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aidenborst

Biden to sign order establishing White House initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawa... - 0 views

  • President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday renewing a White House initiative charged with advancing "equity, justice, and opportunity" for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, including coordinating a "comprehensive" federal response to the rise in anti-Asian violence and discrimination.
  • "... For far too long, systemic barriers to equity, justice, and opportunity have put the American dream out of reach for many AA and NHPI communities, and racism, nativism, and xenophobia against AA and NHPI communities continues to threaten safety and dignity of AA and NHPI families," the White House said in a fact sheet released Friday.
  • The initiative, led out of the Department of Health and Human Services, aims to ensure the federal government is mitigating Covid-related anti-Asian bias, advancing health equity for AA and NHPI communities, and that they "equitably recover" from the dual crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the anti-Asian attacks.
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  • The White House said the initiative will also address the "systemic lack of disaggregated data" on the AA and NHPI communities in federal statistical systems, as it noted how these communities together are the "fastest growing ethnic group" in the US. Read More
  • Krystal Ka'ai, who is a native Hawaiian, will lead the White House initiative. Ka'ai comes to her new role from Capitol Hill, where she served as the executive director of the bicameral Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus since 2013.
  • Last week, the President signed into law a bill intended to counter the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes by creating a new Justice Department position to expedite review of potential Covid-19-related hate crimes and incidents.
Javier E

Trump's Republican National Convention and the Psychology of Obedience - The Bulwark - 0 views

  • “cognitive dissonance.” This term has become familiar, but the rest of Festinger’s theory has been forgotten. Festinger proposed that people do not typically remain in this uncomfortable state. Instead, cognitive dissonance is often resolved by people subconsciously modifying their private views to better align them with their public sentiments, and not the other way around.
  • This may help explain why, after Trump skeptics cross over and express their support, they seem to be drawn ever further into the fold.
  • Having rationalized so much already, they are likely to find it less psychologically stressful to wade in further than to stop and ask themselves how they got in so deep.
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  • the attendees are far more likely to emerge from such a convention with even firmer convictions, as classic data around the psychology of hazing, from scientists at Stanford and the U.S. Army Leadership Human Research Unit, suggests.
  • “Subjects who underwent a severe initiation” in order to become part of a group, the researchers concluded in 1959, “perceived the group as being significantly more attractive than did those who underwent a mild initiation or no initiation.”
  • The proposed explanation? “Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance”—that is, if someone has gone through an unpleasant initiation to become part of a group, this can be “dissonant with his cognition that there are things about the group that he does not like.”
  • To reduce this dissonance, an initiate can either “convince himself that the initiation was not very unpleasant, or he can exaggerate the positive characteristics of the group and minimize its negative aspects,” the researchers explain. The more severe the initiation, the less viable the first option becomes, and the more the person must overestimate the attractiveness of the group
  • “Compelling people to do something changes their psychology,”
  • Trump’s psychological instincts may be uncannily sound. Whatever else you want to say about Donald Trump, he is a keen student of human weakness.
  • Statistically, the vast majority of attendees are likely to do just fine, even if the convention itself becomes a superspreader event
Javier E

The Contradictions of Sam Altman, the AI Crusader Behind ChatGPT - WSJ - 0 views

  • Mr. Altman said he fears what could happen if AI is rolled out into society recklessly. He co-founded OpenAI eight years ago as a research nonprofit, arguing that it’s uniquely dangerous to have profits be the main driver of developing powerful AI models.
  • He is so wary of profit as an incentive in AI development that he has taken no direct financial stake in the business he built, he said—an anomaly in Silicon Valley, where founders of successful startups typically get rich off their equity. 
  • His goal, he said, is to forge a new world order in which machines free people to pursue more creative work. In his vision, universal basic income—the concept of a cash stipend for everyone, no strings attached—helps compensate for jobs replaced by AI. Mr. Altman even thinks that humanity will love AI so much that an advanced chatbot could represent “an extension of your will.”
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  • The Tesla Inc. CEO tweeted in February that OpenAI had been founded as an open-source nonprofit “to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft. Not what I intended at all.”
  • Backers say his brand of social-minded capitalism makes him the ideal person to lead OpenAI. Others, including some who’ve worked for him, say he’s too commercially minded and immersed in Silicon Valley thinking to lead a technological revolution that is already reshaping business and social life. 
  • In the long run, he said, he wants to set up a global governance structure that would oversee decisions about the future of AI and gradually reduce the power OpenAI’s executive team has over its technology. 
  • OpenAI researchers soon concluded that the most promising path to achieve artificial general intelligence rested in large language models, or computer programs that mimic the way humans read and write. Such models were trained on large volumes of text and required a massive amount of computing power that OpenAI wasn’t equipped to fund as a nonprofit, according to Mr. Altman. 
  • In its founding charter, OpenAI pledged to abandon its research efforts if another project came close to building AGI before it did. The goal, the company said, was to avoid a race toward building dangerous AI systems fueled by competition and instead prioritize the safety of humanity.
  • While running Y Combinator, Mr. Altman began to nurse a growing fear that large research labs like DeepMind, purchased by Google in 2014, were creating potentially dangerous AI technologies outside the public eye. Mr. Musk has voiced similar concerns of a dystopian world controlled by powerful AI machines. 
  • Messrs. Altman and Musk decided it was time to start their own lab. Both were part of a group that pledged $1 billion to the nonprofit, OpenAI Inc. 
  • Mr. Altman said he doesn’t necessarily need to be first to develop artificial general intelligence, a world long imagined by researchers and science-fiction writers where software isn’t just good at one specific task like generating text or images but can understand and learn as well or better than a human can. He instead said OpenAI’s ultimate mission is to build AGI, as it’s called, safely.
  • “We didn’t have a visceral sense of just how expensive this project was going to be,” he said. “We still don’t.”
  • Tensions also grew with Mr. Musk, who became frustrated with the slow progress and pushed for more control over the organization, people familiar with the matter said. 
  • OpenAI executives ended up reviving an unusual idea that had been floated earlier in the company’s history: creating a for-profit arm, OpenAI LP, that would report to the nonprofit parent. 
  • Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn co-founder who advised OpenAI at the time and later served on the board, said the idea was to attract investors eager to make money from the commercial release of some OpenAI technology, accelerating OpenAI’s progress
  • “You want to be there first and you want to be setting the norms,” he said. “That’s part of the reason why speed is a moral and ethical thing here.”
  • The decision further alienated Mr. Musk, the people familiar with the matter said. He parted ways with OpenAI in February 2018. 
  • Mr. Musk announced his departure in a company all-hands, former employees who attended the meeting said. Mr. Musk explained that he thought he had a better chance at creating artificial general intelligence through Tesla, where he had access to greater resources, they said.
  • OpenAI said that it received about $130 million in contributions from the initial $1 billion pledge, but that further donations were no longer needed after the for-profit’s creation. Mr. Musk has tweeted that he donated around $100 million to OpenAI. 
  • Mr. Musk’s departure marked a turning point. Later that year, OpenAI leaders told employees that Mr. Altman was set to lead the company. He formally became CEO and helped complete the creation of the for-profit subsidiary in early 2019.
  • A young researcher questioned whether Mr. Musk had thought through the safety implications, the former employees said. Mr. Musk grew visibly frustrated and called the intern a “jackass,” leaving employees stunned, they said. It was the last time many of them would see Mr. Musk in person.  
  • In the meantime, Mr. Altman began hunting for investors. His break came at Allen & Co.’s annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho in the summer of 2018, where he bumped into Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, on a stairwell and pitched him on OpenAI. Mr. Nadella said he was intrigued. The conversations picked up that winter.
  • “I remember coming back to the team after and I was like, this is the only partner,” Mr. Altman said. “They get the safety stuff, they get artificial general intelligence. They have the capital, they have the ability to run the compute.”   
  • Mr. Altman disagreed. “The unusual thing about Microsoft as a partner is that it let us keep all the tenets that we think are important to our mission,” he said, including profit caps and the commitment to assist another project if it got to AGI first. 
  • Some employees still saw the deal as a Faustian bargain. 
  • OpenAI’s lead safety researcher, Dario Amodei, and his lieutenants feared the deal would allow Microsoft to sell products using powerful OpenAI technology before it was put through enough safety testing,
  • They felt that OpenAI’s technology was far from ready for a large release—let alone with one of the world’s largest software companies—worrying it could malfunction or be misused for harm in ways they couldn’t predict.  
  • Mr. Amodei also worried the deal would tether OpenAI’s ship to just one company—Microsoft—making it more difficult for OpenAI to stay true to its founding charter’s commitment to assist another project if it got to AGI first, the former employees said.
  • Microsoft initially invested $1 billion in OpenAI. While the deal gave OpenAI its needed money, it came with a hitch: exclusivity. OpenAI agreed to only use Microsoft’s giant computer servers, via its Azure cloud service, to train its AI models, and to give the tech giant the sole right to license OpenAI’s technology for future products.
  • In a recent investment deck, Anthropic said it was “committed to large-scale commercialization” to achieve the creation of safe AGI, and that it “fully committed” to a commercial approach in September. The company was founded as an AI safety and research company and said at the time that it might look to create commercial value from its products. 
  • Mr. Altman “has presided over a 180-degree pivot that seems to me to be only giving lip service to concern for humanity,” he said. 
  • “The deal completely undermines those tenets to which they secured nonprofit status,” said Gary Marcus, an emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at New York University who co-founded a machine-learning company
  • The cash turbocharged OpenAI’s progress, giving researchers access to the computing power needed to improve large language models, which were trained on billions of pages of publicly available text. OpenAI soon developed a more powerful language model called GPT-3 and then sold developers access to the technology in June 2020 through packaged lines of code known as application program interfaces, or APIs. 
  • Mr. Altman and Mr. Amodei clashed again over the release of the API, former employees said. Mr. Amodei wanted a more limited and staged release of the product to help reduce publicity and allow the safety team to conduct more testing on a smaller group of users, former employees said. 
  • Mr. Amodei left the company a few months later along with several others to found a rival AI lab called Anthropic. “They had a different opinion about how to best get to safe AGI than we did,” Mr. Altman said.
  • Anthropic has since received more than $300 million from Google this year and released its own AI chatbot called Claude in March, which is also available to developers through an API. 
  • Mr. Altman shared the contract with employees as it was being negotiated, hosting all-hands and office hours to allay concerns that the partnership contradicted OpenAI’s initial pledge to develop artificial intelligence outside the corporate world, the former employees said. 
  • In the three years after the initial deal, Microsoft invested a total of $3 billion in OpenAI, according to investor documents. 
  • More than one million users signed up for ChatGPT within five days of its November release, a speed that surprised even Mr. Altman. It followed the company’s introduction of DALL-E 2, which can generate sophisticated images from text prompts.
  • By February, it had reached 100 million users, according to analysts at UBS, the fastest pace by a consumer app in history to reach that mark.
  • n’s close associates praise his ability to balance OpenAI’s priorities. No one better navigates between the “Scylla of misplaced idealism” and the “Charybdis of myopic ambition,” Mr. Thiel said. 
  • Mr. Altman said he delayed the release of the latest version of its model, GPT-4, from last year to March to run additional safety tests. Users had reported some disturbing experiences with the model, integrated into Bing, where the software hallucinated—meaning it made up answers to questions it didn’t know. It issued ominous warnings and made threats. 
  • “The way to get it right is to have people engage with it, explore these systems, study them, to learn how to make them safe,” Mr. Altman said.
  • After Microsoft’s initial investment is paid back, it would capture 49% of OpenAI’s profits until the profit cap, up from 21% under prior arrangements, the documents show. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit parent, would get the rest.
  • He has put almost all his liquid wealth in recent years in two companies. He has put $375 million into Helion Energy, which is seeking to create carbon-free energy from nuclear fusion and is close to creating “legitimate net-gain energy in a real demo,” Mr. Altman said.
  • He has also put $180 million into Retro, which aims to add 10 years to the human lifespan through “cellular reprogramming, plasma-inspired therapeutics and autophagy,” or the reuse of old and damaged cell parts, according to the company. 
  • He noted how much easier these problems are, morally, than AI. “If you’re making nuclear fusion, it’s all upside. It’s just good,” he said. “If you’re making AI, it is potentially very good, potentially very terrible.” 
Javier E

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (Hainish Cycle Book 5) (Ursula K. Le Guin) - 0 views

  • instead of merely looking at it from outside. He took on two seminars and an open lecture course. No teaching was requested of him, but he had asked if he could teach, and the administrators had arranged the seminars. The open class was neither his idea nor theirs. A delegation of students came and asked him to give it. He consented at once. This was how courses were organized in Anarresti learning centers by student demand, or on the teacher’s initiative, or by students and teachers together. When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. “Do they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. “What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up!” He had no intention of being administered out of the course—he had fought this kind of battle before—and because he communicated his firmness to the students, they held firm. To avoid unpleasant publicity, the Rectors of the University gave in, and Shevek began his course to a first-cay audience of two thousand. Attendance soon dropped. He stuck to physics, never going off into the personal or the political, and it was physics on a pretty advanced level. But several hundred students continued to come. Some came out of mere curiosity, to see the man from the Moon; others were drawn by Shevek’s personality, by the glimpses of the man and the libertarian which they could catch from his words even when they could not follow his mathematics. And a surprising number of them were capable of following both the philosophy and the mathematics. They were superbly trained, these students. Their minds were fine, keen, ready. When they weren’t working, they rested. They were not blunted and distracted by a dozen other obligations. They never fell asleep in class because they were tired from having worked on rotational duty the day before. Their society maintained them in complete freedom from want, distractions, and cares. What they were free to do, however, was another question. It appeared to Shevek that their freedom from obligation was in exact proportion to their lack of freedom of initiative. He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discourteous to his hosts, he gave in. He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists. To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. How could the diligent students be distinguished from the dull ones? What was the good in working hard? If no competitive distinctions were to be made, one might as well do nothing. “Well, of course,” Shevek said, troubled. “If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it.” The boys went away unappeased, but polite. They were pleasant boys, with frank and civil manners. Shevek’s readings in Urrasti history led him to decide that they were, in fact, though the word was seldom used these days, aristocrats. In feudal times the aristocracy had sent their sons to university, conferring superiority on the institution. Nowadays it was the other way round: the university conferred superiority on the man. They told Shevek with pride that the competition for scholarships to Ieu Eun was stiffer every year, proving the essential democracy of the institution. He said, “You put another lock on the door and call it democracy.” He liked his polite, intelligent students, but he felt no great warmth towards any of them. They were planning careers as academic or industrial scientists, and what they learned from him was to them a means to that end, success in their careers. They either had, or denied the importance of, anything else he might have offered them.
  • Shevek touched her, silver arm with his silver hand, marveling at the warmth of the touch in that cool light. “If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
  • instead of merely looking at it from outside. He took on two seminars and an open lecture course. No teaching was requested of him, but he had asked if he could teach, and the administrators had arranged the seminars. The open class was neither his idea nor theirs. A delegation of students came and asked him to give it. He consented at once. This was how courses were organized in Anarresti learning centers by student demand, or on the teacher’s initiative, or by students and teachers together. When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. “Do they expect students not to be anarchists?” he said. “What else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up!” He had no intention of being administered out of the course—he had fought this kind of battle before—and because he communicated his firmness to the students, they held firm. To avoid unpleasant publicity, the Rectors of the University gave in, and Shevek began his course to a first-cay audience of two thousand. Attendance soon dropped. He stuck to physics, never going off into the personal or the political, and it was physics on a pretty advanced level. But several hundred students continued to come. Some came out of mere curiosity, to see the man from the Moon; others were drawn by Shevek’s personality, by the glimpses of the man and the libertarian which they could catch from his words even when they could not follow his mathematics. And a surprising number of them were capable of following both the philosophy and the mathematics. They were superbly trained, these students. Their minds were fine, keen, ready. When they weren’t working, they rested. They were not blunted and distracted by a dozen other obligations. They never fell asleep in class because they were tired from having worked on rotational duty the day before. Their society maintained them in complete freedom from want, distractions, and cares. What they were free to do, however, was another question. It appeared to Shevek that their freedom from obligation was in exact proportion to their lack of freedom of initiative. He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discourteous to his hosts, he gave in. He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists. To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving…
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  • He found himself, therefore, with no duties at all beyond the preparation of his three classes; the rest of his time was all his own. He had not been in a situation like this since his early twenties, his first years at the Institute in Abbenay. Since those years his social and personal life had got more and more complicated and demanding. He had been not only a physicist but also a partner, a father, an Odonian, and finally a social reformer. As such, he had not been sheltered, and had expected no shelter, from whatever cares and responsibilities came to him. He had not been free from anything: only free to do anything. Here, it was the other way around. Like all the students and professors, he had nothing to do but his intellectual work, literally nothing. The beds were made for them, the rooms were swept for them, the routine of the college was managed for them, the way was made plain for them.
  • she was not a temporal physicist. She saw time naïvely as a road laid out. You walked ahead, and you got somewhere. If you were lucky, you got somewhere worth getting to. But when Shevek took her metaphor and recast it in his terms, explaining that, unless the past and the future were made part of the present by memory and intention, there was, in human terms, no road, nowhere to go, she nodded before he was half done. “Exactly,” she said. “That’s what I was doing these last four years. It isn’t all luck. Just partly.”
  • Shevek touched her, silver arm with his silver hand, marveling at the warmth of the touch in that cool light. “If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.”
  • all. Odo wrote: “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole.” There was an undercurrent of joy, in that sense, in Abbenay that summer. There was a lightheartedness at work however hard the work, a
  • Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal. The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place. It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell. Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable roads and cities of fidelity: a landscape inhabitable by human beings. It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. Loyalty, which asserts the continuity of past and future, binding time into a whole, is the root of human strength; there is no good to be done without it. So, looking back on the last four years, Shevek saw them not as wasted, but as part of the edifice that he and Takver were building with their lives. The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
brickol

Trump Administration Pulls Back From $1 Billion Coronavirus Ventilator Deal - The New Y... - 0 views

  • A deal with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce tens of thousands of the critical lifesaving devices seemed imminent. Then the announcement was pulled back.
  • The White House had been preparing to reveal on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems that would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators to respond to an escalating pandemic when word suddenly came down that the announcement was off.
  • The decision to cancel the announcement, government officials say, came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it needed more time to assess whether the estimated cost was prohibitive. That price tag was more than $1 billion, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool a car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.
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  • And they contend that an initial promise that the joint venture could turn out 20,000 ventilators in short order had shrunk to 7,500, with even that number in doubt. Longtime emergency managers at FEMA are working with military officials to sort through the competing offers and federal procurement rules while under pressure to give President Trump something to announce
  • But in an interview Thursday night with Sean Hannity, the president played down the need for ventilators.“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” he said, a reference to New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo has appealed for federal help in obtaining them. “You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”
  • “Ventec and G.M. have been working at breakneck speed to leverage our collective expertise in ventilation and manufacturing to meet the needs of the country as quickly as possible and arm medical professionals with the number of ventilators needed to save lives,” said Chris O. Brooks, Ventec’s chief strategy officer.The only thing missing was clarity from the government about how many ventilators they needed — and who would be paid to build them.
  • The shortage of ventilators has emerged as one of the major criticisms of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus. The need to quickly equip hospitals across the country with tens of thousands more of the devices to treat those most seriously ill with the virus was not anticipated despite the Trump administration’s own projection in a simulation last year that millions of people could be hospitalized. And even now, the effort to produce them has been confused and disorganized.
  • Last week, General Motors, Ventec Life Systems and a coalition of business executives called StopTheSpread.org issued a statement saying that Ventec would “leverage G.M.’s logistics, purchasing and manufacturing expertise to build more of their critically important ventilators,” including some portable units.By Sunday, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest on Twitter that a deal had been completed to mass-produce the ventilators, even though it was unclear who would pay to equip the General Motors plant or how long that process would take.
  • The initial projection, one senior administration official said, was that after three weeks of preparation it could produce an initial run of 20,000 ventilators, or about two-thirds of what Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York recently said his state alone needed to cover the influx of coronavirus patients expected in two weeks, if not sooner.That number then shrank to 7,500 ventilators in the initial run, or maybe 5,000, an apparent recognition that auto transmissions and ventilators had very little in common. Those numbers are in flux and so are the Trump administration’s because the White House cannot decide how many ventilators it wants.
  • Targets have changed by the hour, officials said, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, which approves the use of medical devices, and the White House try to figure out how many ventilators to request and how much they should cost.
  • The $1.5 billion price tag comes to around $18,000 a ventilator. And the overall cost, by comparison, is roughly equal to buying 18 F-35s, the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter jet.
hannahcarter11

Swiss Vote To Ban Wearing Of Burqas In Public : NPR - 0 views

  • Swiss voters approved a proposition Sunday banning facial coverings in public. Niqabs and burqas, worn by almost no one even among the country's Muslim population, will be banned outside of religious institutions. The new law doesn't apply to facial coverings for health reasons.
  • Switzerland will join several European countries that have implemented a ban on facial coverings, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria.
  • The new legislation was brought to the ballot through a people's initiative launched by the nation's right-wing Egerkingen Committee, the same group that led the charge to ban minarets over a decade ago
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  • The Swiss government opposed the nationwide initiative as excessive and argued such bans should be decided by individual regions, two of which already have a "burqa ban" in place.
  • The ban barely passed a majority vote, with 51.2% of the Swiss voting in support of the proposal.
  • One of the largest backers of the initiative was the nationalist Swiss People's Party, which applauded the outcome of the vote and called the new measure "A strong symbol in the fight against radical political Islam."
  • Some feminist groups and progressive Muslims reportedly were supporters of the initiative, arguing that full face coverings are oppressive to women.
  • Other groups felt the new restriction was Islamophobic and that women should not be told what to wear.
  • "Today's decision is tearing open old wounds, expanding the principle of legal inequality and sending a clear signal of exclusion to the Muslim minority," the group wrote.
  • Researchers found that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear full face coverings in Switzerland. About 5% of Switzerland's population of 8.6 million is Muslim, the BBC reported.
blythewallick

China's New Silk Road | JSTOR Daily - 0 views

  • China’s “One Belt One Road” (OBOR) initiative—yi dai yi lu in Mandarin Chinese—aims to connect seventy-one countries by land and sea. Highways and maritime routes will complement the “networks of connectivity” in trade, investment, finance, tourism, and even education between China and the world. OBOR is meant to be a form of diplomacy, development, and trade incentive all rolled into one. The initiative is constantly evolving in its scope; in fact, the Chinese government recently changed OBOR to “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) in English.
  • Summers approaches the BRI initiative as a creatively repurposed version of this past. Despite the international media’s portrayal of the proposal as China’s bid for global hegemony, a significant dimension of BRI is domestic. With excess capacity at home, new avenues for sequestering Chinese capital need to be sought abroad. For Yunnan province in southwestern China, this has meant developing cooperation with its immediate neighbors. For example, Summer expects Chinese trade and investment in the Association of South East Asian Nations, including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, to exceed its trade with the E.U. some time in the 2020s. In the northwest province of Xinjiang, greater economic development is also expected to mitigate extremism among China’s restive Uighur Muslim minority. Linking land-locked interior cities like Chongqing by rail with Central Asia has begun to address regional imbalances within China.
kaylynfreeman

Oregon Becomes First U.S. State To Decriminalize Drug Possession | HuffPost - 0 views

  • Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize possession of all illegal drugs after voters passed a ballot initiative in Tuesday’s election.
  • Oregonians can no longer be criminally charged for possessing small amounts of illegal drugs, including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine. The punishment for these felony and misdemeanor drug possession offenses will now be a simple $100 fine. The initiative also redirects some taxes raised through sales of legal marijuana to finance a new voluntary treatment system for drug users.
  • his marks the nation’s most significant development toward ending the 50-year war on drugs launched by President Richard Nixon.
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  • Oregon’s initiative had broad support from groups like the NAACP Portland, local Black Lives Matter chapters, physicians groups and AFSCME, t
  • Supporters of drug decriminalization said they hope the passage of Oregon’s Measure 110 encourages other states to pass similar ballot initiatives or legislation that will ease the war on drugs.
  • The state legalized marijuana in 2014 and reduced many drug penalties from felonies to misdemeanors in 2017.
andrespardo

Can you catch coronavirus twice? What we know about Covid-19 so far | World news | The ... - 0 views

  • But we do have some clues. “We know from ‘normal’ coronavirus studies done in the past you can infect people after about a year following an initial infection,” said Dr Ben Killingley, consultant in acute medicine and infectious diseases at University College London hospital.
  • “I have yet to see a definitive case of reinfection reported in the scientific literature [to date]. To truly prove reinfection, and discriminate from prolonged viral shedding related to the first infection, would require sequencing of both the first and second viruses and demonstration that the two viruses are genetically different,” he said, adding it will also be important to look at symptoms and how long reinfection lasts.
  • What happened in South Korea, where patients tested positive after having recovered from Covid-19?
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  • That’s because the PCR (or “have-you-got-it”) test is based on detecting genetic material from the virus – on its own it does not reveal whether that virus is active, and infectious, or not.
  • “In some persons they begin to feel well again and signs and symptoms including fever decrease, but some then go on to develop respiratory distress and must be provided oxygen in hospital,” said David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It appears to be a delayed immune response that is more serious in some persons and that reacts to remaining virus in various organs.”
  • “[We are] at the beginning of describing what may be a complex picture of chronic disease that may ensue from the initial infection – coming and going in relapsing waves, sometimes almost like a kind of chronic fatigue syndrome,” he said. “[These cases] may reflect examples of virus not fully cleared, or alternatively, some kind of damaging post-hoc disturbance to immune or inflammatory function,” he said.
  • Experts say it is unlikely. “I know some have discussed ‘reactivation’ of virus, but this seems unhelpful and unsupported to me,” said Altmann. “It’s a term that’s borrowed from other viruses, especially the herpes virus family, that can hide in the body in a latent state to reactivate years later. [There is] no evidence of that at all for coronaviruses.”
  • How long are people with Covid-19 infectious for? A recent study of 60 coronavirus patients in China showed 10 patients tested positive for Covid-19 after discharge from hospital. However, once again, experts say this could be down to the test picking up genetic material from inactive virus, with other studies, including work in South Korea, suggesting those who test positive with Covid-19 after recovering from the disease are not infectious.
  • “It’s not uncommon to find virus in the nose or throat for up to four weeks after initial infection, but tests to establish whether this is live infectious virus – as opposed to just genetic material detection – are not normally positive for much longer than a week,” said Killingley, adding: “I haven’t come across relapse cases whereby the initial infection acquired weeks ago reignites itself into an infectious case.”
katherineharron

Fact checking the outlandish claim that millions of Trump votes were deleted - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • A human error that briefly led to incorrect election results in a Michigan county has spiraled into a sprawling, baseless conspiracy theory suggesting that glitches in widely-used voting software led to millions of miscast ballots.
  • Conservative media figures, social media users, and President Donald Trump have spread rumors about problems with Dominion Voting Systems
  • They've claimed that isolated reports about Election Night glitches raise concerns about election results in states around the country.
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  • "DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE," Trump tweeted on Thursday, citing a report from the right-wing One America News Network. Without showing any evidence, he claimed that states using the company's technology had "SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN."
  • Trump's tweet is completely without evidence.
  • "No credible reports or evidence of any software issues exist," the company wrote. "While no election is without isolated issues, Dominion Voting Systems are reliably and accurately counting ballots. State and local election authorities have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process."
  • the network claims to have proof of widespread voter fraud but is choosing to sit on that proof for more than a week.
  • Giuliani has claimed to have received an affidavit from someone "inside" Dominion who alleges that batches of "phony" pro-Biden ballots were counted. Giuliani hasn't released any evidence.
  • Dominion, a Canadian company founded in 2002 with US headquarters in Denver, is the second-largest provider of voting technology in the US, according to a 2017 report from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Public Policy Initiative. In 2016, Dominion's technology was used in 1,635 jurisdictions in more than two dozen states, the report found
  • Further undermining Trump's claims was the fact that hours after his tweet, federal government agencies released a statement declaring that "the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."
  • The county's initial results showed Joe Biden leading, and election officials quickly realized on election night that something was wrong with their results, the local clerk told the Detroit Free Press last week.
  • The county uses Dominion's technology to tally ballots, but the mistake was due to human error and not the company's systems, according to the Michigan Secretary of State.
  • "This was an isolated error, there is no evidence this user error occurred elsewhere in the state, and if it did it would be caught during county canvasses, which are conducted by bipartisan boards of county canvassers," the secretary of state's office said in its statement.
  • Other rumors pointed to Oakland County, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, where initial results mistakenly double-counted votes from the city of Rochester Hills, according to the secretary of state's office. But that was due to human error, not a software issue, the local clerk said.
  • "As a Republican, I am disturbed that this is intentionally being mischaracterized to undermine the election process," Tina Barton, the clerk of Rochester Hills, Michigan, said
  • But online, right-wing voices -- including Giuliani, Eric Trump, conservative Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar and Breitbart News -- have seized on those isolated issues as purported evidence of wider "glitches" with Dominion's software.
  • "It really does feel like people believe what they want to believe," he said. "I don't think I've ever seen it quite like this before."
  • Social media posts have also baselessly alleged ties between Dominion and Democratic leaders, misinformation that was first noted and debunked by The Associated Press.
  • Several Twitter posts that have been retweeted thousands of times have claimed that the company is involved with the Clinton Foundation. But while Dominion did agree to donate its technology to "emerging democracies" as part of a program run by the Clinton Foundation in 2014, according to the foundation's website, Dominion said in its statement that it has "no company ownership relationships" with the foundation.
horowitzza

Israelis and Palestinians absent from Middle East talks in Paris | World news | The Gua... - 0 views

  • Senior diplomats attending a summit in France are aiming to organise a peace conference by the end of the year to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
  • Israeli and Palestinian representatives are absent, making the chances of success slim
  • French diplomats said they felt compelled to act as the opportunity to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel was slipping away, with the situation in the region deteriorating.
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  • “We cannot substitute for the parties. Our initiative aims at giving them guarantees that the peace will be solid, sustainable and under international supervision,”
  • The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has rebuffed the French initiative, saying a deal can only be reached in direct negotiations.
  • The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967
  • Continued Israeli settlement expansion on occupied lands and several months of renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence have also undermined trust.
  •  
    The stronger israel holds on to the land and doesn't give it up, the more respect they will recieve from the global community. My opinion.
Javier E

Destined for War: Can China and the United States Escape Thucydides's Trap? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago.
  • Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war.
  • When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.
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  • Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not.
  • A risk associated with Thucydides’s Trap is that business as usual—not just an unexpected, extraordinary event—can trigger large-scale conflict. When a rising power is threatening to displace a ruling power, standard crises that would otherwise be contained, like the assassination of an archduke in 1914, can initiate a cascade of reactions that, in turn, produce outcomes none of the parties would otherwise have chosen.
  • The preeminent geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years. As Singapore’s late leader, Lee Kuan Yew, observed, “the size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”
  • More than 2,400 years ago, the Athenian historian Thucydides offered a powerful insight: “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.
  • Note that Thucydides identified two key drivers of this dynamic: the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway, on the one hand, and the fear, insecurity, and determination to defend the status quo this engenders in the established power, on the other.
  • However unimaginable conflict seems, however catastrophic the potential consequences for all actors, however deep the cultural empathy among leaders, even blood relatives, and however economically interdependent states may be—none of these factors is sufficient to prevent war, in 1914 or today.
  • Four of the 16 cases in our review did not end in bloodshed. Those successes, as well as the failures, offer pertinent lessons for today’s world leaders. Escaping the Trap requires tremendous effort
  • Lee Kuan Yew, the world’s premier China watcher and a mentor to Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping. Before his death in March, the founder of Singapore put the odds of China continuing to grow at several times U.S. rates for the next decade and beyond as “four chances in five.
  • Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?
  • Could China Become #1? Manufacturer: Exporter: Trading nation: Saver: Holder of U.S. debt: Foreign-direct-investment destination: Energy consumer: Oil importer: Carbon emitter: Steel producer: Auto market: Smartphone market: E-commerce market: Luxury-goods market:   Internet user: Fastest supercomputer: Holder of foreign reserves: Source of initial public offerings: Primary engine of global growth: Economy: Most are stunned to learn that on each of these 20 indicators, China has already surpassed the U.S.
  • In 1980, China had 10 percent of America’s GDP as measured by purchasing power parity; 7 percent of its GDP at current U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 6 percent of its exports. The foreign currency held by China, meanwhile, was just one-sixth the size of America’s reserves. The answers for the second column: By 2014, those figures were 101 percent of GDP; 60 percent at U.S.-dollar exchange rates; and 106 percent of exports. China’s reserves today are 28 times larger than America’s.
  • On whether China’s leaders are serious about displacing the United States as the top power in Asia in the foreseeable future, Lee answered directly: “Of course. Why not … how could they not aspire to be number one in Asia and in time the world?” And about accepting its place in an international order designed and led by America, he said absolutely not: “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.”
  • As the United States emerged as the dominant power in the Western hemisphere in the 1890s, how did it behave? Future President Theodore Roosevelt personified a nation supremely confident that the 100 years ahead would be an American century. Over a decade that began in 1895 with the U.S. secretary of state declaring the United States “sovereign on this continent,” America liberated Cuba; threatened Britain and Germany with war to force them to accept American positions on disputes in Venezuela and Canada; backed an insurrection that split Colombia to create a new state of Panama (which immediately gave the U.S. concessions to build the Panama Canal); and attempted to overthrow the government of Mexico, which was supported by the United Kingdom and financed by London bankers. In the half century that followed, U.S. military forces intervened in “our hemisphere” on more than 30 separate occasions to settle economic or territorial disputes in terms favorable to Americans, or oust leaders they judged unacceptable
  • When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market in 1978, he announced a policy known as “hide and bide.” What China needed most abroad was stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus “bide our time and hide our capabilities,” which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even.
  • With the arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of “hide and bide” is over
  • Many observers outside China have missed the great divergence between China’s economic performance and that of its competitors over the seven years since the financial crisis of 2008 and Great Recession. That shock caused virtually all other major economies to falter and decline. China never missed a year of growth, sustaining an average growth rate exceeding 8 percent. Indeed, since the financial crisis, nearly 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in just one country: China
  • What Xi Jinping calls the “China Dream” expresses the deepest aspirations of hundreds of millions of Chinese, who wish to be not only rich but also powerful. At the core of China’s civilizational creed is the belief—or conceit—that China is the center of the universe. In the oft-repeated narrative, a century of Chinese weakness led to exploitation and national humiliation by Western colonialists and Japan. In Beijing’s view, China is now being restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests.
  • Last November, in a seminal meeting of the entire Chinese political and foreign-policy establishment, including the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi provided a comprehensive overview of his vision of China’s role in the world. The display of self-confidence bordered on hubris. Xi began by offering an essentially Hegelian conception of the major historical trends toward multipolarity (i.e. not U.S. unipolarity) and the transformation of the international system (i.e. not the current U.S.-led system). In his words, a rejuvenated Chinese nation will build a “new type of international relations” through a “protracted” struggle over the nature of the international order. In the end, he assured his audience that “the growing trend toward a multipolar world will not change.”
  • Given objective trends, realists see an irresistible force approaching an immovable object. They ask which is less likely: China demanding a lesser role in the East and South China Seas than the United States did in the Caribbean or Atlantic in the early 20th century, or the U.S. sharing with China the predominance in the Western Pacific that America has enjoyed since World War II?
  • At this point, the established script for discussion of policy challenges calls for a pivot to a new strategy (or at least slogan), with a short to-do list that promises peaceful and prosperous relations with China. Shoehorning this challenge into that template would demonstrate only one thing: a failure to understand the central point I’m trying to make
  • What strategists need most at the moment is not a new strategy, but a long pause for reflection. If the tectonic shift caused by China’s rise poses a challenge of genuinely Thucydidean proportions, declarations about “rebalancing,” or revitalizing “engage and hedge,” or presidential hopefuls’ calls for more “muscular” or “robust” variants of the same, amount to little more than aspirin treating cancer. Future historians will compare such assertions to the reveries of British, German, and Russian leaders as they sleepwalked into 1914
  • The rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a generation
  • Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at the highest level in both countries. It will entail a depth of mutual understanding not seen since the Henry Kissinger-Zhou Enlai conversations in the 1970s. Most significantly, it will mean more radical changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet imagined.
jongardner04

How Serious Is the French Proposal on Middle East Peace? - US News - 0 views

  • It is still unclear whether the international community will support the French initiative to restart talks on a two-state solution.
  • The ambitious French idea first suggested by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius at the end of January of holding an international conference to kick-start the two-state solution process in Paris in July is alive and kicking. A senior Western diplomat in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor that the initiative to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks has been adopted by the new French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault.
  • The three-step approach — which France proposed at the end of January 2016 and includes consultations with Palestinians and Israelis, a spring preparatory meeting of the international working groups and a July conference in Paris — is definitely on track, the diplomat said.
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  • It is unclear how strongly the international community will support the French initiative. Washington appears to have washed its hands of the Palestinian conflict, although US Secretary of State John Kerry made a special effort to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 21 during Kerry's most recent visit to Amman. No details of that meeting have been made public and it is not clear whether the French conference idea was discussed.
  • A major stumbling block to the conference has been the possibility of Israel refusing to attend over the French desire to recognize a Palestinian state if the talks fail, according to the former minister. Speaking to an annual gathering of French diplomats Jan. 29 about what France would do if it faced a wall of Israeli rejection, Fabius said, "Well, … in this case, we need to face our responsibilities by recognizing the Palestinian state."
  • Despite the obvious skepticism due to past failures, an international effort to replicate the Iranian agreement process and solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict might work if there is seriousness behind the French effort and if Washington is willing to spend political capital to make it work.
fischerry

Is the Trump Administration About to Take On China's Belt and Road Initiative? | The Di... - 0 views

  • For the first time, we’re starting to see glimpses of an Asia strategy coming from the Trump administration — specifically, a strategy to counter China’s now nearly four-year-long Belt and Road Initiative (originally known as ‘One Belt, One Road’).
manhefnawi

House of Habsburg | European dynasty | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • royal German family
  • of Europe from the 15th to the 20th century
  • The name Habsburg is derived from the castle of Habsburg
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  • built in 1020 by Werner
  • in the Aargau
  • in what is now Switzerland
  • rebelled against the German king Otto I in 950
  • Rudolf II of Habsburg (died 1232)
  • Rudolf III’s descendants, however, sold their portion, including Laufenburg, to Albert IV’s descendants before dying out in 1408
  • Albert IV’s son Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273. It was he who, in 1282, bestowed Austria and Styria on his two sons Albert (the future German king Albert I) and Rudolf (reckoned as Rudolf II of Austria). From that date the agelong identification of the Habsburgs with Austria begins
  • the most formidable dynasty was no longer the Habsburg but the Bourbon. In the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) the rising powers that 100 years earlier had been Habsburg Spain’s principal enemies and feeble France’s most fluent encouragers
  • Apart from the Bourbon ascendancy
  • The physical debility of Charles II of Spain was such that no male heir could be expected to be born to him
  • his crowns would pass to the electoral prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, son of his niece Maria Antonia, daughter of the emperor Leopold I.
  • Charles II’s next natural heirs were the descendants (1) of his half-sister, who had married Louis XIV of France, and (2) of his father’s two sisters, of whom one had been Louis XIV’s mother and the other the emperor Leopold I’s
  • Critical tension developed: on the one hand neither the imperial Habsburgs nor their British and Dutch friends could consent to their Bourbon enemy’s acquiring the whole Spanish inheritance
  • Charles II in the meantime regarded any partition of his inheritance as a humiliation to Spain: dying in 1700, he named as his sole heir a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, the second of Louis XIV’s grandsons. The War of the Spanish Succession ensued
  • To allay British and Dutch misgivings, Leopold I and his elder son, the future emperor Joseph I, in 1703 renounced their own claims to Spain in favour of Joseph’s brother Charles, so that he might found a second line of Spanish Habsburgs distinct from the imperial
  • Sardinia, however, was exchanged by him in 1717 for Sicily, which the peacemakers of Utrecht had assigned to the House of Savoy.
  • Charles remained technically at war with Bourbon Spain until 1720
  • Meanwhile the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs’ male line and the death of his brother Joseph left Charles, in 1711, as the last male Habsburg. He had therefore to consider what should happen after his death. No woman could rule the Holy Roman Empire, and furthermore the Habsburg succession in some of the hereditary lands was assured only to the male line
  • he issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction of April 19, 1713, prescribing that, in the event of his dying sonless, the whole inheritance should pass (1) to a daughter of his, according to the rule of primogeniture, and thence to her descendants; next (2) if he himself left no daughter, to his late brother’s daughters, under the same conditions; and finally (3) if his nieces’ line was extinct, to the heirs of his paternal aunts
  • The attempt to win general recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction was Charles VI’s main concern from 1716 onward
  • By 1738, at the end of the War of the Polish Succession (in which he lost both Naples and Sicily to a Spanish Bourbon but got Parma and Piacenza
  • acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. His hopes were illusory: less than two months after his death, in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa had to face a Prussian invasion of Silesia, which unleashed the War of the Austrian Succession
  • Bavaria then promptly challenged the Habsburg position in Germany; and France’s support of Bavaria encouraged Saxony to follow suit and Spain to try to oust the Habsburgs from Lombardy
  • The War of the Austrian Succession cost Maria Theresa most of Silesia, part of Lombardy, and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza (Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748) but left her in possession of the rest of her father’s hereditary lands
  • her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who in 1737 had become hereditary grand duke of Tuscany, was finally recognized as Holy Roman emperor, with the title of Francis I. He and his descendants, of the House of Habsburg–Lorraine, are the dynastic continuators of the original Habsburgs
  • An Austro-French entente was subsequently maintained until 1792: the marriage of the archduchess Marie-Antoinette to the future Louis XVI of France (1770) was intended to confirm it
  • the Habsburgs exerted themselves to consolidate and to expand their central European bloc of territory
  • when the emperor Francis I died (1765), his eldest son, the emperor Joseph II, became coregent with his mother of the Austrian dominions, but Joseph’s brother Leopold became grand duke of Tuscany
  • The northeastward expansion of Habsburg central Europe, which came about in Joseph II’s time, was a result not so much of Joseph’s initiative as of external events: the First Partition of Poland (1772)
  • The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought a kaleidoscopic series of changes
  • On Napoleon’s downfall the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) inaugurated the Restoration, from which the battered House of Habsburg naturally benefitted
  • a brother of the Holy Roman emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, had in 1771 married the heiress of the House of Este; and Napoleon’s Habsburg consort, Marie Louise
  • The history of the House of Habsburg for the century following the Congress of Vienna is inseparable from that of the Austrian Empire
  • German, Italian, Hungarian, Slav, and Romanian—gradually eroded. The first territorial losses came in 1859, when Austria had to cede Lombardy to Sardinia–Piedmont, nucleus of the emergent kingdom of Italy
  • Next, the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, in which Prussia, exploiting German nationalism, was in alliance with Italy, forced Austria both to renounce its hopes of reviving its ancient hegemony in Germany and to cede Venetia.
  • Franz Joseph took a step intended to consolidate his “multinational empire”
  • he granted to that kingdom equal status with the Austrian Empire in what was henceforth to be the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary.
  • The ardent German nationalists of the Austrian Empire, as opposed to the Germans who were simply loyal to the Habsburgs, took the same attitude as did the Magyars
  • Remote from Austria’s national concerns but still wounding to the House of Habsburg was the fate of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian: set up by the French as emperor of Mexico in 1864
  • In 1878 Austro-Hungarian forces had “occupied” Bosnia and Herzegovina, which belonged to declining Turkey
  • World War I led to the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire. While Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Italians were all claiming their share of the spoil, nothing remained to Charles, the last emperor and king, but “German” Austria and Hungary proper
manhefnawi

Compassionate Kings and Rebellious Princes | History Today - 0 views

  • History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities
  • When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously
  • In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later
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  • while casting aspersions on his uncle’s illegitimate birth, often to his face, Carlos must at times have envied Don Juan’s bastard lineage and sound health
  • Don Juan of Austria
  • Another promising candidate was the widowed Mary Stuart, who escaped only to marry the despicable Darnley
  • Due to the possibility of armed insurrection in the north, Philip decided to visit his rebellious provinces in person
  • He now became openly vindictive, unstable and sullen, given to insults and unprovoked attacks on imaginary enemies
  • The threat of a divided royal house, with a maleficent Carlos rallying rebel support to his cause, was totally unacceptable to Philip
  • his father obviously had every intention of supplanting his rancorous heir-apparent should God give him another son
  • he intended to leave for Germany and the Netherlands, with or without his father’s permission
  • he stumbled down a decrepit flight of stairs in the dark, fracturing his skull
  • The strained relationship between Philip and his only son continued to deteriorate, but despite disturbing signs of the young man’s mental instability, the King remained phlegmatic
  • The King’s extended absences gave Carlos considerable latitude to prepare his escape
  • His inability to hold his tongue proved to be Philip’s salvation though at dreadful cost
  • Carlos rashly confided to Don Juan of Austria that he intended to leave Spain within the next few days. After some initial hesitation, Don Juan rode out to the Escorial on Christmas Day and informed Philip of the Prince’s decision
  • Meanwhile, Philip had returned to Madrid and was kept fully informed of his son’s designs; incredibly, he still hesitated to act
  • King Philip and five members of the Council of State made their way to the Prince’s bedchamber. The ingenious system of bolts and locks, which could be operated from his bed, had secretly been dismantled; and the startled Carlos was quickly disarmed. He guiltily assumed they had come to assassinate him, especially when his father seized a document listing the Prince’s enemies, with the King’s name at the head
  • The King was soon inured to suffering and private tragedies, and came to regard the unfounded attacks of his enemies as part of the burden he had been called upon to bear
  • Carlos’ mental equilibrium had always been precarious; and now he began to experience hallucinations. No visitors were allowed, and the Prince was kept under close surveillance, though the conditions of his detention were not too onerous
  • His fragile health was unable to withstand such sustained abuse, and an early death soon became inevitable. Philip resigned himself to his loss, and found spiritual comfort in blessing his dying
  • The death of the successor to the throne under such mysterious circumstances naturally gave rise to the wildest conjecture
  • Reasons of state were hinted at, which were assumed to involve a far-flung conspiracy of the son against his obdurate father
  • Ferdinand’s upbringing was similar to that of the ill-fated Carlos. Born on October 14th, 1784 at the Escorial, the young prince received scant affection from his parents, Charles IV and Maria Luisa, who finally ascended the throne in 1788 after a frustrating wait of twenty-three years
  • his suspicious nature and resentment towards his parents being evident from an early age
  • did not deter the calculating priest from further poisoning his charge’s distrustful mind. Ferdinand’s hatred was especially directed against his mother, Queen Maria Luisa
  • Ferdinand’s fears were not imaginary. In 1795, at the conclusion of an unsuccessful war against revolutionary France, Godoy - the monarchs’ ‘querido Manuel’ - had incredibly been granted the vainglorious title of ‘Prince of the Peace’
  • Ferdinand justifiably suspected that some machination on the part of his mother and Godoy might prevent his succession to the throne. By late 1807 his situation had become desperate
  • If the men who surround (Charles IV) here would let him know the character of Your Majesty as I know it, with what desire would not my father seek to tighten the bonds which should unite our two nations
  • Having already removed Charles’ brother from the throne of Naples, the French Emperor watched the unseemly squabbling among the Spanish Bourbons with a calculating eye to the future
  • unilateral commitment to refuse to marry ‘whoever she may be, without the consent of Your Majesty from whom alone I await the selection of my bride
  • Ferdinand’s enthusiasm at being related to the French Emperor was such that Beauharnais suggested that the Prince approach Napoleon directly in writing. Not only is it incredible that the heir-apparent would dare to discuss marriage plans with a foreign head of state; but equally so is the abject tone of the letter
  • The state in which I have found myself for some time, and which could not be hidden from the great penetration of Your Majesty
  • But full of hope in finding in Your Majesty’s magnanimity the most powerful protection
  • persistent rumours that he might appoint himself Regent on the King’s death, spurred the Prince of Asturias to frantic measures
  • august
  • The subsequent crisis, though outwardly similar to the events of 1568, was wider in scope and more tragic in its consequences. King Philip, criticized by many for his dispassionate attitude, never forfeited the esteem or the sympathy of the nation. In 1807 the position was the exact reverse; Charles IV at best was pitied as a dupe, while Maria Luisa and her paramour were held responsible for reducing Spain to the role of Napoleon’s subservient ally
  • Did Napoleon instigate the scheme to sow further dissension within the Spanish royal family, or did Beauharnais initiate it on his own account
  • Napoleon was delighted to receive Ferdinand’s letter and immediately grasped its mischief-making potential
  • Charles IV discovered his son’s treasonous correspondence
  • Godoy whose spies were everywhere
  • The ensuing scenes are reminiscent of those of 1568. The King angrily entered his son’s room, and was soon in possession not only of the damaging correspondence - apparently the Prince’s terrified gaze betrayed its hiding place - but also of the cipher needed to transcribe the coded letters
  • The Queen was distraught that Godoy was ill with a fever in Madrid at such a critical moment
  • The following day Ferdinand was formally placed under arrest with a guard of twenty-four elite soldiers
  • warning him of Godoy’s boundless ambitions and greed, enumerating his supposed crimes, his abuse of power and the royal confidence, his corruption and immorality
  • The most damning assertion was that Godoy had besmirched the King’s name and delivered Spain to her enemies
  • patriots anxious to ensure the orderly succession to the throne in the event of the King’s death
  • who imagined they had come to deliver their beloved prince from the pernicious influence of the royal favourite
  • Godoy pointed out to the King that a family reconciliation was imperative to prevent Napoleon from dividing the Spanish royal family. The King stubbornly refused to pardon his son, but finally agreed to let Godoy act as intermediary
  • Godoy saw his opportunity, and easily prevailed upon the terrified Prince to pen contrite letters to his parents, fully admitting his guilt
  • The King, moved by paternal compassion, granted his son a royal pardon, but insisted nevertheless that the other ‘conspirators’ be brought to trial and a full enquiry be convened
  • As Godoy had foreseen, Ferdinand’s immense popularity throughout the nation and the patriotic motives of the accused could only work to the detriment of the Santa Trinidad, as the reigning monarchs and the favourite were caustically referred to by the common people
  • On January 25th, 1808, to the acclaim of the public and the barely contained fury of the royal couple, the defendants were declared innocent
  • From the outset Godoy had been opposed to the trial; but this was one of the rare occasions on which both monarchs disregarded his counsel. To compound the initial error
  • Ferdinand’s defence, based on his right of legitimate succession to the throne, is persuasive as offered by Escoiquiz and the others at their trial. But whatever the provocation and dangers -real or imagined-one cannot forgive Ferdinand’s clandestine appeal to the French Emperor at such a critical moment, when Spain was threatened from outside
  • Being a King, you know how sacred are the rights of the throne; any approach of an heir apparent to a foreign sovereign is criminal
  • Napoleon assumed that the conduct and moral fibre of the Spanish royal family was representative of the entire nation
Javier E

Why Trump Has Failed on His Foreign-Policy Initiatives - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Donald Trump entered office with more scope for initiative in foreign policy than any of his recent predecessors.
  • “Gradually and then suddenly.” That was how one of Ernest Hemingway’s characters described the process of going bankrupt. The phrase applies vividly to the accumulating failures of President Trump’s foreign-policy initiatives.
  • Trump also enjoyed greater material scope: a growing economy, federal finances that were less of a mess than usual, and a lower pace of combat operations than at any time since 9/11.
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  • This is why presidents are surrounded by elaborate staff systems to help them—and oblige them—to think through their words and actions.  
  • Through his first months in office, Trump threw his power about as if it were an infinite resource. He growled threats, issued commands, picked quarrels, and played favorites.
  • His idea of foreign policy is to bark orders like an emperor, without thinking very hard about how to enforce compliance or what to do if compliance is not forthcoming.
  • First, because he talked so much and tweeted so much, he revealed much more of himself much earlier than other presidents
  • Second, foreign leaders have concluded that the shortest path to Trump’s heart runs through his wallet
  • Third, Trump’s highly suspicious dealings with Russia before the election potentially put him at the mercy of countries in a position to embarrass him
  • At a time of relatively low military casualties and strong job growth, the president’s popularity at home roughly matches that of George W. Bush’s during the worst months of the Iraq war, 2005–2006, and Barack Obama’s during the most disappointing months of the weak recovery from the recession of 2009. The president’s options are narrowing even before the midterm elections.
  • America’s friends are turning their backs fast. (Only 17 percent of South Koreans trust Trump to do the right thing, according to the Pew global surveyin 2017, well before the latest chaos. Obama’s trust rating in South Korea bounced between a low of 75 percent and a high of 88 percent over his presidency.
  • All this is only the beginning. Deficits are rising fast. Military commitments are rising fast
anonymous

China says carrier group reaches 'initial' combat capability | Fox News - 0 views

  • China's aircraft carrier Liaoning (C) takes part in a military drill of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in the western Pacific Ocean, April 18, 2018.  (REUTERS) Just a week after the Pentagon disinvited China from military exercises because of its “militarization” of the South China Sea area, the Communist country announced the carrier group led by its first aircraft carrier had reached "initial systematic combat capability."
  • The ship is conventionally powered by steam turbines, according to CGTN, and is capable of carrying different types of aircraft, including the J-15 fighters, as well as surveillance and anti-submarine helicopters.
  • Little is known about China’s aircraft program which is a state secret, but the country recently began sea trials of its first domestically-produced aircraft carrier that has yet to be named.
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  • The new carrier is based on the former Soviet Union's Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style deck for taking off and a conventional oil-fueled steam turbine power plant.
  • The country has used its naval fleet to stake claim to virtually the entire South China Sea and to range farther into the Pacific and Indian oceans – a provocative move that has heightened tensions with the U.S. Last Wednesday, the Pentagon said it was disinviting China from the Rim of the Pacific Exercises following reports the country was again secretly beefing up its military operation. 
  • Wu Qian, spokesperson Ministry of National Defense, said the "provocative action" was a "serious infringement" on China's sovereignty.
manhefnawi

Spain - Philip IV's reign | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • In 1620, following the defeat of Frederick V (the elector palatine, or prince, from the Rhineland who had accepted the crown of Bohemia when it was offered to him in 1618) and the Bohemians, Spanish troops from the Netherlands entered the “Winter King’s” hereditary dominions of the Rhenish Palatinate. Militarily, Spain was now in a favourable position to restart the war with the United Provinces at the expiration of the truce in 1621
  • Little was said about religion or even the king’s authority, while the protection of the overseas empire had become the central consideration in Spanish relations with the Dutch rebels.
  • Having decided on war, Olivares pursued a perfectly consistent strategy: communications between Spain and the Spanish Netherlands were to be kept open at all costs
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  • The revolt of Catalonia gave the Portuguese their opportunity. The lower classes and the clergy had always hated the Castilians, and the Portuguese aristocracy and the commercial classes—previously content with the patronage and the economic opportunities that the union with Spain had provided—had become dissatisfied during the preceding 20 years.
  • From 1630, when Sweden and France actively intervened in the war, Spain rapidly lost the initiative. The war was fought on a global scale
  • In the autumn of 1640 Olivares scraped together the last available troops and sent them against the Catalan rebels. Claris countered by transferring Catalan allegiance to the king of France, “as in the time of Charlemagne” (January 1641). French troops now entered Catalonia, and only after French forces withdrew with the renewed outbreak of the French civil wars (the Fronde) were the Castilians able to reconquer Catalonia (1652)
  • The first objective led Spain to build up a naval force in the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium) that preyed on Dutch shipping in the North Sea and, on the diplomatic front, to cultivate the friendship of James I of England and even to contemplate the restoration of Frederick V to the Palatinate and the marriage of Philip IV’s devoutly Roman Catholic sister to the heretic prince of Wales (later Charles I).
  • Rather than allow themselves to be sent to fight the Catalan rebels, the Portuguese nobility seized power in Lisbon and proclaimed the duque de Bragança as King John IV of Portugal (December 1640).
  • In 1643 the French king’s cousin, Louis II de Bourbon (the Great Condé), broke the Spanish tercios and their reputation for invincibility at the Battle of Rocroi in northeastern France.
  • When the emperor conceded French claims to Alsace and the Rhine bridgeheads, the “Spanish Road” to the Netherlands was irrevocably cut, and the close alliance between the Spanish and the Austrian branches of the house of Habsburg came to an end. With Portugal in revolt and Brazil no longer an issue between the Dutch and the Spaniards, Philip IV drew the only possible conclusion from this situation and rapidly came to terms with the United Provinces, recognizing their full independence
  • But Philip IV had not changed his basic policy. He wanted to have his hands free for a final effort against France, even after Catalonia had surrendered. Once again the temporary weakness of France during the Fronde confirmed the Spanish court in its disastrous military policy.
  • More important than these relatively minor territorial losses was the realization throughout Europe that Spain’s pretensions to hegemony had definitely and irremediably failed. The Spaniards themselves were slow to admit it. Philip IV had made concessions to France in order, once again, to have his hands free against the last unforgiven enemy, Portugal. There was no longer any rational basis for his hopes of success. All schemes for financial and tax reforms were still being blocked by vested interests, and the government again had declared bankruptcies in 1647 and 1653.
manhefnawi

Spain - Spain in 1600 | Britannica.com - 0 views

  • It was the tragedy of Spain that its ruling classes failed to respond to the social and political problems of the age
  • the system of royal government, as it was understood at the time, depended ultimately on the king’s ability to lead and to make decisions. Philip II’s very consciousness of his divinely imposed obligations, compounded by his almost pathological suspiciousness of the intentions and ambitions of other men, had led him to deprecate independent initiative by his ministers
  • Devout but indolent and passive, Philip III (1598–1621) was incapable of carrying on his father’s methods of personal government. He therefore had to have a minister (privado) who would do all his work for him. His choice, Francisco Gómez de Sandoval y Rojas, duque de Lerma, however, turned out to be a singularly unfortunate one.
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  • During the reign of Philip III the government of Spain either became the victim of events that it did not attempt to control or allowed its hand to be forced by outsiders
  • Neither Philip III nor Lerma was emotionally or intellectually capable of the fundamental reappraisal of foreign policy that Philip II’s failures required.
  • In 1610 a new war with France threatened, but the French king Henry IV was assassinated, and for almost 20 years France, Spain’s most formidable opponent in Europe, became preoccupied with its internal problems. The years from 1610 to 1630 were the last period in which Spain clearly dominated Europe.
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