationship.”
Javier E

When Harry Met eHarmony - Megan Garber - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The rom-com industrial complex—the cultural institution charged with capturing romance as a kind of ritual—failed to recognize the evolution of romance itself.
  • the rom-com's normative approach to relationships—the posture that treats romance and romantic partners as puzzles to be solved—is the thing that may be dying. Or, rather, the thing that may be evolving, slowly and steadily, into something else. We have less of a need, now, to look to the movies to give structure to our romantic relationships: The world is doing that for us, already. Under the influence of Match and eHarmony and Tinder and JDate and Our Time and OK Cupid and Farmers Only and all the others—services that promise to mate souls according to algorithms—our sense of romance itself is becoming ever more formulaic. The will-they-or-won't-they—the gooey stuff that forms the rom-com's gooey center—becomes less compelling a tension in a world ever more dominated by signals and swipes. We are ceding some of love's mystery to measurement.
  • the axis romance has revolved around—the guiding sense of mystery, of uncertainty, of otherness—is giving way, under the influence of digital capabilities, to more pragmatic orientations. eHarmony promises to connect people across “29 dimensions® of compatibility,” breaking those out into “Core Traits” and “Vital Attributes.” Match.com now lets MENSA members connect through its platform, and is experimenting with facial recognition programs to help users better find “their type.” The promises of big data—insights! wisdom! relevance!—are insinuating themselves onto relationships. Love, actually, is now more
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • he rom-com, in general, has responded to this enormous cultural shift by ignoring it. There has been no You’ve Got Mail for the OK Cupid era. There hasn’t even been a Love Actually. But we've gotten something in their place: a move away from the sappy-and-stale dude-and-lady rom-com—and toward more expansive explorations of relationships at large.
  • The rom-com, as a genre, is moving past its obsession with nubile youth to present broad forms of love and relatively inclusive notions of sexuality and, perhaps even more subversively, relationships between people over 40. It is interpreting—and modeling—wide-ranging notions of what romance can be, trading the familiar arc of love, loss, reunion, and Happily Ever After for something more nuanced, more messy, more real.
Javier E

A Dating Show Made for the Age of Apps - The New York Times - 0 views

  • No script is necessary because they rarely deviate from how things are supposed to go. Tepid small talk about drink selection — “What is this?” “Like, a margarita” — moves on to “Where are you from?” followed by a pause for menu consideration, then onto job talk and canned flattery like “How are you single?” The blind dates eventually converge on what feel like serious topics, though the same ones come up almost every night of the week: past relationships, kids, priorities. “I just want love,” Betty says. “Connection, chemistry, love.” A minute later, Tiffany explains the importance of the “three C’s”: “compatibility, chemistry and connection.”
  • Not only do the daters skew toward the kinds of people you commonly see on the apps — youngish, professional, fluent with an iPhone — but they’re also eager to filter their options with getting-to-know-you questionnaire material, the sort of information that you want to find out at some point but that wouldn’t necessarily come up were you to meet by chance
  • What seems uniquely contemporary about “Dating Around” is the rote, bored way people enact these norms, as if they have no choice — or rather because they have so much of it
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The importance of compatibility reinforces the sense that love can be found through a formula or a checklist; the idea is as seductive as anyone on this show
  • When, during an “after hours” conversation, one contestant uses the word “swipe” to refer to dating itself, without having to explain the word’s provenance, she reveals that dating has become so process-oriented that it’s practically indistinguishable from the mechanisms that were meant to streamline it.
  • Though dating apps may improve many aspects of modern romance — by making people safer and more accessible — their guardrails also seem to limit the possibilities for it. The stakeslessness of “Dating Around” might be a refreshing lack of pressure, but it might also reflect the disturbing effects of the same phenomenon in real life.
  • Despite what tech companies would have us believe, people cannot be optimized for one another; an overwhelming abundance of options discourages the leaps of faith that can transform the terrible uncertainty of dating into something great
Javier E

How to avert America's Brexit - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • there is a meaningful chance that 2016 could begin a retreat of the United States from the mix of economic policies and the global engagement that U.S. businesses have regarded for decades as central to their success — unless business leaders can move decisively to redefine their goals as harmonious with those of working- and middle-class families.
  • The key question is how we rise up in more muscular defense of the interests of U.S. workers and industries without doing permanent damage to our economy. We must also demonstrate that government can function and that business can be a constructive partner to it.
  • every generation, we seem to witness an election that startles us, triggering tectonic shocks that change our politics and policies for decades to come. This could be one of those elections. Very much like the realignment revealed by the vote in Britain to leave the European Union, U.S. politics might be transforming into a debate less between right and left and more between those voters who are advantaged by globalization and those who are not.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • For decades, the United States has led the way as the world’s markets for manufacturing, labor and capital have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent. This has benefited poorer nations around the world — most prominently China — as well as large multinational corporations with the reach and balance sheets to compete globally. It has also contributed to a surge in the incomes of well-educated professionals with globally competitive skills.
  • our leaders in business and government have offered up a consensus view that chief among the gains from open trade is a small financial benefit — reflected mostly in lower prices for a host of imported goods — spread in a thin layer over an enormous number of people, which in the aggregate offsets the narrowly focused devastation wreaked on discrete industries, workers and communities.
  • today’s practical lesson is much simpler: The deal on offer to the U.S. working and middle classes from globalization is in tatters. We have ignored at our peril the dislocations and the uneven distribution of the benefits.
  • We need a new agenda promising fairness and growth in equal measure.
  • The business community’s agenda for accelerating economic growth is straightforward. It includes making our corporate tax system simpler and more globally competitive; subjecting regulations to rigorous cost-benefit criteria; reforming our immigration laws to admit more highly educated and skilled workers, particularly in the technology and engineering fields; and adopting more free-trade agreements, most notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, to stimulate global flows of goods and services. Corporate leaders (and many economists) are convinced that this is the clear path to accelerated growth and job formation.
  • in order to create the social circumstances necessary to make this commercial agenda at all politically feasible, the business community must find a way to support — and especially be willing to pay for — an array of policies designed to foster economic fairness that are traditionally opposed by the business lobby.
  • This list is long but would include increasing the minimum wage, expanding the earned-income tax credit and reforming unemployment programs; investing in early-childhood education, vocational training, prison-to-work assistance, apprenticeships and college affordability; financing a large-scale infrastructure building program; implementing robust transition assistance for workers dislocated by foreign competition and technological change; and ensuring health-care and retirement income for aging citizens in need.
  • The cost of all of this would be, of course, high. But the price of inaction is certainly far more dear. One of the best ways to finance it all might be a national sales levy along the lines of a progressive value-added tax
  • To restore credibility to the business community’s agenda, we must work to set in motion the policies necessary to stimulate growing incomes and rising equality. In actuality, growth and fairness agendas are compatible and mutually reinforcing because a stronger middle class — and healthier consumer — would be as good for business as it is for society.
Javier E

The new capitalists: Islamists' political economy | openDemocracy - 1 views

  • In the last four decades, centrist or modernist Islamists, most of whom accept the rules of the political game, brilliantly positioned themselves as the alternative to the failed secular "authoritarian bargain". They invested considerable capital in building social networks on the national and local levels, including non-government professional civil society associations, welfare, and family ties. In contrast to their secular-minded opponents, Islamists have mastered the art of local politics and built a formidable political machine that repeatedly has proved able to deliver the vote. Islamists’ recent parliamentary victories are not surprising, because they had paid their dues and earned the trust of voters
  • Islamist parties are increasingly becoming "service" parties: an acknowledgment that political legitimacy and the likelihood of re-election rests on the ability to deliver jobs, economic growth, and to demonstrate transparency. This factor introduces a huge degree of pragmatism in their policies. The example of Turkey, especially its economic success, has had a major impact on Arab Islamists, many of whom would like to emulate the Turkish model. The Arab Islamists have, in other words, understood the truth of the slogan, "It is the economy, stupid!" The Turkish model, with the religiously observant provincial bourgeoisie as its kingpin, also acts as a reminder that Islam and capitalism are mutually reinforcing and compatible.
  • It is notable that the Islamists' economic agenda does not espouse a distinctive "Islamic" economic model. This is unsurprising, however, as an Islamic economic model does not exist
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Nevertheless, what distinguishes centrist religious-based groups from their leftist and nationalist counterparts is a friendly sensibility toward business activities including wealth accumulation and free-market economics. Islamism is a bourgeois movement consisting mostly of middle-class professionals, businessmen, shopkeepers, petty merchants and traders.
  • If there is a slogan that best describes Islamists’ economic attitude, it would be: "Islam-is-good-for-business". Many Arab Islamists admire and wish to imitate the example of Turkey
  • some Islamist-specific economic measures and ideas will be introduced to complement free-market capitalism
  • There is nothing in Islamists’ current statements and ideas that shows them to be socialist-oriented, though most readily accept the Keynesian model of active state intervention in the economy. Among Islamists, the interventionist approach appeals most to Salafists, who forcefully call for the adoption of distributive measures to address rampant poverty. Yet the dominant Islamist approach to the economy, with minor variations, is free-market capitalism
  • These Islamists also face a huge challenge: to deliver critical economic improvements in the short term, while devising a long-term comprehensive reform agenda that lays the foundation of a productive economy. The dismal socioeconomic conditions in transitioning Arab countries - abject poverty, double-digit unemployment, the absence of a competitive private sector, against a background of rising expectations - mean that the new governments will be hard pressed to focus on distributive policies and urgent short-term needs.
Javier E

Can Islamists Be Liberals? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In Tunisia and Egypt, Islamists, who were long perceived as opponents of the democratic system, are now promoting and joyfully participating in it. Even the ultra-Orthodox Salafis now have deputies sitting in the Egyptian Parliament, thanks to the ballots that they, until very recently, denounced as heresy.
  • It was the exclusion and suppression of Islamists by secular tyrants that originally bred extremism.
  • as Fareed Zakaria warned in his 2003 book “The Future of Freedom,” there are illiberal democracies, too, where the majority’s power isn’t checked by constitutional liberalism, and the rights and freedoms of all citizens are not secured. This is a risk for the post-Arab Spring countries, and even for post-Kemalist Turkey. The real debate, therefore, is whether Islam is compatible with liberalism.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The main bone of contention is whether Islamic injunctions are legal or moral categories. When Muslims say Islam commands daily prayers or bans alcohol, are they talking about public obligations that will be enforced by the state or personal ones that will be judged by God?
  • For those who believe the former, Saudi Arabia might look like the ideal state. Its religious police ensure that every Saudi observes every rule that is deemed Islamic
  • By contrast, rather than imposing Islamic practices, the ultra-secular Turkish Republic has for decades aggressively discouraged them
  • there are reasons to worry that illiberal democracy could emerge. For Turkey still suffers from a paranoid nationalism that abhors minority rights, a heavy-handed judiciary designed to protect the state rather than its citizens, and an intolerant political culture that regards any criticism as an attack and sees provocative ideas as criminal.
  • If Turkey succeeds in that liberal experiment, and drafts its new constitution-in-the-making accordingly, it can set a promising example for Islamist-led governments in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. All of these countries desperately need not only procedural democracy, but also liberalism. And there is an Islamic rationale for it as well: Imposed religiosity leads to hypocrisy. Those who hope to nurture genuine religiosity should first establish liberty.
Javier E

How Your View of God Shapes Your View of the Economy | Religion & Politics - 0 views

  • Frank championed the narrative that working-class Americans vote against their economic interests, having been lured into the GOP tent largely with what he sees as insincere religious rhetoric. “The people at the top know what they have to do to stay there,” writes Frank, “and in a pinch they can easily overlook the sweaty piety of the new Republican masses, the social conservatives who raise their voices in praise of Jesus but cast their votes for Caesar.”
  • However compelling this dichotomy may be, it is a false one. As a researcher and social scientist, I have found that economic perspectives are indelibly tied to religious cosmologies. Voters need not choose between God and mammon. Instead, they tend to see their money, the market, and the economy as a reflection of their God.
  • we often assume that working-class evangelicals struggle to either prioritize their economic interests or remain committed to their religious ethics.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • for many white evangelicals, religious and economic spheres are conceptualized as two sides of the same coin. They describe their worldview as one in which the spiritual and the material are mutually dependent and interactive. And the popularity of this worldview cuts across social class.
  • approximately 31 percent of Americans, many of whom are white evangelical men, believe that God is steering the United States economy, thus fusing their religious and economic interests. These individuals believe in what I call an “Authoritative God.” An Authoritative God is thought to be actively engaged in daily activities and historical outcomes. For those with an Authoritative God, value concerns are synonymous with economic concerns because God has a guiding hand in both. Around two-thirds of believers in an Authoritative God conjoin their theology with free-market economics, creating a new religious-economic idealism. Nearly one-fifth of American voters hold this viewpoint, signaling that it can be a major political force.
  • Religious-economic idealism is the belief that the free-market works because God is guiding it.
  • this ideology explains two supposed paradoxes. First, it indicates why some religious working-class Americans have embraced the GOP. It is not that these individuals ignore their class interests, but rather that they believe issues of abortion and gay marriage are linked to whether God is willing to help solve both social ills and their economic woes.
  • the fact that income does not predict whether an American believes in an Authoritative God indicates that this is not a class-based ideology. Instead, it is a cosmic worldview, which appeals across economic divides. Most clearly, it benefits the wealthy because conservative economic policies tend to favor them. But wealthy Americans with an Authoritative God can also have a religious-like devotion to their economic conservatism. In this way, their economic pragmatism transforms into a type of religious dogmatism. And dogmatism does not bend to changing circumstances and outcomes, so that we can expect believers in religious-economic idealism to cling to laissez-faire policies even when they appear not to work.
  • religious-economic idealism makes economic and cultural issues fully compatible, which may be a blessing and a curse for the Republican Party. It blesses the GOP with strong support from individuals who may be personally disadvantaged by their economic strategies, but also curses them with an unforgiving and inflexible constituency if political compromise becomes a necessity of governing. In a universe where God decrees no government intervention, any deviation or compromise from the free market is heresy.
  • Americans who feel that “God has a plan” for them and their country are much more likely to think that “success is achieved by ability rather than luck” and that “able-bodied people who are out of work should not receive unemployment checks.” And over half (54 percent) of Americans who think God controls the economy feel that “anything is possible for those who work hard”; in contrast, only one-quarter of Americans who rely on human resourcefulness, rather than God’s plan, feel this way.
  • Because evangelicals assert that you alone are responsible for your eternal salvation, it makes sense that the individual is also responsible for his or her economic salvation without government assistance, especially if God is the only assistance you really need.
julia rhodes

Turkey's ailing sultan - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition - 0 views

  • “Increasingly, democratisation and authoritarianism are going hand in hand, and not just in Turkey.”
  • Erdogan’s ambition to institute an enhanced presidency with himself as a new “sultan” now looks unlikely to succeed after his imperious response to the protests over the development of Gezi Park
  • For the first time, Erdogan, who had confidently steered Turkey through choppy waters, seemed at a loss
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • His other recent attempts at social control (restrictions on the sale of alcohol or moves to end abortion, which he has described as murder) infuriated secular Turks, but were aimed at winning votes from Muslim conservatives in this still divided society.
  • Secular intellectuals regard Gezi as a turning point: in the first major political protests since the 1970s, an apolitical younger generation has become politicised — not by big ideas like democracy or nationalism, but for their rights. They were joined by activists for Kurdish, Alevi and gay rights — a coming together of separate causes that is new to Turkey.
  • As it built its own coalitions at home, it set out internationally to demonstrate that Islam was compatible with democracy. The policy worked. The AKP was re-elected on 22 July 2007, and won a triumphant third term in the 12 June 2011 elections
  • The AKP, though not democratic, became a democratising force, giving a new sense of belonging and empowerment to a majority of Turks, previously excluded by the old secular elites
  • His worsening authoritarianism escaped the world’s attention, although in Turkey, there were worries about unaccountability and crony capitalism, the penetration of Fethullah Gulen’s Islamist movement into the police and judiciary, the silencing of the media, and the arrest of many journalists and other critics of the government
  • It is clear the justice system is not free of politics and has failed to investigate evidence of wider involvement in criminal activity and human rights abuses, particularly in the southeast. Yet with the verdicts, Turkey’s demilitarisation has been underlined.
  • Much of the AKP success story was based on the economy, which it opened up, building on structural adjustment reforms by the former economy minister Kemal Derviş (2001-02).
  • . On Cyprus, there is a sense that the AKP government has done what it can, backing the UN peace plan proposed by Kofi Annan for a federal solution.
  • he AKP government’s biggest achievement so far — and greatest remaining challenge — is its attempt at a solution to the Kurdish question.
  • “We used to see self-determination as the only solution... Now our Kurds want to look west. Both for economic benefits and because of the regional conjunction, Kurds here see their future in a democratising Turkey that recognises their rights.” Those rights mean an end to ethnic discrimination, full recognition of Kurdish identity with the right to teach Kurdish at school and a decentralisation that will lead to a form of autonomy. For this, constitutional reform is needed.
  • Further diplomatic incidents led to Turkey’s suspension of military, though not economic, ties with Israel that October. This made Erdogan the darling of the Arab world and played well with the Turkish public. Washington under Obama was not dissatisfied. Then came the Mavi Mamari affair, when a Turkish flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza was attacked in international waters on 31 May 2010 and nine Turkish activists killed. This year, after a very public row, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu apologised.
  • There were miscalculations on Syria. After Turkey’s close alliance with President Bashar al-Assad was swiftly reversed at the start of the uprising, Turkey facilitated the rebels, set up refugee camps along the shared border and allowed the opposition Syrian National Council to set up its headquarters in Istanbul. Ordinary Turks welcomed Syria’s refugees but there was no enthusiasm for military involvement, with the risks of unrest among the country’s own Alevi minority (3) and concern at the porous borders that allow infiltration of Al-Qaida-linked jihadists into Turkey.
Javier E

Undoing Netanyahu's Damage to U.S.-Israel Relations - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Goldberg: A few years ago, we thought that J Street, the Jewish left, was going to drive the agenda. But now people to the right of AIPAC (the mainstream pro-Israel lobby)  are doing much of the driving. How did that happen? Oren: There’s a very simple answer to that. J Street’s power derived from the fact that it is an extension of the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration invited J street into the room with other Jewish organizations and sent high-level officials to speak at their conventions. But the reservoir of support for J Street is not particularly large. The American Jewish community is five million people. What percentage of that number is actually involved in Jewish affairs? What percentage of those are involved with Israel, and what percentage of people involved with Israel wake up in the morning saying, ‘I care about Israel but I’m pained by Israel’s policies.’ That’s a very low percentage. The right is growing much more rapidly, even as a percentage within the Jewish community. There’s a greater percentage that is more religious, more conservative. That disparity is going to grow in favor of the right in coming years.
  • Goldberg: But on policy, what do you do? Oren: We have to understand that people who aren’t anti-Israel have criticisms of specific Israeli policies. We have to show greater flexibility on the peace issue. Israel is willing to go a serious distance on peace. We always have to show that we’re ready to sit at the table if the Palestinians are willing to act accordingly. That’s something we can do, we can make that case. Our problem has been building outside the settlement blocs and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Those areas were recognized by the Bush-Sharon letter of 2004 as remaining within Israel’s boundaries in the event of a final-status negotiation. We should keep to that in a final-status-compatible way.  If the Palestinians don’t want to do this, then here’s what we’re going to do on our own, to make the situation better and lay the groundwork for a future peace. That’s what we have to do, and I think that this logic would be compelling to most American decision-makers.
  • Oren: Foreign affairs is viewed as the poorer, younger brother of security affairs in Israel. We don’t have long-term strategic thinking about foreign affairs. We should take it more seriously here. Israel has to undergo a fundamental change – we have to realize we are not alone in the world Our relationships, not just with the United States, but with the Far East, with Europe, with Africa, are vital for us. We haven’t looked in strategic ways about how to defend ourselves against BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions.) I understand why this happens – there is the old Zionist notion that it is not important what the non-Jews think, that it's only important what the Jews do. But we can’t function in the world with this attitude.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Goldberg: Is the damage in any way permanent here? Oren: I think the damage could be diplomatic damage. I don’t think Americans are going to stop their work for Iron Dome (an American-funded anti-missile system). The rumors are that the U.S. is cutting back on intelligence sharing, but that would a self-inflicted wound. But we could feel the damage at the U.N., or some other international body. We don’t only rely on the U.S. for a military Iron Dome, but for a diplomatic Iron Dome as well.
  • The kingmaker in Tuesday's election in Israel may turn out to be Moshe Kahlon, the Libyan Jewish center-rightist whose new party, Kulanu ("All of Us") stands to win at least eight seats in the next Knesset. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger, the centrist Isaac Herzog, will need Kahlon's party with them in order to create a viable governing coalition. Kahlon's emphasis is on economic issues; his foreign policy guru is Michael Oren, who is ranked fourth on the Kulanu list. Oren served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2009 until 2013,
qkirkpatrick

BBC News - France to protect all religions, vows Francois Hollande - 0 views

  • French President Francois Hollande has vowed that his country will protect all religions, saying that Muslims are the main victims of fanaticism.
  • Speaking at the Arab World Institute, he said Islam was compatible with democracy and thanked Arabs for their solidarity over terrorism in Paris.
  • There are also funerals taking place for Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat and Franck Brinsolaro, a policeman assigned to guard Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Mr Hollande said that radical Islam had fed off contradictions, poverty, inequality and conflict, and that "it is Muslims who are the first victims of fanaticism, fundamentalism and intolerance".
  • But some Muslims were angered by the edition and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu condemned it on Thursday as an "open provocation".
  • "Freedom of the press does not mean freedom to insult," said Mr Davutoglu, who on Sunday attended a Paris march in memory of the victims of last week's attacks.
  •  
    French President vowed to protect all religions in France.
Javier E

Opinion | Why We Miss the WASPs - The New York Times - 0 views

  • two of the more critical takes on Bush nostalgia got closer to the heart of what was being mourned, in distant hindsight, with his death.
  • Peter Beinart described the elder Bush as the last president deemed “legitimate” by both of our country’s warring tribes — before the age of presidential sex scandals, plurality-winning and popular-vote-losing chief executives, and white resentment of the first black president
  • Franklin Foer described “the subtext” of Bush nostalgia as a “fondness for a bygone institution known as the Establishment, hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige. For more than a century, this Establishment resided at the top of the American caste system. Now it is gone, and apparently people wish it weren’t.”
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.
  • we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.
  • Those virtues included a spirit of noblesse oblige and personal austerity and piety that went beyond the thank-you notes and boat shoes and prep school chapel going — a spirit that trained the most privileged children for service, not just success, that sent men like Bush into combat alongside the sons of farmers and mechanics in the same way that it sent missionaries and diplomats abroad in the service of their churches and their country.
  • However, one of the lessons of the age of meritocracy is that building a more democratic and inclusive ruling class is harder than it looks, and even perhaps a contradiction in terms. You can get rid of the social registers and let women into your secret societies and
  • you still end up with something that is clearly a self-replicating upper class, a powerful elite, filling your schools and running your public institutions.
  • you even end up with an elite that literally uses the same strategy of exclusion that WASPs once used against Jews to preserve its particular definition of diversity from high-achieving Asians — with the only difference being that our elite is more determined to deceive itself about how and why it’s discriminating
  • certain of the old establishment’s vices were inherent to any elite, that meritocracy creates its own forms of exclusion
  • the WASPs had virtues that their successors have failed to inherit or revive
  • The WASP virtues also included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it
  • The goal would have been to keep piety and discipline embedded in the culture of a place like Harvard, rather than the mix of performative self-righteousness and raw ambition that replaced them.
  • for every Brahmin bigot there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanophile who understood the non-American world better than some of today’s shallow multiculturalists.
  • And somehow the combination of pious obligation joined to cosmopolitanism gave the old establishment a distinctive competence and effectiveness in statesmanship — one that from the late-19th century through the middle of the 1960s was arguably unmatched among the various imperial elites with whom our establishment contended
  • So as an American in the old dispensation, you didn’t have to like the establishment — and certainly its members were often eminently hateable — to prefer their leadership to many of the possible alternatives
  • And as an American today, you don’t have to miss everything about the WASPs, or particularly like their remaining heirs, to feel nostalgic for their competence
  • long with the establishment failure in Vietnam, which hastened the collapse of the old elite’s authority, there was also a loss of religious faith and cultural confidence, and a belief among the last generation of true WASPs that the emerging secular meritocracy would be morally and intellectually superior to their own style of elite
  • the WASP ascendancy did not simply fall; it pre-emptively dissolved itself.
  • its virtues were to some extent transferable to a more diverse society: The establishment had always been somewhat permeable to arrivistes,
  • in our era their admirable influence is still felt in figures as different as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
  • In such a world the establishment would have still admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics and Hispanics (and more women) to its ranks … but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite-crafting strategy, rather than under the pseudo-democratic auspices of the SAT and the high school resume and the dubious ideal of “merit.”
  • At the same time it would have retained both its historic religious faith (instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian Social Gospel and a soft pantheism) and its more self-denying culture (instead of letting all that wash away in the flood of boomer-era emotivism).
  • “Those who are mourning the passing of the old Establishment should mourn its many failures, too,” he writes. Which is fair enough: The old ruling class was bigoted and exclusive and often cruel, it had failures aplenty
  • it’s to look forward, and to suggest that our current elite might someday be reformed — or simply replaced — through the imitation of the old establishment's more pious and aristocratic spirit.
  • Right now, almost all the discussion of our meritocracy’s vices assumes the system’s basic post-WASP premises, and hopes that either more inclusion (the pro-diversity left’s fixation) or a greater emphasis on academic merit (the anti-affirmative right’s hobbyhorse) will cure our establishment’s all-too-apparent ills.
  • a more radical theory of the case, one proposed by Helen Andrews in a 2016 Hedgehog Review essay on meritocracy and its discontents:
  • The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy — so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label
  • By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not
  • they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.
  • If we would learn from their lost successes in our own era of misrule, reconsidering this idea — that a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is, and act accordingly — might be a fruitful place to start.
Javier E

Republicans' indifference to the massacres of innocents will lead to their ruin - The W... - 0 views

  • When I walked away from Donald Trump’s Republican Party, I did not walk away from conservatism. Instead, I gave up on a political party whose policies had become indefensible.
  • once again, I and many other reasonable conservatives find ourselves at odds with GOP — read: National Rifle Association — orthodoxy.
  • In District of Columbia v. Heller, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that the regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment. That “important limitation . . . is fairly supported,” Scalia wrote, “by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’ ”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • You would think that the ruling of a conservative legend such as Scalia would provide courage to Republicans who want to end the epidemic of mass shootings. Or they could stand with Ronald Reagan. His pleas to lawmakers helped lead to the 1994 ban on assault-style weapons .
  • After losing to the Gipper, NRA lobbyists in Washington lost their minds. They all but declared war on America’s government while comparing law enforcement officers to Nazis. These “jack-booted government thugs” wanted to “take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure or kill us.”
  • GOP politicians and the gun lobbyists they represent live in a bubble. Their indifference to the massacres of innocents will lead to their political ruin. Then, and only then, can we have an honest debate on the epidemic of guns in America.
Javier E

Opinion | The Death and Birth of Europe's Parties - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In France, the ecologist party is now the first political force among 18- to 34-year-old voters. In Germany, the well-structured Greens have jumped to 20.5 percent of the votes in the European elections; national polls now credit them with an even higher share of the vote
  • The Greens’ popularity, also on the rise in the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Britain and Ireland, is forcing other parties to incorporate part of their agenda on environment
  • In the 20th century, the fight against global warming was confined to far left groups and intellectuals. Today, in this age of globalization backlash and extreme weather, it has gone mainstream.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The relationship between ecology and capitalism is already emerging in the public conversation as a new paradigm, as political groups reassess their ideological foundations: those who believe that ecology and market economy are compatible compete against more radical advocates of a complete change of our growth model
  • There is a silver lining to this European upheaval, and it is an important one: the search for a better system is on, and citizens want to be part of the solution, as the large turnout at the European elections has shown. Europe is being turned into a giant political laboratory. Stay tuned.
brickol

U.S. Coronavirus Testing Hits Milestone but Still Falls Short - The New York Times - 0 views

  • About 65,000 coronavirus tests are being performed on Americans each day — a meteoric rise from just 10 days ago. But public health experts say that about 150,000 tests are needed every day, so that infected patients can be quickly identified and separated.
  • The United States cannot even test everyone who is sick because of a shortage of testing kits and personal protective equipment for health care workers.
  • Early flaws in the testing process — like not relying on the World Health Organization’s coronavirus test and problems with the test kits — cost the United States valuable time and has left the country with a haphazard testing process from coast to coast.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Public health laboratories in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. are now testing for the coronavirus and many more labs are completing testing verification procedures outlined by the Federal Drug Administration. But some states are actively discouraging testing for anyone who is not showing symptoms, and a request from a doctor is no guarantee of a test, Dr. LeRoy said.
  • The state labs are largely being used for patients identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as high priority. This includes hospitalized patients with symptoms compatible with the coronavirus; those over 65; those with chronic medical conditions or compromised immune systems; those who show symptoms within 14 days of being in contact with a confirmed coronavirus patient; and those with a history of travel to China, Italy, Iran or South Korea.
millerco

It's Not Just America Losing Patience With North Korea - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • It's Not Just America Losing Patience With North Korea
  • The United Nations Security Council has unanimously passed a new round of sanctions on the country following its most recent nuclear test.
  • The outcome reflects the difficulty of securing international backing for punitive measures against Pyongyang, as well as the level of international concern about the country’s nuclear and missile programs.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the U.S. had to drop its more stringent demands, the news agency reported, including an oil embargo on North Korea—which would dramatically weaken the Kim Jong Un regime
  • a financial and travel ban on the North Korean leader, and the ability to inspect any ships suspected of carrying illicit goods to or from North Korea.
  • Those demands were unacceptable to China and Russia, both veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council
  • At issue was Pyongyang’s claim on September 3 that  it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb that could be fitted onto a long-range missile
  • China and Russia have their own preferred approaches to the crisis, and they’re not always compatible with what the United States wants
  • China, which fears a destabilized North Korea, is Pyongyang’s main political and economic benefactor
zareefkhan

Turkey Signs Russian Missile Deal, Pivoting From NATO - The New York Times - 1 views

  • In the clearest sign of his pivot toward Russia and away from NATO and the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that Turkey had signed a deal to purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system.
  • The deal comes as relations between Russia and the West are at a particularly low point. Tensions escalated in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and then began fomenting armed revolt in eastern Ukraine. They have grown still worse as evidence has mounted that Moscow was behind the hacking of the 2016 election in the United States and also tried to interfere in other nations’ elections.
  • The purchase of the missile system flies in the face of cooperation within the NATO alliance, which Turkey has belonged to since the early 1950s. NATO does not ban purchases of military hardware from manufacturers outside the American-led alliance, but it does discourage members from buying equipment not compatible with that used by other members.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Turkey had earlier planned to buy missiles from China, but that deal fell through under pressure from the United States.
  • Yet Turkey has other reasons for the missile purchase. It needs to cultivate good relations with Russia, and it also needs to build its own military defense, said Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Turkey wants the deal,” she said, “and Russia is only too happy to drive a wedge into the NATO alliance.”
  • Mr. Erdogan’s announcement of the deal with Russia came after Germany said that it was suspending all major arms exports to Turkey because of the deteriorating human rights situation in the country and the increasingly strained ties.
  • As suspicions toward the West have grown, relations with Russia have warmed, driven by the personal relationship between Mr. Erdogan and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Erdogan has expressed personal admiration for Mr. Putin, to the consternation of many European and American leaders, if not President Trump.
  • After a tense falling out in 2015, when Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane on Turkey’s border with Syria, Mr. Erdogan sought to improve relations with Russia, sending two letters to Mr. Putin and then traveling to Moscow for a meeting in June 2016.
  • The purchase of Russian missiles would take cooperation to a new level, but is not the first time that Turkey has bought military equipment from Russia. It turned to Moscow in the early 1990s to buy military helicopters and armored personnel carriers.
ethanshilling

China's Plan to Win in a Post-Pandemic World - The New York Times - 0 views

  • China unveiled a road map for cementing its rise in a post-Covid world as it opened one of its biggest political events of the year on Friday, casting its success against the coronavirus as evidence of the superiority of its top-down leadership while warning of threats at home and abroad.
  • The message on Friday was one of optimism about the strength of its economy and the solidarity of its people, and of struggle against an array of challenges: a hostile global environment, demographic crises at home and resistance to its rule of Hong Kong.
  • According to the plan, the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution, will be amended to change the process of selecting the territory’s chief executive and the legislature.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The changes will amount to a new electoral process with “Hong Kong characteristics,” Wang Chen, a Politburo member who specializes in legal matters, said in a speech.
  • Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 on the promise that it would be accorded a high degree of autonomy for 50 years. But “Beijing’s full grip on power in Hong Kong may happen well before 2047,” said Diana Fu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
  • The government promised economic growth of “over 6 percent,” a relatively modest target by the standards of China’s pre-pandemic expansion but a big turnabout from last year and a signal of its commitment to keeping the world’s second-largest economy humming.
  • The forecast indicates that China expects a strong rebound after the pandemic brought the country’s economy to a standstill for several months last year.
  • The spending increases over the past two decades, which have given China the world’s second-largest military budget today, have paid for a modernization and expansion program aimed at challenging American military dominance in the Pacific, especially in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
  • Strengthening that message will be a major focus for Mr. Xi as he looks ahead to two important political events. In July, the party will celebrate the centenary of its founding.
  • As China’s rivalry over science and technology with the United States and other countries remains at a boil, Beijing is digging deep into its pockets in a bid for victory.
  • Just over a year after the coronavirus first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, Beijing also pledged to increase resources to guard against emerging infectious diseases and biosafety risks.
  • The Communist Party’s latest five-year plan specifically calls for the construction of a “Polar Silk Road,” presumably aimed at helping China better capitalize on new energy sources and faster shipping routes in the Arctic.
  • China’s military budget is set to rise by around 6.9 percent this year, a slight increase from last year. As overall government spending is projected to decline slightly, the People’s Liberation Army is still being funded robustly.
  • As countries continue to grapple with the pandemic, the party has doubled down on the message that China’s political model of strong, centralized leadership is superior to the chaos of liberal democracies.
  • The government addressed concerns about China’s aging population and shrinking labor force by announcing pension reforms and gradual changes to the official retirement age
  • On Friday, the government announced plans to build a system to support “family development” and strengthen marriage and family counseling services.
  • “Fully implement the party’s basic policy on religious work,” read a draft of the five-year plan. “Continue to pursue the sinicization of China’s religions and actively guide religions so that they can be compatible with socialist society.”
leilamulveny

Opinion | How Biden Funds His Next Bill: Shrink the $7.5 Trillion Tax Gap - The New Yor... - 0 views

  • With the passage of a deficit-financed $1.9 trillion relief bill just hours away, Democrats in Congress may soon pivot to new agenda items, including President Biden’s Build Back Better plan for infrastructure and other critical investments. And those lawmakers will inevitably face intense pressure from fiscal moderates to include tax “pay fors” in spending legislation. One of the best ways to raise plenty of revenue — and help honest taxpayers — is to effectively battle tax cheats. To do that, though, Mr. Biden and Congress must seize the chance to revamp and restore the federal government’s own infrastructure: the Internal Revenue Service.
  • That tax gap is projected to total about $7.5 trillion over this decade. Meanwhile, the I.R.S. answered fewer than a quarter of its phone calls from people seeking help with their taxes.
  • . It would help the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to pay whatever they owe. It would help honest businesses better thrive and compete. And restaffing the I.R.S. through restored funding would help fight corruption and strengthen the rule of law.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Perhaps unsurprisingly, the wealthiest are the prime beneficiaries of the status quo. Estimates suggest that the top 1 percent of filers account for at least 28 percent and as much as 70 percent of the tax gap. The wealthiest households and largest businesses often use a complex maze of financial arrangements and offshore entities that make it incredibly hard and time-consuming for the I.R.S. to untangle what taxes are owed but not paid.
  • A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report published last year found the I.R.S. had failed to follow up with more than 369,000 high-income households that simply did not file a tax return in prior years.
  • Multinational corporations being audited by the I.R.S. have shown they can outgun and outlast it, stalling their cases as long as possible to run out the clock on the statute of limitations. The number of cases brought by the agency’s criminal division has dropped by about a quarter since 2010. Many recent high-profile prosecutions for tax evasion — like those of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Michael Avenatti — occurred only because federal investigators were investigating them for other reasons.
  • An increase in I.R.S. funding to reverse this decade of damage would also make good fiscal sense. Natasha Sarin, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school, and Larry Summers, the Harvard economist, have a proposal to restore about $100 billion to the agency’s budget over the next 10 years.
  • For example, because the I.R.S. gets information on wage and salary income from workers’ tax returns and their employers — and because their taxes are often automatically withheld — compliance on this type of income is above 95 percent
  • Lawmakers have the opportunity to remedy that this year and finally secure the 21st-century tools and resources the I.R.S. needs. Because reforming the I.R.S. is compatible with the budget process that lets spending bills pass in the Senate with a simple majority, there’s little excuse for inaction.
remystewart

The politics of the 1930s are still playing out in Eastern Europe - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Soviet-imposed communism, I wrote that night in an article for The Post, had suppressed the politics that drove events in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other East Bloc states before World War II
    • remystewart
       
      The political impact on WWII still is making an impact now
  • Thirty years later, the politics of the 1930s are still playing out in the former Eastern Bloc. Poland is governed by an authoritarian-minded right-wing government closely aligned with a reactionary Catholic Church. An uneasy peace prevails in the splintered remains of Yugoslavia after a devastating ethnic war.
  • They are authoritarian and socially reactionary — anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is a favorite theme of Poland’s ruling party. Prewar evils such as irredentism and anti-Semitism are alive in mainstream politics to a degree they are not on the other side of the former Iron Curtain.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Yet some legacies of communist rule have proved enduring, perhaps because they are all too compatible with the resurgent illiberal movements.
  • One is the use of state-run national television for political propaganda. After the establishment of democracy, Poland moved to make its government-owned network independent, similar to the BBC.
  • After the war, while West Germany de-Nazified, East Germans, Hungarians and Poles were told they bore no responsibility for fascism or the Holocaust, which were portrayed as capitalist crimes.
  • Eastern Europe is far better off than in 1989. Its people are vastly richer and, in spite of creeping authoritarianism, far freer. But the euphoria I saw and shared in that momentous weekend in Berlin seems a little naive 30 years later. We underestimated the tenacity of the culture created by Soviet communism — and the perils of a return to history
Javier E

Opinion | The Age of Aquarius, All Over Again! - The New York Times - 0 views

  • astrology. According to a 2018 Pew poll, 29 percent of Americans say they believe in astrology. That’s more than are members of mainline Protestant churches.
  • 44 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds say that astrology is somewhat or very “scientific.”
  • in 2017 the typical horoscope got 150 percent more traffic than it had the year before.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • witchcraft. In 1990, only 8,000 Americans self-identified as Wiccans. Ten years later there were 134,000, and today, along with other neo-pagans, there are over a million
  • “Wicca, by that estimation, is technically the fastest-growing religion in America.”
  • The third great rising spiritual force is mindfulness
  • The fourth is wokeness, what some have called the Great Awokening. Burton’s essay is really about how astrology and witchcraft have become important spiritual vocabularies within parts of the social justice movement.
  • These surging movements are people’s attempts to solve the major needs of the current moment
  • The first need is simply to find a way to be spiritual. People are always saying we live in a more secular age, but secularism never really comes
  • Humans are transcendent creatures who have spiritual experiences and instinctively appeal to supernatural powers.
  • The people I know who talk about astrology sort of believe it, but they sort of don’t. Their attitude is ironical, attached and detached all at once.
  • Third, there is a widespread need to express alienation
  • Political alienation manifests itself in the alt-right and the energized radical left. It makes sense that it would manifest itself in the spiritual realm, too.
  • Fourth is the need for identity markers
  • Astrology tells you who you are and what traits you have. In a highly diverse society, it also tells you what sort of people you’re likely to be compatible and incompatible with. When I hear people talk about astrology, this is how they are using it.
  • Fifth is the desire to live within a coherent creed and community, but without having that creed impinge on your individual autonomy
  • The emerging spirituality is a hodgepodge spirituality. Each person borrows practices from, say, Native American, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and SoulCycle tradition
  • Finally, many people seem to want to be alternative without actually leaving the mainstream world
  • Second, there is a widespread need to slow down, to escape the pace of life technology wants and to live at a human pace.
  • I doubt it’s possible to have tight community and also total autonomy, that it’s possible to detach spiritual practices from the larger narratives and cultures and still have something life-shaping
  • We really are living through a moment of major transitional change.
1 - 20 of 36 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page