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Javier E

Six weeks to sanity: The anti-Trump surge is finally here - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ti-trump-surge-is-finally-here

gop conservatism demagogue crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 20 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Why couldn’t the GOP have figured all this out before Trump got to 1,237 delegates?
  • Right-wingers will smell a plot. (The MSM held back until he had the nomination!) But there were a number of factors in the primary — a huge field (dividing the not-Trump vote and shielding him in debates), a press entranced with his media show, the novelty of his “act,” and the collapse of his opponents at critical times (e.g., Sen. Marco Rubio’s pre-New Hampshire primary debate) — that aided Trump.
  • there is something fundamentally amiss on the right that in a mere six weeks the country has figured out Trump, whereas Republicans in nine months plainly could not see the character they were embracing. That should highlight some troubling deficiencies on the right.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • First, the anti-immigration obsession that had transfixed the right-wing inured many supposed gate-keepers (e.g., magazines, pundits) as well as the base to a candidate peddling a dangerous brew of nativism, protectionism and isolationism. If the “respectable” publications rant and rave about “amnesty,” one can imagine why Trump’s idea for a wall might have gotten traction rather than guffaws
  • Second, over the past seven years, the anti-government tirades from talk radio, from Beltway groups such as Heritage Action and even from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) saturated the base, convincing them that everyone with experience “betrayed them” and only outsiders devoid of exposure to governance had the secret sauce for peace and prosperity.
  • Third, the “establishment” — the officialdom of the Republican National Committee — facilitated Trump’s rise, convinced he’d run as an independent
  • One, therefore, is left with an unpleasant reality: A plurality of GOP voters wanted Trump
  • A significant segment of the GOP primary electorate itself lacked common sense, standards of decency, and intolerance of bigotry and cruelty. No group was worse than the evangelical “leaders” who cheered him along the way.
  • A Republican wag joked that the GOP needs not only a new candidate but also a new base. There is something to that. In the 2016 postmortem, it will be worth examining the extent to which the GOP has promoted crackpots, become ghettoized in distorted right-wing media and lost track of what 21st-century America believes and looks like
  • the party as a whole has to expand its vision and its base. It’s time to stop reveling in ignorance and celebrating lost causes.
  • It’s a problem when the rest of the country has to rescue the GOP and the country from Republican voters’ terrible judgment.
redavistinnell

Social Club at Harvard Rejects Calls to Admit Women, Citing Risk of Sexual Misconduct -... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...risk-of-sexual-misconduct.html

social club harvard calls new york new york times

shared by redavistinnell on 15 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Social Club at Harvard Rejects Calls to Admit Women, Citing Risk of Sexual Misconduct
  • This week, that silence was broken when an official with the group, the Porcellian Club, said that admitting women could increase the chances of sexual misconduct.
  • “Forcing single-gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease, the potential for sexual misconduct,
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  • Harvard has a long tradition of all-male social clubs. In 1984, the university required these clubs to admit women. At that point, the clubs broke official ties with Harvard, and they remain unrecognized by the university.
  • Last year, the Fox Club and the Spee Club opened their doors to women. But six clubs, including the Porcellian, still admit only men.
  • Harvard College’s dean, Rakesh Khurana — who said in a statement that the single-sex clubs were “at odds with the aspirations of the 21st-century society” — was set to meet with graduate leaders of the groups, known as final clubs, on Wednesday for one in a series of discussions he has held with club members and alumni.
  • According to The Crimson, Mr. Storey said in his letter that sexual assault was not a problem at the Porcellian and that the club had become a “scapegoat.
  • Some students said they did not understand why the Porcellian had inserted itself into the discussion, because it does not host parties and keeps a low profile.
  • “I think the fact that women aren’t allowed in their clubhouse has nothing to do with it, and I think that was a pretty dumb thing to say,” Ms. Bishai said, adding that she has a number of close friends who are in final clubs.
  • “a really troubling sentiment, and I think it’s a really dangerous idea that men- and women-identified people can’t be in the same space and behave with equal respect and regard for one another.”
Javier E

How to Teach Students to Think Like Historians | History News Network - 1 views

hnn.us/...each-students-think-historians

history pedagogy learning historiography education

shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • First, the accumulation of research has established a developmental framework for historical knowledge.  Development moves broadly from a naïve, unquestioning acceptance of the authority of historical texts and a judgment of the past by contemporary values and beliefs to a sophisticated recognition that the past is irretrievable and different (even strange), all accounts are human constructions, subject to challenge, and all sources are problematic. 
  • Second, sophisticated historical thinking can be broken into discrete cognitive “moves”  (2), which Reisman has condensed into sourcing, close reading, contextualization, and corroboration.
  • These skills seem effective for teaching at the secondary level, especially for the struggling readers in the study, but of course historians use more; for example, making connections, empathy, marshaling evidence, recognizing limits to one’s knowledge, and recognition of different perspectives.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Unlike a traditional history class, in which students are asked to master a single narrative, usually established by a textbook, Reisman’s lessons asked students to “interrogate, and then reconcile, the historical accounts in multiple texts in order to arrive at their own conclusions.” 
  • Reisman also evaluated student arguments on a scale beginning at the lowest level of analysis—judgment of historical actors by modern standards with no evidence—to judgments with minimal evidence and no regard for context, to judgments containing an awareness of context and perspective though limited in awareness of complexity, to, finally, awareness of one’s own historical subjectivity that encouraged resistance to hasty judgments.  This highest level demonstrated metacognition; these students had developed an awareness of their own thinking.
  • The fifty-minute periods were organized in a consistent, predictable structure (an important element of learning, Reisman maintains), with the teacher typically devoting ten minutes to introducing or reinforcing background information through lecturing, use of video, or textbook questions followed by thirty minutes of document work, individually or in groups.  The background presentation was designed to prepare students for the documents to come, and often to set up “straw men” that the documents could challenge.  The document work was organized around an essential question (for example, “Why did the Homestead strike of 1892 turn violent?”), and included documents offering conflicting interpretations.  Questions in the handouts were designed to direct student attention toward interrogation of the validity of the documents.  The final ten minutes were taken up with whole-class discussion, during which, Reisman hoped, students would engage in historical argument, making claims supported by specific evidence from the background material and documents. 
  • the introduction of historical thinking skills does not require the dismantling of chronological approaches to history.  Instead, they are integrated into the chronology-based curriculum already in place.
  • Reisman also noted another critical but unmeasured factor:  the role of the teacher.  It was crucial for teachers to model the thinking they asked of their students, often by putting a document up on a screen and “thinking aloud” as she read the document and reasoned her way through it, demonstrating, in the process, specific use of the various skills.  In this way, she could make metacognition concrete.  Teachers’ mastery of their subject varied, however, as did their skill in guiding a discussion.  Most of the teachers who participated in the study did not question documents sufficiently or “stabilize content knowledge” by correcting misconceptions.  Reisman pointed out the crucial role of guiding discussions, for example, to interrupt for clarification or to push student thinking toward greater rigor.  Instructional methods that permit students to explore a topic without teacher intervention run the risk of leaving errors and misconceptions—“opportunities in the search for understanding”—unexplored.
Javier E

Politics - James Fallows - 'Apologizing for America': Finally the Parties Can Agree! - ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...258761

immigration legal

shared by Javier E on 23 Jun 12 - Cached
  • Prior to that, every immigrant was neither legal nor illegal, as there were no laws that applied to them. And even from 1882 to 1921, every immigrant not covered by that law (so basically any non-Chinese and eventually non-Asian immigrant; nor covered by the 1875 Page Act, which restricted only prostitutes and convicted criminals) was still neither legal nor illegal, as they continued to fall under the jurisdiction of no law. I think this information makes a big difference, since so many of our arguments about immigration include the phrase "My ancestors came here legally" (meaning that they chose to follow the law), and it's almost always entirely untrue.
Javier E

Republicans Endorse Obamacare Lite, Ctd « The Dish - 0 views

dish.andrewsullivan.com/...ans-endorse-obamacare-lite-ctd

obamacare republicans

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • the Republicans cannot run on repealing Obamacare when they are effectively proposing to fine-tune it. And they cannot run both on maximal patient choice and lower costs.
  • Finally, as with immigration, they are being forced to admit that their most practical vision is not that far apart from what Obama has already enacted or proposed. Their bluff is finally being called as they have to present themselves as an alternative governing party and not just a cable entertainment company.
Javier E

Holocaust: The Ignored Reality by Timothy Snyder | The New York Review of Books - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...holocaust-the-ignored-reality

holocaust wwII genocide history

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The mass killings of European civilians during the 1930s and 1940s are the reference of today’s confused discussions of memory, and the touchstone of whatever common ethics Europeans may share
  • Historians must, as best we can, cast light into these shadows and account for these people. This we have not done.
  • Auschwitz, generally taken to be an adequate or even a final symbol of the evil of mass killing, is in fact only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come.
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  • The very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz warp our understanding of the Holocaust: we know about Auschwitz because there were survivors, and there were survivors because Auschwitz was a labor camp as well as a death factory. These survivors were largely West European Jews, because Auschwitz is where West European Jews were usually sent. After World War II, West European Jewish survivors were free to write and publish as they liked, whereas East European Jewish survivors, if caught behind the iron curtain, could not. In the West, memoirs of the Holocaust could (although very slowly) enter into historical writing and public consciousness.
  • By 1943 and 1944, when most of the killing of West European Jews took place, the Holocaust was in considerable measure complete. Two thirds of the Jews who would be killed during the war were already dead by the end of 1942. The main victims, the Polish and Soviet Jews, had been killed by bullets fired over death pits or by carbon monoxide from internal combustion engines pumped into gas chambers at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor in occupied Poland.
  • the other state that killed Europeans en masse in the middle of the century: the Soviet Union. In the entire Stalinist period, between 1928 and 1953, Soviet policies killed, in a conservative estimate, well over five million Europeans
  • In shorthand, then, the Holocaust was, in order: Operation Reinhardt, Shoah by bullets, Auschwitz; or Poland, the Soviet Union, the rest. Of the 5.7 million or so Jews killed, roughly 3 million were pre-war Polish citizens, and another 1 million or so pre-war Soviet citizens: taken together, 70 percent of the total. (After the Polish and Soviet Jews, the next-largest groups of Jews killed were Romanian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak. If these people are considered, the East European character of the Holocaust becomes even clearer.)
  • The Final Solution, as the Nazis called it, was originally only one of the exterminatory projects to be implemented after a victorious war against the Soviet Union. Had things gone the way that Hitler, Himmler, and Göring expected, German forces would have implemented a Hunger Plan in the Soviet Union in the winter of 1941–1942. As Ukrainian and south Russian agricultural products were diverted to Germany, some 30 million people in Belarus, northern Russia, and Soviet cities were to be starved to death. The Hunger Plan was only a prelude to Generalplan Ost, the colonization plan for the western Soviet Union, which foresaw the elimination of some 50 million people.
  • The Germans did manage to carry out policies that bore some resemblance to these plans
  • The Germans killed somewhat more than ten million civilians in the major mass killing actions, about half of them Jews, about half of them non-Jews. The Jews and the non-Jews mostly came from the same part of Europe. The project to kill all Jews was substantially realized; the project to destroy Slavic populations was only very partially implemented.
  • German suffering under Hitler and during the war, though dreadful in scale, does not figure at the center of the history of mass killing. Even if the ethnic Germans killed during flight from the Red Army, expulsion from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1945–1947, and the firebombings in Germany are included, the total number of German civilians killed by state power remains comparatively small
  • when one considers the total number of European civilians killed by totalitarian powers in the middle of the twentieth century, one should have in mind three groups of roughly equal size: Jews killed by Germans, non-Jews killed by Germans, and Soviet citizens killed by the Soviet state.
  • An adequate vision of the Holocaust would place Operation Reinhardt, the murder of the Polish Jews in 1942, at the center of its history. Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in the world, Warsaw the most important Jewish city. This community was exterminated at Treblinka, Be zec, and Sobibor. Some 1.5 million Jews were killed at those three facilities, about 780,863 at Treblinka alone. Only a few dozen people survived these three death facilities. Be zec, though the third most important killing site of the Holocaust, after Auschwitz and Treblinka, is hardly known. Some 434,508 Jews perished at that death factory, and only two or three survived.
  • We know about the Gulag because it was a system of labor camps, but not a set of killing facilities. The Gulag held about 30 million people and shortened some three million lives. But a vast majority of those people who were sent to the camps returned alive.
  • the Gulag distracts us from the Soviet policies that killed people directly and purposefully, by starvation and bullets. Of the Stalinist killing policies, two were the most significant: the collectivization famines of 1930–1933 and the Great Terror of 1937–1938.
  • It is established beyond reasonable doubt that Stalin intentionally starved to death Soviet Ukrainians in the winter of 1932–1933. Soviet documents reveal a series of orders of October–December 1932 with evident malice and intention to kill. By the end, more than three million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine had died.
  • The largest action of the Great Terror, Operation 00447, was aimed chiefly at “kulaks,” which is to say peasants who had already been oppressed during collectivization. It claimed 386,798 lives. A few national minorities, representing together less than 2 percent of the Soviet population, yielded more than a third of the fatalities of the Great Terror.
  • If we concentrate on Auschwitz and the Gulag, we fail to notice that over a period of twelve years, between 1933 and 1944, some 12 million victims of Nazi and Soviet mass killing policies perished in a particular region of Europe, one defined more or less by today’s Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.
  • mass killing happened, predominantly, in the parts of Europe between Germany and Russia, not in Germany and Russia themselves.
  • Soviet repressions are identified with the Gulag
  • During the war, many Soviet Russians were killed by the Germans, but far fewer proportionately than Belarusians and Ukrainians, not to mention Jews. Soviet civilian deaths are estimated at about 15 million. About one in twenty-five civilians in Russia was killed by the Germans during the war, as opposed to about one in ten in Ukraine (or Poland) or about one in five in Belarus.
  • Poland was attacked and occupied not by one but by both totalitarian states between 1939 and 1941, as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, then allies, exploited its territories and exterminated much of its intelligentsia at that time. Poland’s capital was the site of not one but two of the major uprisings against German power during World War II: the ghetto uprising of Warsaw Jews in 1943, after which the ghetto was leveled; and the Warsaw Uprising of the Polish Home Army in 1944, after which the rest of the city was destroyed.
  • By starving Soviet prisoners of war, shooting and gassing Jews, and shooting civilians in anti-partisan actions, German forces made Belarus the deadliest place in the world between 1941 and 1944. Half of the population of Soviet Belarus was either killed or forcibly displaced during World War II: nothing of the kind can be said of any other European country.
  • Although the history of mass killing has much to do with economic calculation, memory shuns anything that might seem to make murder appear rational. Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union followed a path to economic self-sufficiency, Germany wishing to balance industry with an agrarian utopia in the East, the USSR wishing to overcome its agrarian backwardness with rapid industrialization and urbanization. Both regimes were aiming for economic autarky in a large empire, in which both sought to control Eastern Europe. Both of them saw the Polish state as a historical aberration; both saw Ukraine and its rich soil as indispensable. They defined different groups as the enemies of their designs, although the German plan to kill every Jew is unmatched by any Soviet policy in the totality of its aims. What is crucial is that the ideology that legitimated mass death was also a vision of economic develop-ment. In a world of scarcity, particularly of food supplies, both regimes integrated mass murder with economic planning.
  • If there is a general political lesson of the history of mass killing, it is the need to be wary of what might be called privileged development: attempts by states to realize a form of economic expansion that designates victims, that motivates prosperity by mortality. The possibility cannot be excluded that the murder of one group can benefit another, or at least can be seen to do so. That is a version of politics that Europe has in fact witnessed and may witness again. The only sufficient answer is an ethical commitment to the individual, such that the individual counts in life rather than in death, and schemes of this sort become unthinkable.
Javier E

Pressure Builds to Finish Volcker Rule on Wall St. Oversight - NYTimes.com - 0 views

dealbook.nytimes.com/...cker-rule-on-wall-st-oversight

Wall Street regulation

shared by Javier E on 18 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • rom the outset, the Volcker Rule was the product of compromise. The Obama administration declined to favor legislation forcing banks to spin off their turbulent Wall Street operations from their deposit-taking businesses. At the same time, it did not want regulated banks, which enjoy deposit insurance and other forms of government support, trading for their own profit. That business, known as proprietary trading, had long been a lucrative, albeit risky, business for Wall Street banks.
  • Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve who served as an adviser to President Obama, urged that Dodd-Frank outlaw proprietary trading. And over the objections of Wall Street, the administration inserted into Dodd-Frank what became known as the Volcker Rule.
  • The rule, however, does not ban types of trading that are thought to be part of a bank’s basic business. Banks can still buy stocks and bonds for their clients — a practice called market making — and place trades that are meant to hedge their risks.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For regulators, the headache comes with finding practical ways to distinguish proprietary trading from the more legitimate practices. If they wrote the exemptions for market making and hedging too loosely, the banks might find loopholes. If they made them too strict, banks might not be able to engage in activities that Congress had said were permissible.
  • The final version is expected to contain a provision that requires bank chief executives to attest that they are not doing proprietary trading, officials say,  a victory for the rule’s supporters. The tougher version of this provision would have a chief executive make this certification in the bank’s public securities filings, which are audited and are expected to have a high degree of accuracy. A more modest version would have the executive attest to a bank’s board of directors.
  • The Volcker Rule also addresses traders’ compensation. The final wording is likely to require that traders engaged in market making and hedging not be paid on the basis of simply how much money their units made. Instead, the risks involved in taking positions would also have to be considered.
  • ince the Volcker Rule was first proposed in 2011, regulators have had to contend with a fierce lobbying campaign by the banks. But that effort lost momentum last year, after JPMorgan’s trading debacle revealed that its traders were placing enormous speculative bets under the guise of hedging.
Javier E

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...longer-the-worlds-richest.html

income US international comparison rich poor growth

shared by Javier E on 23 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States
  • The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.
  • The struggles of the poor in the United States are even starker than those of the middle class. A family at the 20th percentile of the income distribution in this country makes significantly less money than a similar family in Canada, Sweden, Norway, Finland or the Netherlands. Thirty-five years ago, the reverse was true.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • the most commonly cited economic statistics — such as per capita gross domestic product — continue to show that the United States has maintained its lead as the world’s richest large country. But those numbers are averages, which do not capture the distribution of income.
  • Three broad factors appear to be driving much of the weak income performance in the United States. First, educational attainment in the United States has risen far more slowly than in much of the industrialized world over the last three decades, making it harder for the American economy to maintain its share of highly skilled, well-paying jobs.
  • technology skills that are above average relative to 55- to 65-year-olds in rest of the industrialized world
  • Younger Americans, though, are not keeping pace: Those between 16 and 24 rank near the bottom among rich countries, well behind their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Japan and Scandinavia
  • Finally, governments in Canada and Western Europe take more aggressive steps to raise the take-home pay of low- and middle-income households by redistributing income.
  • Whatever the causes, the stagnation of income has left many Americans dissatisfied with the state of the country. Only about 30 percent of people believe the country is headed in the right direction,
  • both opinion surveys and interviews suggest that the public mood in Canada and Northern Europe is less sour than in the United States today.
  • Elsewhere in Europe, economic growth has been slower in the last few years than in the United States, as the Continent has struggled to escape the financial crisis. But incomes for most families in Sweden and several other Northern European countries have still outpaced those in the United States, where much of the fruits of recent economic growth have flowed into corporate profits or top incomes.
  • Even in Germany, though, the poor have fared better than in the United States, where per capita income has declined between 2000 and 2010 at the 40th percentile, as well as at the 30th, 20th, 10th and 5th.
  • the poor in the United States have trailed their counterparts in at least a few other countries since the early 1980s. With slow income growth since then, the American poor now clearly trail the poor in several other rich countries. At the 20th percentile — where someone is making less than four-fifths of the population — income in both the Netherlands and Canada was 15 percent higher than income in the United States in 2010.
  • By contrast, Americans at the 95th percentile of the distribution — with $58,600 in after-tax per capita income, not including capital gains — still make 20 percent more than their counterparts in Canada, 26 percent more than those in Britain and 50 percent more than those in the Netherlands. For these well-off families, the United States still has easily the world’s most prosperous major economy.
Javier E

DNA Deciphers Roots of Modern Europeans - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...roots-of-modern-europeans.html

human origins europe Indo-European archaology

shared by Javier E on 12 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • today’s Europeans descend from three groups who moved into Europe at different stages of history.
  • The first were hunter-gatherers who arrived some 45,000 years ago in Europe. Then came farmers who arrived from the Near East about 8,000 years ago.
  • Finally, a group of nomadic sheepherders from western Russia called the Yamnaya arrived about 4,500 years ago. The authors of the new studies also suggest that the Yamnaya language may have given rise to many of the languages spoken in Europe today.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • the new studies were “a major game-changer. To me, it marks a new phase in ancient DNA research.”
  • Until about 9,000 years ago, Europe was home to a genetically distinct population of hunter-gatherers, the researchers found. Then, between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago, the genetic profiles of the inhabitants in some parts of Europe abruptly changed, acquiring DNA from Near Eastern populations.
  • Archaeologists have long known that farming practices spread into Europe at the time from Turkey. But the new evidence shows that it wasn’t just the ideas that spread — the farmers did, too.
  • the Yamnaya, who left behind artifacts on the steppes of western Russia and Ukraine dating from 5,300 to 4,600 years ago. The Yamnaya used horses to manage huge herds of sheep, and followed their livestock across the steppes with wagons full of food and water.
  • “You have groups which are as genetically distinct as Europeans and East Asians. And they’re living side by side for thousands of years.”
  • Between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago, however, hunter-gatherer DNA began turning up in the genes of European farmers. “There’s a breakdown of these cultural barriers, and they mix,”
  • About 4,500 years ago, the final piece of Europe’s genetic puzzle fell into place. A new infusion of DNA arrived — one that is still very common in living Europeans, especially in central and northern Europe.
  • The closest match to this new DNA, both teams of scientists found, comes from skeletons found in Yamnaya graves in western Russia and Ukraine.
  • The hunter-gatherers didn’t disappear, however. They managed to survive in pockets across Europe between the farming communities.
  • it was likely that the expansion of Yamnaya into Europe was relatively peaceful. “It wasn’t Attila the Hun coming in and killing everybody,”
  • the most likely scenario was that the Yamnaya “entered into some kind of stable opposition” with the resident Europeans that lasted for a few centuries. But then gradually the barriers between the cultures eroded.
  • the Yamnaya didn’t just expand west into Europe, however. The scientists examined DNA from 4,700-year-old skeletons from a Siberian culture called the Afanasievo. It turns out that they inherited Yamnaya DNA, too.
  • was surprised by the possibility that Yamnaya pushed out over a range of about 4,000 miles. “
  • For decades, linguists have debated how Indo-European got to Europe. Some favor the idea that the original farmers brought Indo-European into Europe from Turkey. Others think the language came from the Russian steppes thousands of years later.
  • he did think the results were consistent with the idea that the Yamnaya brought Indo-European from the steppes to Europe.
  • The eastward expansion of Yamnaya, evident in the genetic findings, also supports the theory, Dr. Willerslev said. Linguists have long puzzled over an Indo-European language once spoken in western China called Tocharian. It is only known from 1,200-year-old manuscripts discovered in ancient desert towns. It is possible that Tocharian was a vestige of the eastern spread of the Yamnaya.
  • the new studies were important, but were still too limited to settle the debate over the origins of Indo-European. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” he said.
  • Dr. Heggarty speculated instead that early European farmers, the second wave of immigrants, may have brought Indo-European to Europe from the Near East. Then, thousands of years later, the Yamnaya brought the language again to Central Europe.
Javier E

Greece Over the Brink - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...man-greece-over-the-brink.html

greece financial Euro economics austerity

shared by Javier E on 29 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • most — not all, but most — of what you’ve heard about Greek profligacy and irresponsibility is false. Yes, the Greek government was spending beyond its means in the late 2000s. But since then it has repeatedly slashed spending and raised taxes. Government employment has fallen more than 25 percent, and pensions (which were indeed much too generous) have been cut sharply. If you add up all the austerity measures, they have been more than enough to eliminate the original deficit and turn it into a large surplus.
  • So why didn’t this happen? Because the Greek economy collapsed, largely as a result of those very austerity measures, dragging revenues down with it.
  • And this collapse, in turn, had a lot to do with the euro, which trapped Greece in an economic straitjacket. Cases of successful austerity, in which countries rein in deficits without bringing on a depression, typically involve large currency devaluations that make their exports more competitive
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Greece, without its own currency, didn’t have that option.
  • the ruling leftist coalition, was willing to accept the austerity that has already been imposed. All it asked for was, in effect, a standstill on further austerity.
  • But the troika was having none of it. It’s easy to get lost in the details, but the essential point now is that Greece has been presented with a take-it-or-leave-it offer that is effectively indistinguishable from the policies of the past five years.
  • The purpose must therefore be to drive him from office, which will probably happen if Greek voters fear confrontation with the troika enough to vote yes next week.
  • But they shouldn’t, for three reasons. First, we now know that ever-harsher austerity is a dead end: after five years Greece is in worse shape than ever. Second, much and perhaps most of the feared chaos from Grexit has already happened. With banks closed and capital controls imposed, there’s not that much more damage to be done.
  • Finally, acceding to the troika’s ultimatum would represent the final abandonment of any pretense of Greek independence.
  • it’s time to put an end to this unthinkability. Otherwise Greece will face endless austerity, and a depression with no hint of an end.
  • Hooray for Obamacare JUN 25
Javier E

Charleston's Museums Finally Chronicle History of Slavery - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...onicle-history-of-slavery.html

slavery US history museum

shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • At the beginning of the 20th century, in fact, the field was dominated by Southern historians who gave the institution of slavery a paternalistic veneer. It was only in the 1930s that the historian Frederic Bancroft began piecing together the evidence showing just how important the domestic slave trade was. And that meant, to put it mildly, that slave families and owner loyalties were far less secure than previously portrayed.
Javier E

Will the Greece Referendum Send the Eurozone Spiralling? - Megan McArdle - Business - T... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...247728

shared by Javier E on 02 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • If EU economic policy were a soap opera--and apparently, it is--Greece would be the sultry, irresponsible beauty in a tumultuous love-hate relationship with rigid, authoritarian Germany.  Obviously after years of tumultuous breakups and teary reunions, this is the season finale where he finally beats the hell out of her during a screaming fight over thier impending bankruptcy, and in despair, she drives both of them, and his prize Volkswagen, off a cliff.
Maria Delzi

Israel releases 26 Palestinian prisoners - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ease-20131230221424954472.html

shared by Maria Delzi on 05 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Twenty-six Palestinian prisoners have been released from Israeli jails, as part of a US-brokered deal to restart Middle East negotiations.
  • It is the third of four stages to free 104 inmates that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed to let go when the talks were renewed in July. They have been convicted of killing Israeli civilians or soldiers and have spent between 19 and 28 years in prison.
  • We will not sign a final peace deal with Israel before all the prisoners are released,'' he said.
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  • In Israel, though, the release was met with anger. Relatives of Israelis killed in attacks had attempted to prevent the release by petitioning Israel's Supreme Court
  • The 26 inmates were jailed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, which formally launched the Middle East peace process.
  • They include 18 men from the West Bank, three Gazans, and in a concession by Israel, five men from East Jerusalem.
  • The US welcomed the release, with Kerry expressing "his appreciation for Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to release the third tranche of prisoners," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
  • The Israeli government's commitment to release Palestinian prisoners helped enable the start ... and the continuation of the final status negotiations, and we believe this is a positive step forward in the overall process," she added.
  • "As part of this release he has announced 140,000 additional new settlements in the West Bank," he said
  • "The Palestinians ask, how can you talk to us about being legitimate partners, if you're going to build inside the West Bank?"
Hannah Caspar-Johnson

Newtown school panel to include proposed gun ban in report - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...-working-on-final-details-of-r

gun ban

shared by Hannah Caspar-Johnson on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • An advisory panel charged with looking at public safety in the wake of the deadly Newtown school shooting agreed Friday to include in its final report a recommendation to ban the sale and possession of any gun that can fire more than 10 rounds without reloading
  • recommendations in three categories: law enforcement and emergency response; safe school design and operation; and mental health and wellness.
  • “Whether or not this law would stand the test of constitutionality is not for this commission to decide,”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • there needs to be more regulation of guns that can inflict mass casualties, even if it causes some inconvenience to recreational shooters.
  • “We’re hoping that some of our recommendations will go far beyond the borders of the state of Connecticut.”
  • Hannah Caspar-Johnson on 17 Jan 15
     
    A school panel in Newtown puts together a list of recommendation to create safety in the school systems with gun regulation.  
Javier E

Finally I Hear a Politician Explain My Country Just the Way I Understand It - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...387178

American idea obama

shared by Javier E on 08 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I first lived outside my native country at age 21, when I went to graduate school in the superficially similar setting of England. Those next few years began for me the process that has continued ever since, when living in the U.S. or abroad: that of recognizing how exceptional the American ambition is, and how much my own tribal identities start with being American.
  • These are the parts of Obama's speech that rang truest to me, after spending much of my life seeing the country from afar, with emphasis added:
  • what could be more American than what happened in this place? ... What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge, that’s the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny.... It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths.  It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo.  That’s America.   That’s what makes us unique.
  • Political speeches are masterworks of base-touching references to different icons and interest groups. This list in this speech is different from what most politicians would offer — you'll know that the GOP is serious about competing for non-white votes and thus for the presidency when you can imagine one of its candidates presenting a similar list — and it is one that matches my sense of what I love about my country.
  • the appeal to American exceptionalism via embracing our capacity for renewal, self-criticism, and inclusiveness is one I haven't heard this clearly from a public figure in many years.
  • And near the end: That’s what America is.  Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others. We respect the past, but we don’t pine for the past.  We don’t fear the future; we grab for it.  America is not some fragile thing.  We are large, in the words of Whitman, containing multitudes.  We are boisterous and diverse and full of energy, perpetually young in spirit.
Javier E

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

www.theatlantic.com/...387817

israel foreign policy US relations

shared by Javier E on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • 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,
Javier E

More White People Die From Suicide and Substance Abuse: Why? - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-and-substance-abuse-why.html

death rate statistics white narcotic

shared by Javier E on 04 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Why would the death rate for middle-aged non-Hispanic whites be increasing after decades of decline while rates for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continue to fall? And why didn’t other rich countries have the same mortality rate increase for people in midlife?
  • if the death rate among middle-aged whites had continued to decline at the rate it fell between 1979 and 1998, half a million deaths would have been avoided over the years from 1999 through 2013. That, they note, is about the same number of deaths as those caused by AIDS through 2015.
  • The major causes of the excess deaths are suicides, drug abuse and alcoholism.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • In the past, drug abuse deaths were more common in middle-aged blacks than in middle-aged whites. Now they are more common in whites. The same pattern holds for deaths from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. The suicide rate for whites was four times that of blacks.
  • Could people be taking drugs and killing themselves as a response to the economic slowdown? Maybe. But, if so, Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case said, then why aren’t people in other countries responding the same way?
  • Recent reports of illness and disability might provide some clues. More middle-aged whites report that their general health is not good; and, more report chronic pain
  • older people are actually doing better — less addiction, disability rates falling.
  • how much of what they are seeing might be attributed to the explosive increase in prescription narcotics.
  • the people who report pain in middle age are the people who report difficulty in socializing, shopping, sitting for three hours, walking for two blocks.
  • Dr. Deaton envisions poorly educated middle-aged white Americans who feel socially isolated are out of work, suffering from chronic pain and turning to narcotics or alcohol for relief, or taking their own lives. Starting in the 1990s, he said, there was a huge emphasis on controlling pain, with pain charts going up in every doctor’s office and a concomitant increase in prescription narcotics.
  • Dr. Deaton noted that blacks and Hispanics may have been protected to an extent. Some pharmacies in neighborhoods where blacks and Hispanics live do not even stock those drugs, and doctors have been less likely to prescribe them for these groups.
  • So we're all the same after all.Under the right conditions - no control over your life, low pay, no job, little in the way of job prospects, no healthcare, little education, families break down when the man can't be the breadwinner, and then along comes poor health, substance abuse, depression, despair - all those ills that were blamed on black people's supposed lack of morals.Now that white kids are dying of heroin we need to change the laws, end the war on drugs, legalize pot, and change how we talk about what were formerly known as 'junkies'.White men are in despair as a result of economic problems, white kids are doing hard drugs in numbers that everyone's starting to notice, and AIDS is plaguing white communities, and now we need to care. So we're all human?
  • Because white people are depressed over their diminution in society by the policies of the Federal Government, the education system, racial animosity and biased media outlets that are rampant through the society. These doctors are clueless liberals that will try to find any reason to blame, other than the truth. It's not the drugs, it's what is causing them to want the drugs. White males have been denigrated for the past 50 years. The effects have to be building up and weighing on them.
  • John is a trusted commenter Boston 6 hours ago No, their diminution in society came from globalized capitalism. A lot of these working class white people were Reagan voters. I'm the same age as them, I saw it happen. They thought they were getting "Morning in America" but instead they got morning for Walmart and sunset for the working class. That's enough to make anybody turn to pills and booze.
  • DougH Lithonia, GA 7 hours ago To some extent, it's of their own making. High school educated whites tend to vote Republican. Over the last 30 years, Republicans have sold them a bill of goods. They abandoned unions, opposed increases in the minimum wage, and opposed regulation, including safety, wage fairness, etc.So now they are paid less. They have no way of changing that (short of high education) and the big beneficiaries of lower taxes have been the businesses and owners that for which they work. Did those owners bless the workers with the fruits of their benefits? Of course not. They kept the reduced expenses as profit, increased CEO wages, and kept cutting benefits before finally shipping their jobs overseas.Perhaps, if they stopped voting against their own interests, they would fair better.
  • dw659 Chicago 8 hours ago Why? Simple. Because to males, a 'loss of control' is an unacceptable change. 200 years of being 'in control' just because you are born white and male is ending. Many men can't face a world where they are of 'lower status' than women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. They don't want to live in that world.....
  • dale south africa 5 hours ago Its true ! I am a conservative man and i live i johannesburg. I cant imagine what it must be like respecting all things under the suns . From females, gays blacks etc Children of slaves dictating societies . oprah picking presidents. the bully is not allowed to be at his natural best and strongest with this new liberal socialist agenda , everyone equal attitude. im not white but if I was who would want that
  • Linda is a trusted commenter Oklahoma 54 minutes ago I know so many white men in this small town I live in who never had anything to do with their children. They didn't care about anybody through their productive years and now they're surprised that nobody cares about them.
  • AC USA 5 hours ago Could it be because these guys have no close family ties? They are the ages that their parents are probably in nursing homes or already passed away. These blue collar, high school educated guys fathered unwanted children with women to whom they may or may hot have been married and divorced. But now at middle age comes time for them to feel wanted and valued by their progeny (dad, dispense some life wisdom to us, help us with college, getting married, a down payment on a house, take your grand-kids fishing, etc.), but they dumped their kids by not wanting to pay child support, or having a bad attitude and not helping their kids at all past age 18. So they kids moved on without dad's love and "support" (monetary or emotionally). The "all for myself mentality" they have espoused has finally come home to roost. There is no going back in time, they are all alone, have no purpose as jobs are hard to come by at that age - even more-so blue collar ones - so they drink/take pills to dull the pain, then overdo it.
  • suzinne bronx 5 hours ago Think white families more often DO NOT stick together. At middle age and white, have ZERO contact with any family members. By the time I was 16 most had died, moved away or become estranged. Know this amps up my chances for suicide, and that's probably going to pan out too. Flag
  • Paul '52 is a trusted commenter NYC 2 hours ago The is the first cohort to experience the phenomenon that if you do the same job as your parents you won't do as well or better. These are the auto workers, the airport baggage handlers, the truck drivers. They are, in fact, more productive than their fathers, but they're not paid as well and they don't have pensions. And the disappointment is taking its toll.
Javier E

Poppy Bush Finally Gives Junior a Spanking - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...y-gives-junior-a-spanking.html

bush dynasty family politics 41 43 history

shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • I am here, my puzzled readers, to help interpret the latest Oedipal somersaults of our royally messed up Republican royal family.
  • Like many uptight, upper-class families, the Bushes seem oddly unable to directly confront tensions and resentments and talk to each other candidly. With other families, the unsaid and circuitous end up rupturing relationships. In the case of the Bushes, it ended up rupturing the globe.
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