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manhefnawi

The Battle of Almanza | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...battle-almanza

Battle Spain France Bourbons Allied Army War of Spanish Succession

shared by manhefnawi on 13 May 18 - No Cached
  • son of the future James II of England
  • the War of the Spanish Succession, which began with a dispute between Louis XIV and the Austrian Habsburgs over the vacant Spanish throne
  • The decisive battle occurred on Easter Monday in 1707 when the allied army arrived at the walled town of Almanza, south-west of Valencia, and found Berwick waiting for them
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  • There was fighting in Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, and the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy won brilliant victories for the allies, including Blenheim in 1704
  • The war drew in the English, the Dutch and the Portuguese on the Austrian side against the French, who in Spain were supported by Castile, but opposed by the Catalans
  • The allied army had British, Portuguese, Dutch and Huguenot French contingents
  • the disappearance of the Portuguese cavalry left the British, Dutch and Huguenot infantry’s flank completely exposed and they were overwhelmingly defeated
  • The victory was a major factor in securing control of Spain for the Bourbons
Javier E

Seeds, kale and red meat once a month - how to eat the diet that will save the world | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ce-a-month-diet-save-the-world

meat diet ecological health global warming culture

shared by Javier E on 11 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at
  • The Norway-based thinktank Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem
  • Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet
  • The Eat-Lancet report posits that the global food system is broken. From the numbers quoted alone, it is hard to disagree: more than 2 billion people are micronutrient deficient, and almost 1 billion go hungry, while 2.1 billion adults are overweight or obese
  • Unhealthy diets are, it says, “the largest global burden of disease”, and pose a greater risk to morbidity and mortality than “unsafe sex, alcohol, drug, and tobacco use combined”
  • we are not (yet) extinct, but we have an era named after us. And what we are eating has a lot to do with that. Food production, the report states, “is the largest source of environmental degradation”.
  • It has identified a daily win-win diet – good for health, good for the environment – that is loosely based on the much-lauded Mediterranean diet, but with fewer eggs, less meat and fish, and next to no sugar.
  • it does include a range of foodstuff types that are adaptable, in theory, to the cuisines (potato or cassava; palm-oil-based, say, or soy-rich) and primary dietary restrictions (omnivore, no pork, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan) found across the world
  • the daily ration of red meat stands at 7g (with an allowable range of 0-14g); unless you are creative enough to make a small steak feed two football sides and their subs, you will only be eating one once a month.
  • you are allocated little more than two chicken breast fillets and three eggs every fortnight and two tins of tuna or 1.5 salmon fillets a week
  • Per day, you get 250g of full-fat milk products (milk, butter, yoghurt, cheese): the average splash of milk in not very milky tea is 30g
  • The diet functions on the basis of 2,500 kcal daily,
  • It is still more food – way, way more – than two billion people currently have access to.
  • The future served up on a plate Monday
  • Breakfast: Porridge (made with water) with 1 tbsp honey or maple syrup, topped with nuts and seeds, and one piece of fruit; one cup of tea or coffee with milk
  • Lunch: Fennel, avocado, spinach and broccoli salad with feta and mustard and plant-oil dressing with one slice of sourdough bread, plus one plain yoghurt pot with a handful of berries
  • Dinner: Roast red cabbage and red lentil dahl with rice
  • Snack: Sugar-free ricecakes with nut butter.
  • Tuesday Breakfast: Two eggs with two slices wholemeal toast and Marmite
  • Lunch: Barley or other wholegrain salad with smoked mackerel, seeds
  • radishes, celery, chickpeas, herbs, oil and lemon juice dressing; one piece of fruit.
  • Dinner: One baked sweet potato with salsa, cavolo nero, avocado, black beans, grated cheese and a dollop of sour cream.
  • Snack: One handful of roasted chickpeas.
  • Wednesday Breakfast: Two slices of wholemeal toast with one sliced banana and honey; one cup of tea or coffee with milk.
  • Lunch: Spicy miso noodle soup with tofu, radishes, leafy greens and poached egg (that’s your quota for two weeks used up: no eggs for you next week); small pot of plain yoghurt
  • Dinner: Steamed veg (kale, broccoli and carrot) with a yoghurt and fresh herb dressing and olive oil, root veg and bean mash.
  • Snack: Cannellini bean dip with red pepper sticks
bluekoenig

One policy that changes the coronavirus math - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

politics us history trump crisis culture policy health medicine covid19 coronavirus

shared by bluekoenig on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • bluekoenig on 27 Mar 20
     
    This video details the one policy held by most developed countries across the world except for the United States, paid sick leave for all employees, that may further determine how bad Covid-19's impact will be on the US. Most other developed countries, including Italy and Germany, have a policy where every employee must receive paid sick leave from either their employer, the government or both. This ensures that any disease an employee may have, not just Covid-19, doesn't spread to the company or anyone it serves. The US doesn't have a policy like this and many Americans make the choice every day to go to work sick in order to have enough money to live. This can prove to be detrimental in this outbreak as people continue to go to work and continue to get others sick or don't go to work and lose their job, house, and all their savings. Contingency plans have been in the works since the government started acting on this virus, but most if not all bills requiring paid sick leave have been edited to contain loopholes or become vague in order to appease republican lawmakers.
Javier E

Opinion | The Audacity of Hate - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-anger-fear.html

polarization politics history trust partisan

shared by Javier E on 20 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Karl Rove had a novel idea for how to organize President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.
  • He and the chief campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd, decided on a “base strategy.” They reallocated the bulk of the campaign’s media budget to focus on social conservatives instead of on moderates — a decision predicated on the fact that the swing, or persuadable, share of the electorate had shrunk from one in five voters to less than one in 10.
  • The result was a shift that year from a traditional centrist strategy to an emphasis on anger and fear, a shift that turned out to have profound long-term consequences.
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  • American politics were irrevocably transformed, polarization strategies became institutionalized and the stage was set for the explicit racial and anti-immigrant themes dominating Donald Trump’s campaigns for election and re-election.
  • Three major events over the next 10 years bridged the gap between the White House campaign of George W. Bush and the White House campaign of Donald J. Trump.
  • The economic meltdown of 2007-9 devastated faith in the American economic system and in the nation’s elected leaders — especially the Republican establishment.
  • A second response to intensifying fears, however, was the emergence of the Tea Party, which mobilized racially and financially apprehensive whites who felt abandoned by the Republican leadership.
  • The Tea Party changed what it was permissible to debate openly in contemporary politics. Within a few years, it enabled Trump to further erode the norms of political combat and more openly instigate partisan conflict based on racial and ethnic antagonism.
  • Under Trump, coded rhetoric like Reagan’s “welfare queen” and Nixon’s “silent majority,” was — and is — no longer coded.
  • Sean Trende, an election analyst at RealClearPolitics, Vox reported, “offered a different diagnosis: Romney’s real problem was ‘missing’ white voters who didn’t show up to vote,” and Trende was proved right: As the 2016 primary battle progressed, “those voters” were “no longer missing.” Trump had found them.
  • the most significant damage resulting from negative partisanship and polarization isthat the normal methods of accountability in a democratic society cease to apply. It used to be that people, regardless of party, believed government statistics about the employment rate and other metrics of progress and national well-being. Now, our interpretation of the basic facts of whether we are going in the right or wrong direction is dominated by whether expressing such an opinion is consistent with that which would advantage our tribe.
  • Partisan polarization has become hard-wired in the American political system and is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. Our constitutional system is not well matched with our current party system. Partisan asymmetry makes it even worse. The GOP has radicalized into an anti-system party that does not accept the legitimacy of its opposition and enables a slide toward autocracy. Very dangerous times for American democracy.
  • It is an environment in which negative campaigning, on TV and on social media, has become the instrument of choice, not a tool, but the beating heart of political partisanship.
  • The rise in hostile views of the opposition candidate, the two authors argue, “is not primarily due to learning about real ideological positions of the candidates and the parties.” Instead, they write, the more likely explanation is that the effectiveness of these campaigns is in reminding “partisans about the negative traits of the out-party candidate, and positive traits of her own party.”
  • When you take today’s urban-rural divide, couple it with the most engaged citizens’ tendency to live in echo chambers, and add accelerants in the forms of identity politics and misinformation campaigns, you have a house waiting to go up in flames.
  • We identify three possible negative outcomes for democracy,”
  • The three negative outcomes, according to the authors, are gridlock; democratic erosion or collapse under new elites and dominant groups; and democratic erosion or collapse under old elites and dominant groups.
  • With few exceptions, political scientists are pessimistic about both the short- and long-term prospects for amelioration of hostile partisan division.
  • More than anything, Trump intuitively understood how polarization, and with it, the intense hatred among legions of Republican voters of liberal elites and of the so-called meritocracy could be a powerful tool to win elections.
  • trust in the electoral process is now contingent on who wins. That is, losers will cry ‘fraud’ and consider the president illegitimate, even if the election is well-run. This is the kind of dynamic we see in the developing world and unstable democracies. It is a recipe for disaster.
  • it is more likely that that bygone era was the aberration and today’s hyperpolarization is what we should expect in equilibrium. In other words, we probably ought to accept the current state of affairs as the new normal.
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: Reality Arrives to the Trump Era - 0 views

nymag.com/...-arrives-to-the-trump-era.html

1619 white supremacy American idea interpretation historiography

shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • educating people about the brutal horrors of the slavery regime, as uncovered by recent historians, and the staggering cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy of many of the Founding Fathers is only a good thing.
  • But the upping of the ideological ante, the decision to call the issue a “project,” the placing of slavery at the center of the revolution, and the intent to deploy it as simple, incontrovertible, historical truth to schoolkids takes things much further.
  • It is, in fact, history as filtered through the ideology of critical race theory, which regards the entire American experiment as an exercise in racial domination, deliberately masked by rhetoric about human freedom and equality
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  • But the paper of record and the Pulitzer Board, both of which sponsored and promoted the issue, are surely different. They aspire to factual, honest journalism — not ideological reframing, repackaged as empirical reality
  • They imply a liberal view of the world, in which the race of authors is far less important than the cogency of what they have to say, in which history is not predetermined by analyses of “structural oppression,” but by fact and contingency. The Times is supposed to be more about empiricism than activism
Javier E

Opinion | The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-outcomes.html

pandemic model outcome crisis

shared by Javier E on 21 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • About four out of five people known to have had the virus had only mild symptoms, and even among those older than 90 in Italy, 78 percent survived.
  • Two-thirds of those who died in Italy had pre-existing medical conditions and were also elderly
  • “I’m not pessimistic. I think this can work.” She thinks it will take eight weeks of social distancing to have a chance to slow the virus, and success will depend on people changing behaviors and on hospitals not being overrun. “If warm weather helps, if we can get these drugs, if we can get companies to produce more ventilators, we have a window to tamp this down,”
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  • Dr. Neil M. Ferguson, a British epidemiologist who is regarded as one of the best disease modelers in the world, produced a sophisticated model with a worst case of 2.2 million deaths in the United States.
  • I asked Ferguson for his best case. “About 1.1 million deaths,” he said.
  • one can argue that the U.S. is not only on the same path as Italy but is also less prepared, for America has fewer doctors and hospital beds per capita than Italy does — and a shorter life expectancy even in the best of times.
  • up to 366,000 I.C.U. beds might be needed in the United States for coronavirus patients at one time, more than 10 times the number available. A Harvard study reached a similar conclusion.
  • This is an interval of quiet when the United States should be urgently ramping up investment in vaccines and therapies, addressing the severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment, and giving retired physicians and military medics legal authority to practice in a crisis
  • During World War II, the Ford Motor Company turned out one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes; today, we should be rushing out ventilators and face masks, but there’s nothing like the same sense of urgency.
  • After initial missteps in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first discovered, China adopted protocols for protective gear that are more rigorous than those in the United States, involving N95 masks and face shields, double gowns, gloves and shoe covers, plus special areas to remove protective clothing — and all this worked. Not one of the 42,000 health workers sent to Wuhan is known to have become infected with the coronavirus. The United States isn’t protecting health workers with the same determination; it seems to be betraying them.
  • In Italy, 8.3 percent of coronavirus cases involve health workers. A doctor in the Seattle area who is forced to reuse N95 masks told me that she and her colleagues fear that the lack of supplies will be deadly.
  • “We are all making dying contingency plans at this point just in case,” she said. “Wills, backup people to take care of kids, recording bedtime stories.”
  • The United States is in a weaker position than some other countries to confront the virus because it is the only advanced country that doesn’t have universal health coverage, and the only one that does not guarantee paid sick leave
  • with infectious diseases, the burden will be shared by all Americans
  • This crisis should be a wake-up call to address long-term vulnerabilities. That means providing universal health coverage and paid sick leave — and if you think that the coronavirus legislation Trump signed on Wednesday achieves that, think again. It guarantees sick leave to only about one-fifth of private-sector workers. It’s a symbol of the inadequacy of America’s preparedness.
  • We may dodge a bullet this time, but experts have been warning for decades that a killer pandemic will come;
  • if we, too, can be scared enough to invest in public health and fix our health care system, then something good can come from this crisis — and in the long run, that may save lives.
  • Ferguson questions whether South Korea and other countries can sustain their success for 18 months until a vaccine is ready, even as new cases are constantly being imported
  • America and South Korea reported their first Covid-19 cases on the same day, but South Korea took the epidemic seriously, promptly created an effective test, used it widely and has seen cases go down more than 90 percent from the peak.
  • In contrast, the United States badly bungled testing, and President Trump repeatedly dismissed the coronavirus, saying it was “totally under control” and “will disappear,” and insisting he wasn’t “concerned at all.” The United States has still done only a bit more than 10 percent as many tests per capita as Canada, Austria and Denmark.
  • Peter Hotez, an eminent vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, told me that he and his colleagues have a candidate vaccine for the coronavirus but still haven’t been able to line up sufficient funding for clinical trials.
Javier E

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation | George Monbiot | Opinion... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...all-to-complacent-civilisation

nature civilization bubble deniers sustainability threat crisis food antibiotics culture sunk costs

shared by Javier E on 25 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • e have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world.
  • The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.
  • The temptation, when this pandemic has passed, will be to find another bubble. We cannot afford to succumb to it. From now on, we should expose our minds to the painful realities we have denied for too long.
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  • The planet has multiple morbidities, some of which will make this coronavirus look, by comparison, easy to treat
  • how will we feed ourselves?
  • A large body of evidence is beginning to accumulate showing how climate breakdown is likely to affect our food supply
  • In his forthcoming book, Our Final Warning, Mark Lynas explains what is likely to happen to our food supply with every extra degree of global heating. He finds that extreme danger kicks in somewhere between 3C and 4C above pre-industrial levels.
  • At this point, a series of interlocking impacts threatens to send food production into a death spiral. Outdoor temperatures become too high for humans to tolerate, making subsistence farming impossible across Africa and South Asia. Livestock die from heat stress. Temperatures start to exceed the lethal thresholds for crop plants across much of the world, and major food producing regions turn into dust bowls.
  • Simultaneous global harvest failure – something that has never happened in the modern world – becomes highly likely.
  • Every food-producing sector claims that its own current practices are sustainable and don’t need to change
  • even if every nation keeps its promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.
  • Thanks to our illusion of security, we are doing almost nothing to anticipate this catastrophe, let alone prevent it. This existential issue scarcely seems to impinge on our consciousness
  • A food deficit could result in billions starving. Hoarding will happen, as it always has, at the global level, as powerful people snatch food from the mouths of the poor.
  • But this is just one of our impending crises. Antibiotic resistance is, potentially, as deadly as any new disease. One of the causes is the astonishingly profligate way in which these precious medicines are used on many livestock farms
  • Pharmaceutical companies are failing to invest sufficiently in the search for new drugs. If antibiotics cease to be effective, surgery becomes almost impossible
  • Childbirth becomes a mortal hazard once more. Chemotherapy can no longer be safely practised. Infectious diseases we have comfortably forgotten become deadly threats. We should discuss this issue as often as we talk about football. But again, it scarcely registers.
  • Sunk costs within the fossil fuel industry, farming, banking, private healthcare and other sectors prevent the rapid transformations we need. Money becomes more important than life.
  • this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life. This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world.
Javier E

Opinion | Politician Cyrus Habib Leaves Office to Join the Jesuits - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cyrus-habib-jesuit.html

politician role model

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Try the parable of the blind man who gave up political glory for Jesus Christ.He quickly climbed the rungs of power, became the lieutenant governor of the state of Washington at 35 and had reason to believe that he’d be governor someday, maybe even before he turned 40.
  • At the age of 8, he lost his sight: A rare cancer forced the removal of both of his retinas. He spent the next decades proving to the world — and to himself — that he could nonetheless accomplish just about anything that he set his mind to.
  • He attended Columbia University. He won a Rhodes scholarship. He graduated from Yale Law. “From Braille to Yale” was how he often described his journey. It made for a great political speech.
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  • “I was in talks with a top literary agent in New York about a book deal, and it was all predicated on my biography, my identity,” he told me recently. He could feel himself being sucked into “a celebrity culture” in American politics that had nothing to do with public service. He could feel himself being swallowed by pride.
  • “How many ways,” he said “can you be called a rising star?”
  • He decided not to find out. Last month Habib, now 38, announced that instead of being on the ballot in November for a second term as lieutenant governor, he would soon leave office to become a Roman Catholic priest.
  • He is entering the Jesuit religious order, whose intensive, extensive ordination process typically takes about 10 years and involves vows of poverty and obedience as well as chastity.
  • But the more frequently that was mentioned, the more awkwardly it sat with him. His friend Lee Goldberg, who went to Columbia with him, told me that Habib watched other politicians race to the television cameras and meticulously plot their careers and was increasingly turned off.
  • Habib worried that if he moved into the governor’s office, he might be too intoxicated by power to let it go. Stepping down now, he told me, is like “giving your car keys to someone before you start drinking.”
  • And he committed to this course just as political gossips speculated about a heady promotion for him. He was a lock for re-election, as is the state’s governor, Jay Inslee. But in one scenario, a Joe Biden presidency could lead to a high-level administration position for Inslee, who would then have to step down. His lieutenant governor would immediately take his place.
  • If anything, that bolsters his resolve to take a sledgehammer to the old fortifications of his ego. “That can-do, can-overcome mentality is fantastic and can get you far,” he said. “But if hardened into an ideology of its own, it can crowd God out, because it makes you into a kind of god and says: ‘I’m not a contingent creature. I’m completely independent.’”
  • Habib devoured popular fiction, serious literature and history, reading in Braille or listening to recordings. “Books allowed me to see — through the eyes of the author, the eyes of the narrator,” he said.
  • he and his admirers assumed there’d be even higher offices down the road.
  • “We’re not completely in control,” he told me during a series of long telephone conversations over the past two weeks. “Look at what we’re going through now. Something that you can’t even see with the naked eye is ravaging us.”
  • Habib said that federal lawmakers increasingly seemed to be interested in posturing, not problem-solving, which involves compromise. “You have to face the political reality you’re in and not just present a competing utopia,” he said.
  • Although he hadn’t been particularly religious as a child or in college, he was subsequently drawn to Catholic teaching and faith, and one of his spiritual advisers in the church recommended that he read “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” by the Rev. James Martin, a nationally renowned Jesuit priest and best-selling author. Habib did — and it pointed him toward what he thought might be a more satisfying, impactful way of helping people in need.
  • What about the surrender of his autonomy to the order’s directives? Wouldn’t his world become smaller?
  • “I don’t see it as a shrinking of my world,” he said. “I see it as a shrinking of my self. When the focus is not as much on my brand, my messaging, my re-election, my fund-raising process, my legislative agenda, you create more space for God to operate on you.”
Javier E

How Environmental Movement Plans to Leverage the Coronavirus Pandemic - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ronavirus-pandemic-11586164191

environmental movement pandemic crisis policy

shared by Javier E on 06 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • groups including Greenpeace, the International Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute are seizing the crisis as an opportunity to press governments to make industrial stimulus packages contingent on modernizing energy systems.
  • . “Any loans must come with strings attached to reduce emissions so that in the months to come the government can steer high-carbon industries toward the cleaner, healthier and more resilient future we all need,”
  • “We are asked by many governments around the world to give them advice on how they can shape the energy component of these stimulus packages in order to boost the energy resilience and accelerate the energy transition,” said Fatih Birol, executive director at the IEA.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A slowdown in activity during the 2009 economic downturn reduced carbon emissions and air pollution, but emissions rose 6% the following year, data from the International Energy Agency showed, as governments unleashed stimulus programs to reinvigorate growth.
  • the rapid changes in regions around the world resulting from measures to stop the spread of the virus could yet bring about long-term behavioral changes such as walking to work and increased teleconferencing over travel.
  • “Financial incentives from governments embedded in stimulus packages to move people toward using energy less and less mobility may be part of the results we are going to see after the shock is over,”
Javier E

Never Trumpers' Next Move - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...609064

gop conservatism trump

shared by Javier E on 07 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • The core of the movement was made up of the public intellectuals, political operatives, and once and future political appointees whom the party depends on to run campaigns and to govern after successful ones. Eliot A. Cohen (now an Atlantic contributing writer), Bryan McGrath, and John Bellinger were among the ringleaders of the nearly unanimous resistance by the GOP’s foreign-policy establishment.
  • New publications have also sprouted up, including The Bulwark, the go-to source for anti-Trump commentary on the center-right, and The Dispatch, founded by two leading conservative journalists, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes. These stalwarts have kept up rearguard efforts to expose the perfidy of the current administration and to wrest their former allies away from Trumpian populism.
  • A small but vocal contingent within the Republican political-operative class also joined the effort.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • In some circles, Never Trump is looked at as little more than the pitiful last gasp of a decadent, exhausted, and now vanquished elite.
  • Kristol has nurtured several organizations committed to traditional conservative values, including Republicans for the Rule of Law and Defending Democracy Together. McMullin and Finn launched Stand Up Republic, an organization dedicated to strengthening American democracy that now has chapters in 18 states
  • Nonetheless, a dedicated remnant has kept the candle burning
  • Another strong constellation of Never Trumpism was made up of writers such as the venerable columnist George Will and Bill Kristol, a co-founder of The Weekly Standard.
  • More likely, however, Never Trumpers will play a different but still vital role in American politics. It could fall to them to prevent Trumpism from dominating the Republican Party—and the country—for years to come.
  • If Trump wins a second term and can maintain his vindictive cult of personality, successful challenges to his style of politics do seem improbable. The conversion of onetime Never Trump favorites like Graham and Representative Elise Stefanik into shameless sycophants bears this out, as does the demonizing of critics such as former Senator Jeff Flake, former Representative Mark Sanford, and Representative Justin Amash, who left the party and now identifies as an independent
  • Others cling to the view that if the president is repudiated at the ballot box this fall, the Trumpist fever will break and the party will be restored to something like its former self. This outcome seems unlikely. Deep sociological factors—in particular, a GOP base that is overwhelmingly white and is becoming more working-class, less formally educated, and older—will lead the party to go where its voters are, even in the absence of Trump.
  • For the foreseeable future, the dominant faction of the GOP may be populist and nationalist. But the populists will not have the party all to themselves
  • They will be forced to share it with what we will call a liberal-conservative faction, in recognition of their grounding in classical liberal principles of pluralism, constitutionalism, and free trade. That faction, in other words, is the Never Trumpers and their fellow travelers: the educated middle class, business interests, and the more upwardly mobile parts of minority groups.
  • Because it will be especially attractive to the kinds of experts and thinkers who played such a key role in the Never Trump movement, it will not lack for well-developed policies and philosophies. In the midst of a pandemic, expertise might even regain some of its appeal.
Javier E

Plasma of COVID-19 Survivors Could Save Lives - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...609007

Covid-19 blood donation

shared by Javier E on 07 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • The criteria, set by the FDA, suggest that donors should have had no symptoms for at least 14 days. They should have had a lab test confirming COVID-19, which is hard to get now and was even harder to get when the donors would have first gotten sick, several weeks ago.
  • All of this, of course, is contingent on plasma actually working against COVID-19. The clinical trials that are planned in the U.S. will focus on patients who are less ill—ideally those not in the ICU. Some evidence suggests that the antibodies in plasma are useful early on in the immune response, but less so once a patient has reached the stage of organ failure that requires hospitalization.
Javier E

The Atomic Bomb, War Room Intrigue and Emperor Hirohito's Decision to Surrender | Histo... - 0 views

hnn.us/174871

japan atom surrender WWII history

shared by Javier E on 08 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Was Japan ready to surrender without the bomb? Some of us believe so, in particular if the Allies would have simply guaranteed the preservation of the Imperial System (with the divine Emperor as the embodiment of all sovereign power in the realm). Others contend the Soviet entry into the war actually caused Japan’s surrender.
  • a close look at the deliberations of Japan’s Supreme Council at the Direction of War––known as the “Big Six”—evidence which has been available for decades, shows Japan’s leadership deeply divided into two factions
  • A hardline contingent remained opposed to surrender even after the second atomic attack on Nagasaki and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war
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  • On the flip side, the peace faction used the atomic bombings to engage the Emperor in the surrender decision, an unprecedented move within Japan’s dysfunctional form of government, which required unanimous approval to make any decision.
  • The Emperor instructed Suzuki to muster another Imperial Conference, where, if necessary, he would “command” the cabinet to accept Byrnes’ counteroffer. After listening to Anami, Umezu, and Toyoda’s now familiar arguments for rejecting the Allies terms, Hirohito told his government he wanted the Byrnes offer accepted.
  • The record of the Imperial Conferences extinguishes any notion that the Japanese government was ready to surrender, that it would have surrendered had the Allies guaranteed the Imperial System, or that it surrendered in response to Russia’s entry into the war. It makes clear two salient facts: that Emperor Hirohito ended the war, and he ended it because of the atomic bomb
Javier E

Our economy is a hellscape for consumers. The United flier is the latest victim. - The ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ted-flier-is-the-latest-victim

oligopoly market fundamentalism consumers economic

shared by Javier E on 12 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • We are told that this is the era of the empowered consumer:
  • Better information means more competition, which means lower prices — all features, of course, of an open marketplace ostensibly presided over by a regulatory authority that, while distant, exists to protect our safety.
  • This vision is a lie. Air travel is the most concentrated version of an essentially authoritarian experience that can be found throughout today’s economy. We live, work, shop, and travel under a system of grossly asymmetric power relationships, in which consumers sign away most of their rights just by purchasing a ticket and companies deputize themselves to enforce contracts with hired goons.
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  • It doesn’t help that the Trump administration is rapidly stripping away as many regulations as it can, promising to repeal two for every new one implemented — an ultra-wealthy administration’s attempt to formalize the plutocratic free-for-all that has followed decades of growing corporate power, defined by massive income inequality, regulatory capture, a revolving door between agencies and the industries they oversee, and steadily eroding consumer rights. The empowered consumer is a figment of our imagination.
  • Experiences that used to be standardized are being divided into tiers denoting various rights, access and costs. The result is to both pit consumers against one another — as they compete for a limited pool of guaranteed seats on an airplane, for example — and to extract more money out of better-heeled customers.
  • If we violate any of the strictures of the contract we’ve implicitly signed by buying a ticket, then the airline — backed with the imprimatur of state authority, perhaps even with the help of local police — has every right to remove us from the plane without apology.
  • Survey the economic landscape and you’re likely to find similarly scrambled power relationships. During the foreclosure crisis, banks acted like arms of the state, with local sheriffs becoming the banking industry’s eviction force. Health insurers dictate access to health care for millions while a small coterie of chief executives reaps huge payouts. The telecommunications industry has consolidated into a handful of industry behemoths that maintain regional monopolies
  • The result is a lack of competition and slow, pricey service
  • Increasingly we’re not just paying more for less; we are sacrificing our privacy rights in the process, as personal data has become a huge driver of the digital economy
  • Those are the economic costs of this arrangement. The social and cultural costs are harder to define but no less important. As Sandel explains, common experiences become increasingly fragmented and subjected to the vicissitudes of the market: “At a time of rising inequality, the marketization of everything means that people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives. We live and work and shop and play in different places. Our children go to different schools.”
  • traditionally guaranteed rights become more contingent and benefits accrue to the wealthy.
  • We get what we pay for, which increasingly means whatever a company like United decides.
abbykleman

Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...on-liberal-william-barber.html

shared by abbykleman on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved — and even recruiting political candidates — to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.
  • Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved — and even recruiting political candidates — to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.
  • Frustrated by Christian conservatives’ focus on reversing liberal successes in legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, those on the religious left want to turn instead to what they see as truly fundamental biblical imperatives — caring for the poor, welcoming strangers and protecting the earth — and maybe even change some minds about what it means to be a believer
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  • The last time the religious left made this much noise was in protesting the Vietnam War, when the members of the clergy were mostly white men.
  • Now, those in the forefront include blacks and Latinos, women and gays, along with a new wave of activist Catholics inspired by Pope Francis. And they include large contingents of Jews, Muslims and also Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists in some cities — a reflection of the country’s religious diversity.
  • Such a loose alliance of people of many faiths, many causes — and no small number of intractable disagreements — may never rival the religious right in its cohesion, passion or political influence
  • Last year, he branched out. Along with the Rev. Traci Blackmon, a well-known supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and other clergy members, Dr. Barber trained thousands of activists in 32 states, an effort that continues.
  • “If we’re going to change the country,” he says, “we’ve got to nationalize state movements. It’s not from D.C. down. It’s from the states up.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • 50th anniversary of the landmark sermon at Riverside Church in Manhattan in which King denounced the Vietnam War, saying, “I cannot be silent,”
  • Dr. Barber preached against Mr. Trump from the same pulpit and denounced what he saw as pervasive racism across the political right.
  • Relations between Democrats and religious progressives have been more difficult since 1980, when evangelicals deserted Jimmy Carter — one of their own, whom they had supported in 1976 — for Ronald Reagan.
  • Issues on which the religious left is at odds with Democratic doctrine include military spending and the death penalty, though the most polarizing is abortion — the main barrier, for many liberal evangelicals and Catholics, to voting as Democrats — as could be seen when the party split recently over whether to endorse an anti-abortion Democrat running for mayor of Omaha.
  • Setting abortion aside, political appeals based on religious beliefs continue to carry risk for Democrats, given the growing numbers of Americans who claim no religion:
  • Secular voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and younger voters are far more secular than older voters.
  • “Most progressive religious leaders I talk to, almost all of them, feel dissed by the left,” he said. “The left is really controlled by a lot of secular fundamentalists.”
  • If Dr. Barber works from the outside in, Mr. Wallis is the consummate inside player. His Capitol Hill operation is on an upswing, its big new offices bustling with interns plotting social media campaigns like a “Matthew 25 Pledge,” to “protect and defend vulnerable people in the name of Jesus.”
  • “People are trying to figure out: How do we get traction? But it has not yet jelled,” she said. “So I yell at the Holy Spirit, ‘Hurry up!’”
  • In Cincinnati alone, 21 churches have joined a sanctuary coalition, forming teams to respond when immigrants are detained, as one group of ministers did recently when a Guatemalan man seeking asylum was held at a nearby jail. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • More and more, younger evangelicals are questioning their association with the religious right, Mr. Nathan said: “I don’t know almost any evangelical Christians who feel comfortable with the old evangelical guard. They’re certainly not in my orbit. Millennial Christians are really concerned about social justice.”
  • “I wish we were not in this place,” he said, “but it’s one of the gifts of this moment. The energy is there, and there’s new, deep relationships that are being forged between clergy and congregations that never existed before.”
millerco

Ted Cruz: A Pressure Point for North Korea - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ure-point-for-north-korea.html

Trump Obama Kim jong-un Jon-il Us north korea politics history

shared by millerco on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • On Oct. 31, the State Department faces a critical decision in our relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
  • The Iran-Russia-North Korea sanctions bill enacted in August included legislation I introduced that requires the secretary of state to decide whether to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism within 90 days.
  • Look at the accusations against Pyongyang: the unspeakable treatment of Otto Warmbier; the assassination of a member of the Kim family with chemical weapons on foreign soil; collusion with Iran to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles; cyberattacks on American film companies; support for Syria’s chemical weapons program; arms sales to Hezbollah and Hamas; and attempts to assassinate dissidents in exile. Given this, the decision should be easy.
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  • In fact, Americans could be forgiven for wondering why North Korea is not already designated as a sponsor of terrorism.
  • Aside from the many stringent limitations a terrorism-sponsor designation imposes on a state, the label serves as a formal indication from the United States that any positive development of diplomatic relations is contingent on abandoning the financing and support of terrorism.
  • On Feb. 13, 2007, the State Department signed a deal with North Korea in pursuit of a grand bargain: exchanging Pyongyang’s promise of eventual denuclearization for Washington’s guarantees for full diplomatic recognition.
  • It used to be — and the story behind the decision to remove that designation nearly 10 years ago is the key to understanding America’s failed assumptions about North Korea, how they led to Pyongyang obtaining its nuclear arsenal, and why the United States needs to reverse its approach and relist Pyongyang immediately.
  • Standing in the way, however, was a decision President Ronald Reagan made nearly 20 years earlier, designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism largely in response to its complicity in a 1987 plane bombing that killed 115 people.
  • Indeed, the State Department linked Pyongyang’s ties to terrorist groups and its nuclear program as a rationale for maintaining the terror designation in 2005.
  • wo years later, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor believed to have been built with North Korean help in Syria, a designated state sponsor of terrorism. Although all this was understood at the time, the United States elected to delist North Korea in 2008 — and in so doing, again fell back into its pattern of misunderstanding rogue regimes.
  • When North Korea reneged on its promise to forgo nuclear weapons in the early 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s administration put together the “Agreed Framework” that paved Pyongyang’s path to nuclearization. When North Korea’s leader at the time, Kim Jong-il, withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003, confirming that he intended to build a nuclear weapon, President George W. Bush pushed for the China-led six-party talks with North Korea.
  • When the country tested its second nuclear weapon in 2009, President Barack Obama opted for “strategic patience.”
leilamulveny

Biden Seeks Deal to Buy Additional 100 Million Doses of J&J Covid-19 Vaccine - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...accine-by-year-end-11615391631

biden deal vaccine wsj Politics policy Pandemic economics

shared by leilamulveny on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden directed his administration to secure an additional 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the year and said he planned to share any excess vaccine supply with other nations.
  • “We need maximum flexibility. There’s always a chance we’ll encounter unexpected challenges,” Mr. Biden said of his additional intended purchases on Wednesday, following a meeting at the White House with J&J CEO Alex Gorsky and Merck & Co. Inc. CEO Kenneth Frazier. Asked what the U.S. will do with any leftover doses, Mr. Biden said, “If we have a surplus, we’re going to share it with the rest of the world.”
  • the U.S. would contribute a total of $4 billion to the international Covax program, an initiative aimed at supplying Covid-19 vaccines to the world’s poorest countries.
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  • Ms. Psaki told reporters the additional J&J doses the administration intends to secure weren’t expected until the second half of the year and would allow the administration to plan for booster shots, if necessary, or for the possible approval of the vaccine for children.
  • “Some observers may view this corporate partnership as the coming together of rivals, but in these extraordinary times we are colleagues, not competitors,” Merck’s Mr. Frazier said on Wednesday.
  • The White House said states will receive 15.8 million doses this week, up from 15.2 million last week. Another 2.7 million doses will be distributed to pharmacies. Those shipments don’t include doses of the J&J vaccine due to manufacturing constraints.
  • The vaccine hasn’t been approved for people under 16 years old. Administration officials have sought to increase the total number of vaccines to prepare for all contingencies, including new variants that could require booster shots.
  • As part of the agreement, the administration committed to help Merck with upgrading its facilities for vaccine production. —Peter Loftus contributed to this article.
Javier E

A Few Thoughts on Conservatism Across Racial Lines | Talking Points Memo - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...nservatism-across-racial-lines

conservatism politics US

shared by Javier E on 05 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • people who call themselves conservatives, I’d suggest a definition like this: a general skepticism of change and preference for past practice, a general privileging of order and authority over equity and equality. Almost inevitably some element of gender traditionalism is part of the equation. This penchant for hierarchical order is almost always played out in the context of the family and usually, if not always in predictable ways, a gender hierarchy within the context of the family.
  • I think this is a decent – not-tightly-historically contingent – way to define ‘conservatism’.
  • a lot about current ‘conservatives’ in the US that isn’t conservative at all. Various definitions of radical are better fits
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  • many African-Americans are both more radical in their critiques of policing and more conservative/traditionalist in their view of the role of policing in public safety than most white liberals
katherineharron

US and China deploy aircraft carriers in South China Sea as Philippines prepares for jo... - 0 views

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

taiwan

shared by katherineharron on 12 Apr 21 - No Cached
  • Military activity in the South China Sea spiked over the weekend as a Chinese aircraft carrier entered the region and a US Navy expeditionary strike group wrapped up exercises.
  • the US and Philippines were preparing for joint drills as the US secretary of defense proposed ways to deepen military cooperation between Washington and Manila after China massed vessels in disputed waters.
  • China's state-run Global Times on Sunday said the country's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, steamed into the South China Sea on Saturday after completing a week of naval exercises around Taiwan.
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  • There was no official announcement of the Liaoning's position
  • The Liaoning's reported arrival in the South China Sea came after a US Navy expeditionary strike group, fronted by the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island, conducted exercises in the South China Sea a day earlier.
  • The ships also carried hundreds of Marine ground forces from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit as well as their supporting helicopters and F-35 fighter jets.Read More
  • "This expeditionary strike force fully demonstrates that we maintain a combat-credible force, capable of responding to any contingency, deter aggression, and provide regional security and stability in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific,"
  • Exercises by the Chinese carrier "can establish wider maritime defensive positions, safeguard China's coastal regions, and keep US military activities in check," the report said, citing Wei.
  • US analyst described the Liaoning's presence in the South China Sea as normal for the spring when weather conditions are conducive to training.
  • On Monday, more than 1,700 US and Philippines troops were beginning two weeks of military exercises, Reuters reported, citing Philippine military chief Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana.
  • The proposals included ways of "enhancing situational awareness of threats in the South China Sea" and come after "the recent massing of People's Republic of China maritime militia vessels at Whitsun Reef," in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone in the Spratly Islands, the statement said.
  • Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Saturday tweeted he will work to have any attack on Philippine civilian craft trigger mutual defense aid, CNN Philippines reported.
  • Beijing accuses Washington and other foreign navies of stoking tensions in the region by sending in warships like the current expeditionary group led by the carrier Roosevelt.
  • Tensions extend to the northeastern edges of the South China Sea, where the island of Taiwan sits
  • Beijing claims the democratic, self-governed island of almost 24 million people as its territory
  • the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.
  • Chinese President Xi Jinping has vowed that Beijing will never allow Taiwan to become formally independent
  • Before moving into the South China Sea at the weekend, the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning had been putting on a show of military muscle around Taiwan for a week, according to Chinese state media. At one point the People's Liberation Army flanked Taiwan, with the Liaoning and its escorts operating in the Pacific Ocean to the east and PLA warplanes making forays into Taiwan's self-declared air defense identification zone to the west.
  • Analysts said the exercises were a warning to Taipei and Washington that Beijing would not brook any moves for Taiwanese independence
  • "What is a real concern to us is increasingly aggressive actions by the government in Beijing directed at Taiwan," Blinken said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
  • "We have a serious commitment to Taiwan being able to defend itself. We have a serious commitment to peace and security in the Western Pacific. And in that context, it would be a serious mistake for anyone to try to change that status quo by force," Blinken said.
Javier E

COVID-19 Vaccines Won't Stop All Infections - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...618330

pandemic vaccine results

shared by Javier E on 20 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Breakthrough infections, which occur when fully vaccinated people are infected by the pathogen that their shots were designed to protect against, are an entirely expected part of any vaccination process. They’re the data points that keep vaccines from reaching 100 percent efficacy in trials; they’re simple proof that no inoculation is a perfect preventative.
  • nearly 40 million Americans have received the jabs they need for full immunization. A vanishingly small percentage of those people have gone on to test positive for the coronavirus. The post-shot sicknesses documented so far seem to be mostly mild, reaffirming the idea that inoculations are powerful weapons against serious disease, hospitalization, and death.
  • The goal of vaccination isn’t eradication, but a détente in which humans and viruses coexist, with the risk of disease at a tolerable low.
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  • dislikes the term breakthrough case, which evokes a barrier walling humans off from disease. “It’s very misleading,” she told me. “It’s like the virus ‘punches’ through our defenses.”
  • Immunity is not a monolith, and the degree of defense roused by an infection or a vaccine will differ from person to person, even between identical twins. Some people might have underlying conditions that hamstring their immune system’s response to vaccination; others might simply, by chance, churn out fewer or less potent antibodies and T cells that can nip a coronavirus infection in the bud.
  • An ideal response to vaccination might create an arsenal of immune molecules and cells that can instantaneously squelch the virus, leaving no time for symptoms to appear. But sometimes that front line of fighters is relatively sparse
  • Should the virus make it through, “it becomes a race [against] time,” Ellebedy told me. The pathogen rushes to copy itself, and the immune system recruits more defenders. The longer the tussle drags on, the more likely the disease is to manifest.
  • The range of vaccine responses “isn’t a variation of two- to threefold; it’s thousands,”
  • “Being vaccinated doesn’t mean you are immune. It means you have a better chance of protection.”
  • The number of post-vaccination infections is also contingent on “the ongoing transmission situation,” Omer told me. “It depends on how much people are mixing.”
  • he circumstances of exposure to any version of the coronavirus will also make a difference. If vaccinated people are spending time with groups of unvaccinated people in places where the virus is running rampant, that still raises their chance of getting sick. Large doses of the virus can overwhelm the sturdiest of immune defenses, if given the chance.
  • under many circumstances, vaccines are still best paired with safeguards such as masks and distancing—just as rain boots and jackets would help buffer someone in a storm.
  • Even excellent vaccines aren’t foolproof, and they shouldn’t be criticized when they’re not. “We can’t expect it’s going to be perfect, on day one, always,” Borio said.
  • The numbers for asymptomatic infections are still crystallizing, but they’re likely to be lower.
  • “Whenever someone tests positive, the real question is, are they sick, and how sick are they? That’s a big difference.”
  • Efficacy, a figure specific to clinical trials, also doesn’t always translate perfectly to the messiness of the real world, where there’s immense variability in how, when, where, by whom, and to whom shots are administered
  • The vaccine’s performance under these conditions is tracked by a separate measure, called effectiveness. Studies rigorously examining vaccine effectiveness are challenging, but early data suggest that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots are living up to their initial hype.
  • Vaccination is actually more like a single variable in a dynamic playing field—a layer of protection, like an umbrella, that might guard better in some situations than others. It could keep a lucky traveler relatively dry in a light drizzle, but in a windy maelstrom that’s whipping heavy droplets every which way, another person might be overwhelmed.
  • A vaccine with a recorded efficacy of 95 percent, for example, doesn’t give everyone who’s vaccinated a 5 percent chance of getting sick. Not all of those people will even encounter the virus
  • The key is how vaccination changes the outcome for those who are meaningfully exposed: Among 100 individuals who might have fallen ill without the vaccine, just five symptomatic cases might appear.
edencottone

U.S. warns of China's growing threat to Taiwan - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...a-growing-threat-taiwan-476170

Politics us

shared by edencottone on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • TOKYO — When President Joe Biden’s national security team prepares to meet their Chinese counterparts at a high-stakes summit in Alaska on Thursday, one of the most urgent issues they must tackle is Beijing’s growing threat to Taipei.
  • It’s a timeline they say has been accelerated by the Trump administration’s repeated provocation of Beijing, China’s rapid military build-up, and recent indications that Taiwan could unilaterally declare its independence from the mainland.
  • Such an invasion would be an explosive event that could throw the whole region into chaos and potentially culminate in a shooting war between China and the United States, which according to the Taiwan Relations Act would consider a Chinese invasion a “grave concern” and is widely understood as a commitment to help Taiwan defend itself against Beijing.
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  • “If we interject ourselves, we are the reagent catalyst that will make this problem hotter,” said one senior defense official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive operational planning. “Militarily we know that if we do too much, push too hard, China will use that optic and they will do more against Taiwan.”
  • Washington and Taipei have robust economic ties but do not have formal diplomatic relations. The Trump administration sought to strengthen this relationship with controversial arms sales and senior-level visits. Officially, the United States has a “One China” policy that recognizes China and Taiwan's historic connection but has consistently opposed the coerced resolution of the status of the island.
  • “Preparing for Taiwan contingencies has been a focus in China’s military modernization for some time, so as their capabilities are increasing, obviously, we are paying very careful attention to the military balance in the Taiwan Strait,” David Helvey, the acting assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told reporters traveling with Austin to Japan.
  • Despite a global pandemic, in 2020 China commissioned 25 advanced new ships, including cruisers, destroyers and ballistic missile submarines — capabilities designed to keep America and its allies that might interfere on Taiwan’s behalf at bay, a second senior defense official said. Meanwhile, Beijing is integrating its new equipment into an increasingly sophisticated force, demonstrated in a loudly publicized live-fire event last fall in which Chinese forces took out an “enemy” with ballistic missiles, and developing a theater command structure much like that of the U.S. military.
  • Meanwhile, officials are increasingly concerned that Taipei may force Beijing into action by unilaterally declaring its independence, particularly after Taiwan’s president was reelected in a landslide last year. Polling data consistently shows the Taiwanese people want a separate identity that is not Chinese, the second official said.
  • The Trump administration exacerbated the Taiwan problem, the second official said. Trump sought to use Taipei as a cudgel against Beijing during the tariff-driven trade war he launched against China, increasing the number of senior-level visits and publicizing arms sales and an anti-China military strategy.
  • Sayers urged the new administration to increase investment in its forward-based forces in the Pacific, strengthen ties with Japan and Australia to deter Beijing, and take steps to bolster Taiwan’s defenses.
  • “If we were to all of a sudden militarize the engagement, if we were to do a lot more to push back on China, if [Taiwan’s] government declares independence — those are all bellwether events that could significantly alter the facts or the assumptions that we have about a military crisis,” said the first senior defense official.
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