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Javier E

Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change - The Ne... - 0 views

  • Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, blending a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.
  • He describes relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment and says apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness are to blame.
  • He places most of the blame on fossil fuels and human activity, while warning of an “unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequence for all of us” if corrective action is not taken swiftly. Developed, industrialized countries were mostly responsible, he says, and are obligated to help poorer nations confront the crisis.
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  • News media interest was enormous, in part because of Francis’ global popularity, but also because of the intriguing coalition he is proposing between faith and science.
  • Catholic bishops and priests around the world are expected to discuss the encyclical in services on Sunday. But Francis is also reaching for a wider audience, asking in the document “to address every person living on this planet.”
  • Advocates of policies to combat climate change have said they hoped that Francis could lend a “moral dimension” to the debate.
  • “Within the scientific community, there is almost a code of honor that you will never transgress the red line between pure analysis and moral issues,” said Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder and chairman of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “But we are now in a situation where we have to think about the consequences of our insight for society.”
  • Catholic theologians say the overarching theme of the encyclical is “integral ecology,” which links care for the environment with a notion already well developed in Catholic teaching: that economic development, to be morally good and just, must take into account people’s need for things like freedom, education and meaningful work.
  • “The basic idea is, in order to love God, you have to love your fellow human beings, and you have to love and care for the rest of creation,” said Vincent Miller, who holds a chair in Catholic theology and culture at the University of Dayton, a Catholic college in Ohio. “It gives Francis a very traditional basis to argue for the inclusion of environmental concern at the center of Christian faith.”
  • “Critics will say the church can’t teach policy, the church can’t teach politics. And Francis is saying, ‘No, these things are at the core of the church’s teaching.’ ”
  • in a passage certain to rankle some Christians, he chastises those who cite Genesis as evidence that man has “dominion” over the earth that justifies practices like mountaintop mining or fishing with gill nets.
  • “This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church,” Francis writes. The Bible teaches human beings to “till and keep” the garden of the world, he says. “ ‘Tilling’ refers to cultivating, plowing or working, while ‘keeping’ means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving.
  • His most stinging rebuke is a broad critique of profit-seeking and the undue influence of technology on society. He praises achievements in medicine, science and engineering, but says that “our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.”
  • The pope rejects the belief that technology and “current economics” will solve environmental problems, or “that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth.”
  • Francis sharply criticizes the trading of carbon credits — a market-based system central to the European Union’s climate policy — and says it “may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”
  • “All is not lost,” he writes. “Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start.”
redavistinnell

Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters | World news | Th... - 0 views

  • Revolutionary Guards release 10 US sailors who entered Iranian waters
  • The US military confirmed the sailors’ release after the Guards issued a statement claiming they were freed into international waters after an apology from Washington.
  • The sailors’ two small navy craft brieflywent missing on Tuesday while crossing the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. Pentagon sources later said the vessels entered Iranian waters because of technical difficulties.
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  • “These are always situations which, as everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control. I’m appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the Iranian authorities.”
  • In fact, it is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be peacefully resolved, and officially resolved, and that is a testament to the critical role that diplomacy plays in keeping the country safe, secure and strong.”
  • The US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said: “I am pleased that 10 US navy sailors have departed Iran and are now back in US hands. I want to personally thank secretary of state John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran to secure our sailors’ swift return. Around the world, the US navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved.”
  • The Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
  • The swift release of the Americans contradicted speculation that the hardline Revolutionary Guards were seeking to sabotage improving relations between Iran and the west days before the planned implementation of the nuclear deal reached in Vienna in July
  • In an unusual move, the Guards last week condemned the attack by a group of hardliners on the Saudi embassy in Tehran, showing an approach in line with that of the Rouhani administration.
  • Once Iran finishes swapping the core of a heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak with cement, they will receive an influx of cash under the July deal.
anonymous

How A Bar In Mexico Ended Up Touching Many Around The World : NPR - 0 views

  • Chances are you miss your favorite bar: The chatter, the live music, or the pour of the drink made just so. You're not alone. With bars shuttered all over the world, that sense of community has now been absent for over a year. But one bar in Mexico decided to do so something about it, by recreating some of those sounds at your favorite bar for those confined at home. And that idea? Well, it took off around the world.
  • The bar is in Monterrey, Mexico. Started in 2012 by Oscar Romo and a few friends, it was a little neighborhood spot, with live music next to a long, wooden bar and a small patio outside.Back then, Monterrey was emerging from a horrific string of violence from the drug cartels waging war across northern Mexico. The city was starting to come back to life, and people were finally feeling safe.
  • For the next eight years, Maverick blossomed into a cornerstone of the neighborhood, a spot where artists and musicians, writers, and others in the community could meet to unwind. Until the pandemic hit.
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  • The bar was hurting. Financially, obviously, but also because that sense of community that they had worked so hard to build had evaporated overnight. Romo says it was really painful.
  • So Romo decided to do something about it, and this is where things got interesting.Romo enlisted the help of René Cárdenas, in charge of marketing at Maverick. Cárdenas thought of the silence of the pandemic and he soon came to a realization: It was the sounds of the bar that really brought the sense of community home.
  • And they put all the sounds on a website, called IMissMyBar.com. The idea was customers could put all the sounds together, and feel like they were in Maverick, while sitting around their homes, drinking their cocktails (preferably bought to-go from the bar, of course). This is wat it sounded like.
  • So they modified the website to make it something where anyone, anywhere could play around and try to best recreate the bar they miss the most.It worked.
  • The website has been getting noticed — Maverick has been getting calls from everywhere: India, Greece, Germany, the United Kingdom. Thousands of miles away, Max Wolff, the general manager of a cozy cocktail bar called Swift in London, was going through the same feelings of loss as his counterparts in Maverick.
  • He shared the site with his customers. London is still in total lockdown, and bars like Swift are completely empty. Wolff says the city has lost part of its spirit — and sharing the sounds created by the Maverick team was about taking some of it back.
  • It isn't just those chaotic and surprising interactions that are missing. Bars all over the world are in danger of disappearing. Just in the United States, an estimated 100,000 bars and restaurants have closed during the pandemic, according to the National Restaurant Association.
  • Marcio Duarte is one of those struggling bar owners around the world. He runs a small bar named Machimbombo in Lisbon, Portugal.
  • Like in many cities around the world, nightlife has been largely banned in Lisbon, though the restrictions are finally starting to lift.Duarte's bar has been hanging on by pivoting to selling food during the day, but it's been tough.So when he came across IMissMyBar.com, he put it on surround sound speakers. It gave him hope.
  • Oscar Romo, at Maverick in Mexico, says he's been surprised at how the website he helped create has taken off around the world.To him, it speaks to the importance of bars like his in the social fabric – and how IMissMyBar.com helped bring that reality home.
katherineharron

Trump vents fury at impeachment probe with key witness due to testify - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • An agitated President Donald Trump on Tuesday branded the Democratic impeachment process a "lynching" shortly before a crucial new witness is scheduled to give a deposition that could potentially unpeel new layers of the Ukraine scandal that is threatening his presidency.
  • Trump, who on Monday called on Republicans to be tougher in his defense, warned in a tweet that Democrats were setting a precedent that a president of their own party could be impeached in future without due process.Read More"All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here -- a lynching. But we will WIN!" Trump wrote.
  • A torrent of disclosures could dash hopes for a swift House vote on articles of impeachment before the Thanksgiving break as members follow fresh paths of inquiry beyond the original scope of questioning. That could in turn also hinder their effort to offer the public a crisp, easily understandable case against a President who habitually defies limits on his power.CNN reported Monday on growing expectations that historic votes on impeachment may now slip towards the end of the year -- even as Democrats also move to begin doing weekend work with a scheduled Saturday deposition for another State Department official. Such a scenario would make it more likely that a subsequent Senate trial of the President could overshadow and infect the Democratic Party's presidential primary votes early next year, a time when party leaders hope voters will focus instead on considering their own candidates for President.
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  • Given that Democrats appear far from wrapping up private depositions, may want to call new witnesses from multiple agencies, hope to publish transcripts of hours-long depositions and also want to hold public hearings, it is tough to see them advancing Articles of Impeachment in the committee next month.As a case in point, the top US diplomat currently in Ukraine Bill Taylor is scheduled to deliver a deposition to three House committees on Tuesday. The US charge d'affaires in Kiev was depicted in text message exchanges with the President's men as saying it would be "crazy" to withhold military aid to the former Soviet state to coerce it into offer political favors. So he's potentially a critical witness for impeachment managers.
  • It now seems all but inevitable that at the time when Democrats hoped to focus voters on plans for health care reform, lowering student debt and a fairer economy in the run up to the Iowa caucuses in February, the nation's attention will still be fixated on Washington.
  • If the increasingly complicated case against Trump makes a swift denouement impractical, Democrats may begin to doubt Pelosi's decision to hold off on impeachment months ago -- after the special counsel provided what some scholars see as strong evidence of obstruction of justice. Trump's defenders could soon begin to make the case soon that a decision to overturn an election should best be left to voters due to weigh in months, rather than lawmakers on Capitol Hill.But Democrats will not be alone in facing dangerously shifting political currents should impeachment drag on longer than expected. After all, every week that has passed since Pelosi fired the starting gun a month ago has weakened Trump's position.It's possible that day after day of damaging disclosures about Trump's off-the-books dealings with Ukraine to get dirt on Biden could significantly weaken the President's position.
  • Events of the last few days -- over Trump's aborted plan for a G7 summit at his Florida resort and his Syria withdrawal -- have exposed increasing GOP impatience with the President.While there is no suggestion that his Senate firewall is in danger of collapsing, it appears that Trump will continue to fray tempers in the months before a Senate trial."We have to get tougher and fight," Trump warned his party on Monday in a wild hour-long photo-op before a cabinet meeting.
  • "(There is) growing frustration in the Republican Party, growing disenchantment in the Republican Party, but we haven't seen a real breakout and we may not see one through this process," David Gergen, an adviser to GOP and Democratic presidents who is now a senior CNN political analyst, told CNN International on Monday.
nrashkind

Graham calls for swift end to impeachment trial, warns Dems against calling witnesses |... - 0 views

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced that his initial plan of a pre-trial dismissal of the impeachment case against President Trump is now unlikely to happen
  • he is pushing for the trial to begin and end as quickly as possible.
  • The Senate trial is set to begin Tuesday.
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  • Graham had previously floated the idea that the GOP majority could immediately vote to dismiss the case before hearing any arguments, but now he states that this does not appear to be a possibility given the lack of sufficient Republican support for such action.
  • “Yeah that’s dead for practical purposes,
  • Graham remains confident that Republicans are still united enough to acquit Trump at the conclusion of the trial.
  • t Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans on keeping the Senate in session for 12 hours a day so that House Democrats would be done presenting their arguments Wednesday.
  • Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are among a small group of Republicans who have yet to completely shut the door on new witnesses
  • “If we call one witness, we’re going to call all the witnesses,” Graham said.
chrispink7

Impeachment: Trump wants Senate trial over before State of the Union address | US news ... - 0 views

  • Donald Trump wants his impeachment trial to end before his state of the union address in just two weeks’ time, Lindsey Graham said on Sunday.
  • “His mood is, to go to the state of the union [on 4 February] with this behind him and talk about what he wants to do for the rest of 2020 and what he wants to do for the next four years,” the South Carolina senator and close Trump ally told Fox News Sunday.
  • That timeline is ambitious, given overwhelming public support for a fair airing of the charges against Trump at his Senate trial, in which opening arguments will be heard on Tuesday. Graham conceded that a swift dismissal of the charges, which he had hoped for, will not be possible.
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  • The trial could include testimony from top Trump advisers with firsthand knowledge of his alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. But the White House has indicated that Trump would invoke executive privilege to prevent such advisers from testifying, setting up a court fight that could drag the trial out for weeks or longer.
  • The House impeachment managers, who will act as prosecutors, declared the president must be removed for putting his political career ahead of the public trust and seeking to hide that betrayal from Congress and the American people.
  • The seven managers led by intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff published a 46-page tiral brief. A 61-page “statement of material facts” was attached.
  • Another impeachment manager, Jason Crow of Colorado, said the White House was in effect arguing that Trump was above the law. “If all of the president’s arguments are true, that a president can’t be indicted, and that the abuse of power, the abuse of public trust doesn’t count as an impeachable offense – if that is true, then no president can be held accountable,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Then the president truly is above the law.”
  • Trump must be removed, Democrats argue, owing to the egregiousness of his past misconduct and his ongoing efforts to encourage foreign tampering in US elections.
  • “President Trump’s continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic processes and endangers our national security,” the managers wrote. “President Trump’s abuse of power requires his conviction and removal from office.”
anonymous

Post-Election Violence: Cities And Businesses Prepare For Unrest : NPR - 0 views

  • Across the country, there are growing concerns that the bitterness and animosity over the presidential election will not end when the polls close Tuesday night. From coast to coast, cities are preparing for possible protests, civil unrest and violence, regardless of the election's outcome.
  • While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.
  • The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.
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  • but also the mom & pop shops on the South and the West sides of Chicago who he says "are hanging on by a thread right now because of the pandemic."
  • "They cannot afford to be looted. They cannot afford destruction, because if that happens, they very well may close and not reopen,"
  • Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says the city has been planning and preparing for potential election-related protests and civil unrest for months.
  • Chicago has been running tabletop exercises and gaming out how, when and where violence might erupt.
  • the city will flood certain areas with a highly visible police presence to deter violence. The city will also be using snow plows, dump trucks and other heavy vehicles to block certain streets and expressway exit ramps to keep demonstrators away.
  • Chicago police will respect people's rights to peacefully protest and will work first and foremost to de-escalate any confrontations, but he hastens to add that his officers will take swift action against anyone intent on spreading chaos.
  • Groups on all sides of the political spectrum are planning election night demonstrations and the very real possibility that the results might not be known for days or weeks after Election Day could escalate tensions.
  • mass organized political violence is not a part of the American psyche.
  • but in terms of actual massive violence, this is not something we have done before."
  • 2020 is already a year of political tension and unrest unlike anything seen in the country since the 1960s
  • Phil Brach spent the weekend putting huge sheets of plywood up over the massive glass windows of the store where he works, Rodman's Food and Drug in Washington, D.C., in preparation for Election Day.
  • Across the country, there are growing concerns that the bitterness and animosity over the presidential election will not end when the polls close Tuesday night. From coast to coast, cities are preparing for possible protests, civil unrest and violence, regardless of the election's outcome.
  • Nolan says he went to the store the night of the looting along with a police officer who advised him to leave.
  • "We put some film on these windows so that they're not easily broken, if they're smashed, they'll stay in place. And we're hoping that no one can break into the store, at least not easily," Roy says. Nolan adds, "The film makes the glass shatterproof so it doesn't just explode upon contact."
  • While the nation's capital city is certain to be a focal point of post-election demonstrations, other cities are bracing for possible chaos too.
  • Workers were busy boarding up store windows while supporters of President Trump held a "freedom rally" that was briefly disrupted by counter protesters.
  • "Coming off of the summer, seeing the looting that occurred, there's a lot of anxiety," says Elliott Richardson who heads the Small Business Advocacy Council in Chicago.
  • Superintendent David Brown says Chicago police will respect people's rights to peacefully protest and will work first and foremost to de-escalate any confrontations, but he hastens to add that his officers will take swift action against anyone intent on spreading chaos.
  • In Beverly Hills, Calif. tensions felt high already this weekend.
  • The National Retail Federation has held training webinars for members on crisis prevention and de-escalating conflict and hired security consultants to help store owners prepare.
  • Groups on all sides of the political spectrum are planning election night demonstrations and the very real possibility that the results might not be known for days or weeks after Election Day could escalate tensions.
Javier E

"Falsehood Flies, And Truth Comes Limping After It" - 0 views

  • “I traced a throughline: from Sandy Hook to Pizzagate to QAnon to Charlottesville and the coronavirus myths to the election lie that brought violence to the Capitol on January 6th,” she told Vox earlier this year. “I started to understand how individuals, for reasons of ideology or social status, tribalism, or for profit, were willing to reject established truths, and how once they’d done that, it was incredibly difficult to persuade them otherwise.”
  • She describes the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, CT as “a foundational moment in the world of misinformation and disinformation that we now live in.”
  • the NYT’s Elizabeth Williamson about her book, Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth, which was recently named one of the best books of 2022 by Publishers Weekly.
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  • “The struggle to defend objective truth against people who consciously choose to deny or distort it has become a fight to defend our society, and democracy itself.”
  • Jonathan Swift, it’s worth noting that he was not an optimist about “truth.”
  • By the time a lie is refuted, he wrote, “it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man, who has thought of a good repartee, when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who has found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.'“
  • “Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe,” he wrote in 1710, “I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in every body's mouth; that truth will at last prevail.
  • A recent Washington Post tally found that nearly 300 Republicans running for congressional and state offices are election deniers. That means, as a FiveThirtyEight analysis found, 60 percent of Americans will have at least one election denier on their ballot next week.
  • In a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 63 percent of Republicans say they worry “the election results could be manipulated.”
  • From the New York Times: When asked, six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.
  • The big mistake people have made is in assuming this could blow up only in an extensive struggle in 2024 and perhaps involving Donald Trump. What seems entirely unanticipated, yet is extremely predictable, is that smaller skirmishes could break out all over the country this year.
  • Democrats have got themselves in a situation where the head of their party holds the most popular position on guns and crime—and yet they’re getting crushed on the issue because they’ve let GOP campaign ads, the right wing media ecosystem, and assorted progressive big city prosecutors shape the narrative on the issue rather than doing so themselves.
Javier E

Russia's Money Is Gone - Bloomberg - 0 views

  • One great theme of the post-2008 financial world is that money is a social construct, a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services.
  • 15 years ago it was easier to think that money was an objective fact. Money is a kind of stuff, you might have thought, stuff with some predictable value that you can exchange for goods and services, and you can acquire a quantity of it and then you own that money and can use it however you like to buy things. 
  • The bulk of Russia’s foreign reserves are held in the form of securities, deposits at other central banks and deposits at foreign commercial banks. A ban on transactions with Russia’s central bank means that it can’t sell those securities or access those deposits.
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  • The fiscal response to Covid-19 reinforced this point: Money is a tool of social decision-making, not an objective thing that you get through abstract merit.
  • the value of cryptocurrency is so clearly socially constructed: A Bitcoin was worth roughly nothing a decade ago, and roughly $41,000 today, solely because people collectively decided to ascribe value to Bitcoin.
  • money gets its value from people agreeing that it’s valuable.
  • As of Friday Russia had about $630 billion of foreign currency reserves, a large cushion designed to allow it to withstand economic sanctions and prop up the value of the ruble
  • But “foreign currency reserves” are not an objective fact; they are mostly a series of entries on lists maintained by foreign-currency issuers and intermediaries (central banks, correspondent banks, sovereign bond issuers, brokerages). 1  If those people cross you off the list, or put an asterisk next to your entry freezing your funds, then you can’t use those funds anymore.
  • Russia’s foreign reserves consist, in the first instance, of a set of accounting entries. But in a crisis the accounting entries don’t matter at all. All that matters are relationships, and if your relationships get bad enough then the money is as good as gone.
  • Now you want something for yourself? OK, but that is going to be subtracted from the running total of how much you’ve done for the rest for us.
  • There is a lot to dislike, or at least to be uncomfortable with, in this situation.
  • This is arguably bad for the dollar’s long-run dominance: Russia will develop its own ways around SWIFT, China will push other countries to adopt its digital yuan, everyone will use Bitcoin, etc
  • it is also arguably bad for global prosperity: Trustworthy rules-based trade works better and produces more value than arbitrary uncertain trade.
  • But what I want to suggest is that this weekend’s actions are evidence that the basic structure is good. What I want to suggest is that society is good, that it is good for people (and countries) to exist in a web of relationships in which their counterparties can judge their actions and punish bad actions.
  • If money is socially constructed and property is contingent then money is a continuing, dynamic, ever-at-risk reward for prosocial behavior.
  • one of the ways I suggest students think about money is as a kind of social scorecard.
  • You did something good — made something somebody wanted, let somebody else use something you own, went to work and did everything the boss told you? Good for you, you get a cookie. Or more precisely, you get a credit, in both senses, in the personal record kept for you at a bank.
  • But the response to the 2008 global financial crisis, and to its later European aftershocks, made it clear that something else was going on. Who has money and what they can do with it can be adjusted by the actions of central banks and national treasuries; banks can be bailed out; costs can be socialized.
  • we have exactly this system already. The number is called a bank account. The difference is simply that we have so naturalized the system that “how much money you have” seems like simply a fact about you, rather than a judgment imposed by society.
  • Pervasive social credit systems seem dystopian, and you would not really want the U.S. government making day-to-day decisions about who deserves to keep their bank accounts.
  • But another idea is that money can insulate you from  the obligations of society, and that is also bad.
  • You get a claim on goods and services by being part of society, and having a big number next to your name on a list does not relieve you of your obligations. If you do something so outrageous that society as a whole decides you are a pariah, then money is a way for society to express that.
nataliedepaulo1

WikiLeaks proposes tracking verified Twitter users' homes, families and finances - The ... - 0 views

  • WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations.
  • WikiLeaks would seek to uncover information about the financial lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin or President-elect Donald Trump, both of whom are verified on Twitter.)
  • But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.
Javier E

Is China Ripe for a Revolution? - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.
  • The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was set off by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas over land rights.
  • Beijing has learned its lessons from the past. We see this in the swift and ruthless suppression of Falun Gong and other religious sects that resemble the Taiping before they became militarized. We can see it in the numbers of today’s “mass incidents.” One estimate, 180,000 in 2010, sounds ominous indeed, but in fact the sheer number shows that the dissent is not organized and has not (yet) coalesced into something that can threaten the state
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  • The greatest fear of the government is not that violent dissent should exist; the fear is that it should coalesce.
  • For all of the West’s contempt for China’s government in the 19th century, when the Taiping Rebellion actually drove it to the brink of destruction, it was Britain that intervened to keep it in power. Britain’s economy depended so heavily on the China market at the time (especially after the loss of the United States market to the American Civil War in 1861) that it simply could not bear the risk of what might come from a rebel victory. With American encouragement, the British supplied arms, gunships and military officers to the Manchu government and ultimately helped tip the balance of the war in its favor.
  • Given the precarious state of our economy today, and America’s nearly existential reliance on our trade with China in particular, one wonders: for all of our principled condemnation of China’s government on political and human rights grounds, if it were actually faced with a revolution from within — even one led by a coalition calling for greater democracy — how likely is it that we, too, wouldn’t, in the end, find ourselves hoping for that revolution to fail?
Javier E

Obama Assures Americans This Will Not Be Another 1456 Ottoman Siege Of Belgrade | The O... - 0 views

  • “I of course realize that many people around the country are concerned that an intervention in Syria would devolve into another Siege of Belgrade, but I can assure you that this operation will be swift, decisive, and will in no way resemble the Ottoman Empire’s ill-advised invasion of Nándorfehérvár,” Obama told the assembled White House Press Corps.
  • “When I heard we were getting involved in Syria, right away I thought, ‘Well, here we go, it’s 1456 Belgrade all over again,’” said Seattle resident Matt Haggerty, 42, who, like millions of Americans, says he “in no way supports the idea” of getting entangled in any military campaign even remotely similar to the Ottoman invasion of the Catholic Balkans.
Javier E

China's Swift Trains Are a Boon to Development, but a Costly One - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation — though on a much faster construction timetable and at significantly higher travel speeds than anything envisioned by the Eisenhower administration.
  • China’s manufacturing might and global export machine are likely to grow more powerful as 200-mile-an-hour trains link cities and provinces that were previously as much as 24 hours by road or rail from the entrepreneurial seacoast.
  • high-speed trains were making it more convenient to base businesses here in Hunan Province. Populous Hunan has long provided labor to the factories of the east, but its mountains have tended to isolate it from the economic mainstream.
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  • Around China, real estate prices and investment have surged in the more than 200 inland cities that have already been connected by high-speed rail in the last three years. Businesses are flocking to these cities, now just a few hours by bullet train from China’s busiest and most international metropolises.
  • the tonnage hauled by China’s rail system increased in 2010 by an amount equaling the entire freight carried last year by the combined rail systems of Britain, France, Germany and Poland, according to the World Bank.
  • Even at the initial speeds, they will take less than five hours to cover a distance comparable to New York to Atlanta — which requires nearly 18 hours on Amtrak.
Javier E

Building the First Slavery Museum in America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • As a descendant of Irish laborers, he has no direct ties to slaveholders; still, in a departure from the views held by many Southern whites, Cummings considered the issue a personal one. “If ‘guilt’ is the best word to use, then yes, I feel guilt,” he said. “I mean, you start understanding that the wealth of this part of the world — wealth that has benefited me — was created by some half a million black people who just passed us by. How is it that we don’t acknowledge this?”
  • the German Coast Uprising, an event rarely mentioned in American history books. In January 1811, at least 125 slaves walked off their plantations and, dressed in makeshift military garb, began marching in revolt along River Road toward New Orleans. (The area was then called the German Coast for the high number of German immigrants, like the Haydels.) The slaves were suppressed by militias after two days, with about 95 killed, some during fighting and some after the show trials that followed. As a warning to other slaves, dozens were decapitated, their heads placed on spikes along River Road and in what is now Jackson Square in the French Quarter.
  • just in case you’re worried about people getting distracted by the pretty house over there, the last thing you’ll see before leaving here will be 60 beheaded slaves.”
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  • “It is disturbing,” Cummings said as he pulled out past Whitney’s gate. “But you know what else? It happened. It happened right here on this road.”
  • “If the Germans built a museum dedicated to American slavery before one about their own Holocaust, you’d think they were trying to hide something. As Americans, we haven’t yet figured out how to come to terms with slavery. To some, it’s ancient history. To others, it’s history that isn’t quite history.”
  • Next year, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to be dedicated in Washington as part of the Smithsonian Institution, a project supported by $250 million in federal funding; exhibits on slavery will stand alongside those containing a trumpet played by Louis Armstrong and boxing gloves worn by Muhammad Ali.
  • “It has to be said that the end note in most of these museums is that civil rights triumphs and America is wonderful,” says Paul Finkelman, a historian who focuses on slavery and the law. “We are a nation that has always readily embraced the good of the past and discarded the bad. This does not always lead to the most productive of dialogues on matters that deserve and require them.”
  • What makes slavery so difficult to think about, from the vantage point of history, is that it was both at odds with America’s founding values — freedom, liberty, democracy — and critical to how they flourished.
  • created equal” was drafted by men who were afforded the time to debate its language because the land that enriched many of them was tended to by slaves. The White House and the Capitol were built, in part, by slaves. The economy of early America, responsible for the nation’s swift rise and sustained power, would not have been possible without slavery.
  • “Slavery gets understood as a kind of prehistory to freedom rather than what it really is: the foundation for a country where white supremacy was predicated upon African-American exploitation,” says Walter Johnson, a Harvard professor. “This is still, in many respects, the America of 2015.”
  • “If one word comes to mind to summarize what is in John’s head in doing this,” Seck said, “that word would be ‘reparations.’ Real reparations. He feels there is something to be done in this country to make changes.”
  • People have tried to do a museum like this for years, and I’m still stunned that this guy made it happen,” he said afterward. “There I was, coming down to talk about how in trying to tell the story, it’s often one step forward and two steps back, and boom, here’s the Whitney.” Holloway was particularly taken by the museum’s subversive approach. “Having been on a number of tours where the entire focus is on the Big House, the way they’ve turned the script inside out is a brilliant slipping of the skirt,” he said. “The mad genius of the whole thing is really resonant. Is it an art gallery? A plantation tour? A museum? It’s almost this astonishing piece of performance art, and as great art does, it makes you stop and wonder.”
aqconces

How the Monuments Men Saved Italy's Treasures | History | Smithsonian - 0 views

  • As Allied Forces fought the Nazis for control of Europe, an unlikely unit of American and British art experts waged a shadow campaign
  • It was the fall of 1943. A couple of months earlier, the Sicilian landings of July 10 had marked the beginning of the Allied Italian campaign.
  • The idea of safeguarding European art from damage was unprecedented in modern warfare.
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  • The brainchild of experts associated with American museums, the concept was embraced by President Roosevelt, who established the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas.
  • The commission assisted the War Department by providing maps of European cities and towns where significant monuments and religious sites were highlighted, to be used by bombing crews and commanders when planning operations.
  • In Britain, Prime Minister Churchill approved a parallel committee in the spring of 1944. Like all sections of the Allied military government, the MFAA would be composed nearly equally of American and British officers.
  • The commission selected a few enlisted men to serve in Italy with the Allied armies—MFAA ranks would increase to more than 80 as the war progressed across Europe and reached France, Austria and Germany—and charged them to report on and bring first aid to damaged buildings and art treasures, and indoctrinate troops on the cultural heritage of Italy.
  • The Italian campaign, predicted to be swift by Allied commanders, turned into a 22-month slog. The whole of Italy became a battlefield.
  • In Sicily, Monuments Officers encountered utter destruction in the main coastal towns, while the interior of the island, and its ancient Greek temples, were unscathed.
  • In December 1943, after repeated reports of Allied soldiers’ vandalism reached Supreme Headquarters, General Eisenhower addressed a letter to all Allied commanders. He warned his men not to use “the term ‘military necessity’...where it would be more truthful to speak of military convenience or even personal convenience.” Military necessity, Eisenhower insisted, should not “cloak slackness or indifference.”
redavistinnell

Pakistan attack: Gunmen kill 19 at Bacha Khan University - BBC News - 0 views

  • Pakistan attack: Gunmen kill 19 at Bacha Khan University
  • One Pakistani Taliban commander said the group had carried out the assault, but its main spokesman denied this.The group killed 130 students at a school in the city of Peshawar, 50km (30 miles) from Charsadda, in 2014.
  • The attackers struck at about 09:30 local time (04:30 GMT), apparently climbing over a back wall under cover of the thick winter fog.
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  • One student told television reporters he was in class when he heard gunshots: "We saw three terrorists shouting, 'God is great!' and rushing towards the stairs of our department.
  • Reports say a chemistry lecturer, named by media as Syed Hamid Husain, shot back at the gunmen to allow his students to flee, before he was killed.
  • "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall."
  • The victims - mostly male students - were shot in the head or chest. Seventeen people were injured. At least one security guard also died.
  • The attack is reminiscent of the December 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar in which more than 150 people, mostly schoolboys, were killed. But damage to life and property this time has been much less, mainly due to swift action by the local police, but also because of the fact that the university had its own team of more than 50 trained security guards on duty who first confronted the attackers.
  • A senior Taliban commander, Umar Mansoor, told the media the attack was in response to a military offensive against militant strongholds. He said four suicide attackers had carried out the attack.
  • There is a symbolic value attached to Bacha Khan University as it is named after a Pashtun nationalist leader who believed in non-violent struggle, says BBC Urdu's Asad Ali Chaudry.
alexdeltufo

Fascism's nascent comeback in Europe - The Boston Globe - 0 views

  • Katidis is a reflection of a troubling global trend: the rise of neo-fascist politics amid the economic tumult in Europe.
  • The austerity measures enacted in response to the Greek economic crisis have propelled the rise of right-wing politics; nationalist groups are gaining footholds throughout the country.
  • While political distress causes people to leave their homelands, economic distress causes them to turn their frustration on their newest neighbors.
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  • and shares a porous border with Turkey. The mass migration of refugees from Africa and the Middle East
  • The far-right parties prey (as they always do) on young people, unemployed and energetic, who are convinced that their societies are collapsing at just the moment that they themselves are reaching maturity
  • Economists tend to view Europe’s woes solely in fiscal terms, which means they too easily ignore the social impact of austerity measures. And nothing is more social than sports.
  • Greece’s soccer federation declared in announcing the end of his career.
  • Katidis now claims that he is just a stupid kid and that he had no idea what, in fact, he was doing.
  • shirtless and covered in tattoos, delivers the fascist salute while an older gentleman tries to bring his hand down.
  • Back in 2005, an Italian player was banned for only one game after delivering a similar salute.
  • The traditional notion of sports as a safe haven for people of all backgrounds, a level playing field, is lost if there is any institutional tolerance of racism.
  • The most recognized game in the world is struggling under a corrosive narrative.
  • It can’t stop the Syrian civil war or Africa’s poverty. But in one swift and conclusive move, it took a stand against glorifying the worst of mankind.
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    Juliette Kayyem 
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