Now no one is alive who served in the trenches or on a dreadnought, and the reliance is entirely upon documents, there can be, paradoxically, far more rigour in the analysis, as sources are tested against each other, and the unreliability of active memory ceases to intrude.
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Simon Heffer Battles Historians about the First World War | New Republic - 0 views
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Few historians have the range of specialisms needed, at least in the depth to which each is required, to tell the whole story,
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First, an understanding of the history of power, international relations since (at least) the Congress of Berlin and of European diplomacy is required to illuminate the catastrophe of August 1914.
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One also requires
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knowledge of the political heritage and divisions in certain countries that played a leading role in the drama
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The historiography of the war began when the war did. On the most basic level there was a running commentary in the press. Further up the scale of debate and analysis, Oxford University Press quickly published Why We Are At War
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there is the question of life away from the front. The political pressures and civilian unrest that led to the dissolution of first the Romanov, and then the Hohenzollern, the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires in 1917-18 say as much about the effect of the war and its pervasive influence in the ensuing decades as the final outcome itself.
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Second, one needs the skills of the advanced military historian not simply to outline strategy and tactics after war breaks out, and to recount the movements of troops and the joining of battle, but also to link these with the political direction (or, sometimes, lack of it) of the chancelleries of Europ
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The book went through several editions in the first few months of the conflict as governments made available correspondence and documents that presented each nation’s justification for its course of action – Britain’s Blue Book, the German White Book, the Russian Orange Book and the Belgian Grey Book.
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Of the general histories still read today the first truly rigorous one that probed more deeply was Captain Basil Liddell Hart’s. He was a veteran of the Somme; his The Real War was published in 1930 and is still in print today under the title History of the First World War.
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Wars are fought in cabinet rooms as well as on battlefields, and Repington’s eyewitness accounts of both make his book an essential source today. He was also the man who first used the term “the First World War”, in September 1918: not so much to coin a phrase to describe a conflict involving international empires and, since the previous year, America, but to warn that there might one day be a second one.
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The modern school of First World War history has its origins in the 1960s, at around the time of the 50th anniversary of the conflict. It is from this time onwards that popular history – that is, books written with the intention of being read by an intelligent general public, rather than just a small circle of elevated academics – begins to evolve to its present sophisticated state, and standards of scholarship rise considerably
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the new vogue for popular history of the First World War began with a book that displays none of these qualities – Alan Clark’s The Donkeys, published in 1961.
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Sir Michael Howard called it “worthless” as history because of its “slovenly scholarship”. Unlike later historians, Clark did not attempt to explore whether there might be two sides to the story of apparently weak British generalship.
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The book is a clever piece of propaganda and manipulation of (usually) the truth, and its revisionism created an entirely new view of the war and how it was fought. It is, however, a view that more reputable historians have sought to correct for the past half-century.
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The BBC’s landmark documentary series of 1964, entitled The Great War, stimulated great interest in the subject, not least because of the realisation that the generation that survived it was beginning to die. The series filmed numerous veterans and prompted a vogue for oral history; the Imperial War Museum undertook an enormous, and hugely valuable, project. For the rest of that generation’s life oral history was given more emphasis than documentary records
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In America, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August had appeared in 1962. George Malcolm Thomson covered similar ground in his highly acclaimed The Twelve Days, published in 1964, a detailed account of the diplomatic activity between 24 July and 4 August 1914.
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A J P Taylor, the highest-profile historian of the time, published in 1969 War by Timetable, which argued that the mobilisation timetables of all the great powers – whose generals had prided themselves on being able to mobilise faster than their potential enemies – led to an inevitable drift towards a war no one actually wanted.
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led to the birth of the two rival schools of thought that have dominated the study of the war in recent years: one that says Germany was hell-bent on world domination, the other that says the war happened by accident.
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In 1998 two serious British historians of different generations published authoritative histories of the conflict. Sir John Keegan’s The First World Warwas based almost entirely on secondary sources, but written with a measured expertise that made it the perfect entry-level guide to the fighting, taking into account almost all of the scholarship since 1914
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Professor Niall Ferguson’sThe Pity of War was a different beast; a more political book, making greater use of primary sources, and offering a more controversial judgement: that the kaiser had not wanted war, and Britain’s security did not rely on Germany’s defeat.
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The next great landmark of British war studies – and in one respect the most frustrating – was the first volume of Sir Hew Strachan’s The First World War, published in 2001
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The anniversary has prompted not just more publications, but also a renewed argument about the necessity of fighting such a horrendous conflict.
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In a magisterial review in the Times Literary Supplement last autumn of Sir Max’s and two other books – Professor Margaret MacMillan’s bizarrely titled but widely acclaimed The War That Ended Peace and Brigadier Allan Mallinson’s 1914: Fight the Good Fight – William Philpott, professor of the history of warfare in the world-renowned war studies department at King’s College London, drew some distinctions between rigorous and populist histor
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Of all the recent works of history, one stands far above all others, and should be regarded as an indispensable read for anyone who wishes to understand why the war happened: Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers, published in 2012
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relying on a grasp of the main languages involved and a serious study of foreign archives, Clark gets to the heart of the two principal questions: why Gavrilo Princip felt moved to shoot Franz Ferdinand and his wife when they went to Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, and why the ensuing quarrel could not be contained to one between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. After much inquiry, presentation of evidence and discussion, he reaches a judgement: that the kaiser didn’t want war, and that a war occurred was largely down to the bellicosity, incompetence and weaknesses of others.
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I suspect that Clark’s view will gain more adherents, not least as a more nuanced and thoughtful understanding of this abominable conflict becomes more possible now that those who remember it are dead
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Brexit: What is the Withdrawal Agreement Bill and why is it so controversial? - CNN - 0 views
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We're in the Brexit endgame -- or so Boris Johnson hopes.
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By Thursday evening, the British Prime Minister intends to have done the seemingly impossible and passed a Brexit deal.But whether he is able to do that depends on a series of crucial votes by lawmakers on his Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB).
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But the government's efforts to force it through in three days are proving controversial, and the bill could be picked apart and reshaped by lawmakers even if it succeeds in its initial vote on Tuesday.
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The deal looked similar to the one previously negotiated by his predecessor Theresa May, with one big difference: Johnson's pact strips out May's hated Northern Irish backstop mechanism for a customs border in the Irish sea -- something May said she would never agree to.
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Johnson is desperate to stick to his promise that the UK will leave the EU on October 31, but he can only achieve that with a rapidly accelerated timetable.
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But that timeframe for such a lengthy and significant bill is causing anger on the opposition backbenches."Issues like this need to be properly debated not rushed through. Government is storing up very serious future problems by the way it is trying to implement this," Labour MP Yvette Cooper tweeted.
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Ken Clarke, a former Conservative minister turned independent whose vote could be crucial, added: "If the Government is for some reason insistent on dashing for this completely silly and irrelevant date which it keeps staking its fate on then give some proper time for debate. Two-and-a-bit days of ordinary parliamentary hours is plainly quite insufficient."
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The Labour Party is arguing that Johnson is running from proper parliamentary scrutiny. Its official position is to vote down both the bill and his timetable, but rebel MPs within the party could swing the votes towards Johnson.
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It's looking like the Prime Minister could squeak the WAB through Parliament on Tuesday evening.A CNN analysis showed that he could win by around three to five votes, with just enough Labour rebels and independents joining his side.
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Alternatively, the Prime Minister could abandon the legislation altogether and seek a general election in an effort to resolve the mess.
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'Islamic State' Turning Into a Guerrilla Army, Top General Warns - The Daily Beast - 0 views
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‘Islamic State’ Turning Into a Guerrilla Army, Top General Warns
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The capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq is now under assault. But ISIS isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the terror group is beginning to rebrand itself from a “caliphate” to an insurgency
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It could well mean that there will be no “lasting defeat” of ISIS, even if it loses control of Iraq’s second-largest city, despite Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s claim of such a victory just four days ago
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Fighting that insurgency cost as much as $2 trillion, according to one estimate, and the lives of nearly 5,000 American troops
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And it likely would fall to nascent Iraqi fighters, who just two years ago ditched their weapons and uniforms in Mosul, to repel ISIS and launch a counterinsurgency.
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Volesky warned that such attacks in liberated areas are one reason the U.S. is advising the Iraqi and Kurdish forces charged with liberating Mosul to move deliberately. Fas
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But there are alternatives. Al Qaeda, for example, has embraced local Sunnis, not terrorized them, allowing the group to return to areas and recruit members.
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Iraqi and Kurdish forces are now as far as 20 miles outside Mosul’s city center. The U.S. military has said the operation could last anywhere from weeks to months.
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After its defeat, ISIS said the promised apocalyptic battle would come at a later, unspecified date.
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A series of attacks last week killed at least 55 people in Baghdad. And in July, at least 324 people died when a truck bomb struck a popular shopping area in central Baghdad, the deadliest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.
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But after two years of brutal reign, ISIS may not be able to attract Sunnis to its insurgency. Not after the terror group that robbed their cities, beheaded their citizens, and made crimes of smoking, shaving, and playing music.
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But that timetable could shift. In the last week, ISIS has lost a number of key cities in a matter of days. And in those battles, the group appears to be on the defensive before abandoning territory altogether. Most notably, ISIS lost the Syrian city of
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And it is possible that ISIS, in taking credit for bombings, is exploiting the frustration of other groups seeking to upend the current Iraqi government.
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Or just as likely, the U.S. military is wrong. After all, last year, U.S. commanders forecasted an ISIS expansion in Libya, which instead flailed
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When Finland's Teachers Work in America's Schools - The Atlantic - 0 views
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When Finnish Teachers Work in America’s Public Schools
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Kristiina Chartouni, a veteran Finnish educator who began teaching American high-school students this autumn, said in an email. “I am supposedly doing what I love, but I don't recognize this profession as the one that I fell in love with in Finland.”
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In Tennessee, Chartouni has encountered a different teaching environment from the one she was used to in her Nordic homeland—one in which she feels like she’s “under a microscope.”
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Chartouni misses that feeling of being trusted as a professional in Finland. There, after receiving her teaching timetable at the start of each school year, she would be given the freedom to prepare curriculum-aligned lessons, which matched her preferences and teaching style.
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In general, U.S. public-school teachers report that they have the least amount of control over two particular areas of teaching: “selecting textbooks and other classroom materials” and “selecting content, topics, and skills to be taught.
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Marc Tucker, the president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, suggested to me that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which he called “the inauguration of [America’s] accountability movement,” significantly affected how U.S. public-school teachers perceived their level of autonomy.
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Under NCLB, America’s public schools needed to make adequate yearly progress, decided in large part by student performance on state standardized tests, or face serious consequences, such as school closures.
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As a public-school educator in Tennessee, Chartouni is seeing how some accountability measures—ones that are unobserved in Finnish schools—have reduced her level of professional freedom.
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” So, occasionally, Chartouni decides to assign easy bell work as she greets her exhausted students: “sit down, relax, and breathe.” (In Finland, students and teachers typically have a 15-minute break built-into every classroom hour.)
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She described it as a rote job where she follows a curriculum she didn’t develop herself, keeps a principal-dictated schedule, and sits in meetings where details aren’t debated.
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“I feel rushed, nothing gets done properly; there is very little joy, and no time for reflection or creative thinking (in order to create meaningful activities for students).”
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“And the countries that give [teachers] more autonomy successfully are countries that have made an enormous investment in changing the pool from which they are selecting their teachers, then they make a much bigger investment than we do in the education of their future teachers, then they make a much bigger investment in the support of those teachers once they become teachers.
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Farhad and Mike Discuss the Apple Case and a Go-Playing Computer Program - The New York... - 0 views
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The program is a blend of deep learning and Monte Carlo algorithms, meaning it is both good at recognizing patterns and has the ability to exhaustively search vast libraries of possible moves.
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the timetable for computing dominance of Go has been moved up roughly a decade from when it had been expected. That’s largely because the new ability to blend pattern recognition algorithms and vast data sets has been yielding spectacular results in the last half-decade. It’s like computer scientists have found a powerful new hammer, and they’re using it to pound lots of different nails
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The Google program combines two types of algorithms. One is a machine learning algorithm, which does an extremely good job of recognizing patterns based on being trained on a vast set of examples. So it is likely to have seen almost any move that a human could make, and also know which responses are better ones.
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A second type of algorithm can also see the consequences of particular moves far, far in advance of the game by playing millions and millions or perhaps even billions of combinations of moves. In contrast, human Go experts have their experience to rely on, but it is fuzzy by comparison. Think of this as an intellectual version of John Henry and the jackhammer.
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Palestinians Make a Surprise Move, and Mideast Talks Falter - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...middle-east-peace-talks.html
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Surprising the United States and Israel, the Palestinian leadership formally submitted applications on Wednesday to join 15 international agencies, leaving the troubled Middle East talks brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry on the verge of breakdown.
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relayed to the appropriate body for each of the 15 treaties and conventions the Palestinians want to join, adding that there is “a whole procedure involved” in examining the documents. “You basically submit that you want to accede and then it goes to the depository and there’s a process of review,” Ms. Ramming said. “To say this takes effect tomorrow, that’s a bit misleading.”
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In that planned deal, the United States would release from prison Jonathan J. Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel more than 25 years ago, while Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and slow construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.Mr. Abbas, who had vowed not to seek membership in international bodies until the April 29 expiration of the talks that Mr. Kerry started last summer, said he was taking this course because Israel had failed to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners.
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“We waited three days, from March 29 until April 1, to give American diplomacy a chance and to give the Israelis a chance,” Mr. Shtayyeh said.
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“We do not want to use this right against anybody or to confront anybody,” he said as he signed the membership applications live on Palestinian television. “We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for a solution, this becomes our right.”
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American officials, while rattled, said the Palestinians appeared to be using leverage against Israel rather than trying to scuttle the negotiations.
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The United States voted against the Palestinians’ 2012 bid in the United Nations General Assembly, and it blocked a similar effort in 2011 at the Security Council, arguing that negotiations with Israel were the only path to peace and statehood.
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While the Palestinians’ pursuit of the international route is widely viewed as a poison pill for the peace talks, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Kerry held out hope on Tuesday night that they could still be salvaged. The agencies Mr. Abbas moved to join include the Geneva and Vienna Conventions and those dealing with women’s and children’s rights.
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While Middle East analysts widely praised Mr. Kerry’s determination, many thought he was on a fool’s errand. He long ago abandoned his original goal of achieving a final-status agreement within nine months, and in recent weeks he even de-emphasized his proposed framework of core principles for a deal, focusing instead on merely extending the timetable.
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In addition, Israel would promise to “show restraint” in settlement construction, according to an official involved in the negotiations, by not starting new government housing projects in the West Bank. Projects underway would be allowed to continue, the official said, and East Jerusalem would not be included.
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History News Network | Woodrow Wilson's Blunders as a Wartime President - 0 views
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Woodrow Wilson’s presidential leadership was often egregious. His frequent failure to master or even to employ the most rudimentary forms of power orchestration amounted to strategic incompetence. The unhappy sequence of blunders that fed upon each other can be traced to the early months of 1917
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This sort of behavior was increasingly typical for Wilson: inattention to power orchestration, neglect of strategy, obliviousness to opportunities for leverage. Instead, Wilson succumbed increasingly to the illusion that noble ideals expressed in eloquent words would sway the hearts and minds of the people of the world in a manner which — when combined with the providence of God — would force the leaders of other nations to do the right thing.
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in April 1917. Wilson’s adviser, Col. House, requested copies of their pre-existing understandings of war aims and territorial settlements. The British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, provided them. But in the opinion of Wilson scholar Arthur S. Link — editor of the Papers of Woodrow Wilson — Wilson never even bothered to read these treaties
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The war effort itself went badly during 1917. Wilson tapped General John J. Pershing to command the American Expeditionary Force, but he gave him complete autonomy — unlike war leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who supervised their generals closely and played an active role in formulating strategy
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Wilson, after declaring that the war should “make the world safe for democracy,” became complicit in one of the worst governmental assaults upon freedom of speech in American history, via the Espionage Act of 1917, and the Sedition Act of 1918.
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In the autumn of 1917, as German victory approached on the eastern front, Wilson sent Col. House to discuss war aims with the British and the French. The timing could not have been worse: American troops had not taken part in any fighting and Gen. Pershing was completely noncommittal as to when they would be ready for battle.
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The British and the French knew that within a few months the Germans would be able to shift massive numbers of troops to the western front for the knock-out blow in France. They needed troops from the United States right away. Wilson refused to order Pershing to speed up his timetable. Not surprisingly, the British and the French refused to agree to the principle of a non-vindictive peace.
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in January 1918, with American influence at low ebb, he and House created his soon-to-be famous “Fourteen Points.” These principles for a peace settlement were composed by these two men in total secrecy. No members of Wilson’s cabinet were consulted, no members of Congress were consulted, no foreign heads of state or foreign ministers were consulted.
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a League of Nations, the Fourteenth Point of Wilson’s manifesto, was supported by a great many influential people on both sides of the Atlantic. Again and again, such people reached out to Wilson in 1918 to offer their assistance. Wilson spurned them.
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The British leaders, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau, were beside themselves with frustration and fury as Pershing committed only minimal numbers of American troops to battle and Wilson refused to order his commander to increase the American effort.
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He said that “the return of a Republican majority to either House of the Congress would . . . certainly be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership.” And so, by his very own proclamation, he stood repudiated, for the Republicans captured both houses of Congress. As usual, he had not taken time to engage in any worst-case contingency planning
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What was wrong? There is reason to believe that the medical theorists may well be correct — that for more than a year (and perhaps for several years) before the stroke of October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered from cerebro-vascular degeneration that led to episodic dementia.
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As the German position fell apart in the fall of 1918, Wilson botched the negotiations for the armistice. As usual, he sent Col. House as his representative and he gave him no written instructions at all except to emphasize his own commitment to freedom of the seas and the other principles set forth within the Fourteen Points. And so as House obsessed about freedom of the seas, harsh armistice terms were imposed upon the Germans
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BBC News - Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW - 0 views
www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24754460
policy history politics crisis bbc news syria chemical weapons equipment economic
shared by julia rhodes on 01 Nov 13
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31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad
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Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.
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nspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas.
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"I hope those who have always thought of us negatively will change their minds and understand that Syria was, is, and will be always a constructive partner," Mr Mekdad told our correspondent
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Mr Countryman, the assistant secretary for international security and non-proliferation, told US lawmakers that "our target dates are ambitious but they are achievable".
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In a separate development, a large explosion at a Syrian army base has been reported outside the coastal city of Latakia. A White House official told the BBC Israeli planes carried out the attack, saying he believed the intended target was Russian missiles. Separately, a US security official said Russian-made SA-125 missiles had been targeted, according to the Associated Press news agency.
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Israel is believed to have targeted the same base in July and is concerned that some weapons in Syria are being moved to Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon.
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Mr Smith said that verifying the destruction of Syria's weapons production capability had been a "particularly challenging job" because it had to be done in the midst of a conflict, with a tight deadline
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The first step is for the weapons watchdog and the Syrian government to agree a timetable for the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile - this should be done within the next two weeks
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The US says more than 1,400 people were killed when government forces used a nerve agent to attack Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus on 21 August. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies have said rebel groups were responsible
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China's Swift Trains Are a Boon to Development, but a Costly One - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Iran demands apology after detaining US navy boat crews for 'violating' Gulf waters | W... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...two-us-navy-ships-persian-gulf
iran apology navy boat gulf waters detainment world news the guardian politics US crisis obama
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Iran has said the US should apologise after the crews of two US Navy boats were detained by Revolutionary Guards for “violating” Iran’s waters in the Gulf.
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Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said in an interview broadcast live on state television that foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had taken a “firm stance” on the issue when contacting US secretary of state John Kerry.
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Earlier, US officials said they had received assurances from Tehran that the crew of two small US navy ships in Iranian custody would soon be allowed to continue their journey. Fadavi was quoted by the Tasnim news agency as saying “The final order will be issued soon and they will probably be released.”
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Fadavi blamed the incident on the American navigation system. “Investigation shows that [the] entry of American sailors into Iran’s territorial waters was due to mechanical problems in their navigation system and that issue is being resolved,” he said.
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The two small craft briefly went missing on Tuesday after transiting the Gulf from Kuwait to Bahrain. The Pentagon said the crews ended up in Iranian custody, sparking immediate fears of escalating tensions during a week when Iran is expected to receive the first wave of sanctions relief from the landmark nuclear accords.
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Plans were in place for Iran to return the crew to a US Navy vessel in international waters early on Wednesday, during daylight hours when it would be safer, a US defence official told the Associated Press. The exchange was reportedly set for 10.30am local time (7am GMT), but is yet to have happened.
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Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that 10 Americans – including one woman – were arrested by the naval forces of the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guards after entering Iranian waters.
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Fars said the two American boats were 2km inside Iranian waters when they were detained close to Farsi island, which is home to a Revolutionary Guards base.
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The agency claimed GPS data on the American ships – reported to be on a training mission – also indicated they were on the Iranian side. Pentagon officials told the Associated Press the two boats drifted into Iranian waters after facing mechanical problems. Fars reported the Americans were carrying semi-heavy weaponry on board their craft.
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The episode comes amid heightened regional tensions, and only hours before Barack Obama was set to deliver his final State of the Union address.
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Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio reacted swiftly to the reports, calling on Iran to release the US sailors and navy boats immediately. “If they are not immediately released, and the boats are not immediately released, then we know something else is at play here,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.
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Paul Ryan, House speaker and the top Republican in Washington, withheld judgment, saying in a statement: “Our top priority is the safety and security of our servicemembers detained by Iran.
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A US defense department official played down the incident, saying the Iranians had sent indications of the “safety and wellbeing” of the sailors.
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Pentagon and Navy officials did not identify the naval craft, the number of detained sailors, their mission or a timetable for their release.
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards patrol Iranian waters in the Gulf, especially near the strait of Hormuz, a vital passageway where a fifth of the world’s oil passes in tankers.
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Transitional Brexit deal must be agreed this year, City warns government | Politics | T... - 0 views
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The City of London has warned that businesses will start activating Brexit contingency plans unless there is a transitional deal by the end of 2017, as Philip Hammond tried to calm fears that a final agreement may not be reached for another year.
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In a letter to Hammond before next month’s budget, McGuinness said the UK was facing a “historically defining moment” and warned that the timetable for business to prepare for transition was “tightening very rapidly”.
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“We must have agreement with the EU on transition before the end of 2017,” she added.
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The City of London Corporation added its warning on Wednesday in McGuinness’s letter to the chancellor. She said some businesses were already activating contingency plans and more would do so without more substance from the UK and EU on the length and nature of a transitional period to smooth the path to a future relationship after Brexit in March 2019.
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John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said: “The prime minister yesterday sowed more confusion in her statement, giving the impression that a transition is to be negotiated only after we have settled on what the future partnership will be. Businesses cannot wait. They need to plan now. Jobs are in jeopardy now.
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What the prime minister said is that the implementation period is about building a bridge and obviously in order to do that you need to know what the future relationship is going to look like. But what we would also say is that in terms of the broad outline of an implementation period, we believe that we can agree that quickly.
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Size and duration of empires growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 b.c. - ScienceDirect - 0 views
www.sciencedirect.com/...0049089X78900108
empire duration comparison timetable statistics history culture
shared by Javier E on 02 Mar 19
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Area changes of about 30 best known empires and states
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Size-time integral, maximum stable size, adulthood date, and duration are defined operationally and are listed for 20 empires.
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A criterion is given for distinctness of successive empires.
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A world-wide territorial concentration index is tabulated. It increases during the period considered from 0.08 to 1.4% of the world dry land area
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BBC - Future - The lifespans of ancient civilisations - 0 views
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In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure
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Given this definition, all empires are civilisations, but not all civilisations are empires.
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Growing List of Countries Agree on Net-Zero Emissions Goal | Time - 0 views
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As lawmakers around the world debate how best to fight climate change, one goal is rapidly becoming standard: net-zero emissions by 2050.
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That means that greenhouse gases would be dramatically reduced — most likely by using a combination of switching from coal and gas to wind and solar, becoming more energy-efficient and putting taxes or fees on carbon — and whatever remains would be offset by planting trees or using budding technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.
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two key problems remain: the worst polluters, including the United States, haven’t yet signed on, and most places still need to figure out the details of how they will reach their goal.
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“We are in a very dangerous position now where action could go forward or backward,” Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare told reporters Wednesday. “The next 12 months or so will really tell.”
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Research from Climate Analytics released in early 2015, for example, suggested that global greenhouse emissions would need to hit zero by 2100 at the latest to have a good chance of keeping temperatures from rising more than 2°C by the end of the century
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“Ambitious plans are very good but not enough,” says Niklas Höhne, a founding partner of NewClimate Institute. “They need to be cast in stone with laws and regulation.”
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There’s an even bigger elephant in the room: such bold climate proposals are not on the table for the world’s three biggest emitters, the U.S., China and India
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Global emissions rose last year at the fastest rate in years thanks in large part to a spike in those countries even as emissions fell in the European Union, Japan and elsewhere.
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Prior to Donald Trump’s election, the U.S. federal government had suggested the country could implement policies to reduce emissions 80% by 2050, which would have been a significant move in direction of a net-zero target
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Trump has not only done away with long-term thinking to reduce the country’s emissions but targeted a slew of environmental rules for rollback. Carbon emissions rose last year more than 3% even as cities and states continued their own pushes to reduce emissions.
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China has reversed a ban on the construction of new coal-fired power plants while India is projected to continue to grow its use of that fossil fuel. Others including Brazil and Australia are also backtracking on their climate change commitments.
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White House Economists Warned in 2019 a Pandemic Could Devastate America - The New York... - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-economy-trump.html
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White House economists published a study last September that warned a pandemic disease could kill a half million Americans and devastate the economy.It went unheeded inside the administration.
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In an interview, she said it would encompass school closures, shutting down many businesses and the sort of stay-at-home orders that many, but not all, states have imposed.“What it entails is something as drastic as you can get,”
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Public health threats did not typically hurt the economy, Mr. Philipson said. He suggested the virus would not be nearly as bad as a normal flu season.
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The 2019 study warned otherwise — specifically urging Americans not to conflate the risks of a typical flu and a pandemic.
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The existence of that warning undermines administration officials’ contentions in recent weeks that no one could have seen the virus damaging the economy as it has.
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One of the authors of the study, who has since left the White House, now says it would make sense for the administration to effectively shut down most economic activity for two to eight months to slow the virus.
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Government officials estimated Tuesday that the deadly pathogen could kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans.
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it is unclear how the White House is tallying the potential benefits and costs — in dollar figures and human lives — of competing timetables for action.
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The director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, told ABC News on Sunday that “it could be four weeks, it could be eight weeks” before economic activity resumes. “I say that hopefully,”
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seeks to determine the optimal length of a national suppression of economic activity,
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“I don’t think corona is as big a threat as people make it out to be,” the acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Tomas Philipson, told reporters during a Feb. 18 briefing, on the same day that more than a dozen American cruise ship passengers who had contracted the virus were evacuated home
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In a best-case scenario, Ms. Scherbina concludes, a national suppression of economic activity to flatten the infection curve must last at least seven weeks.
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In a worst case, where the shutdown proves less effective at slowing the rate of new infections, it would be economically optimal to keep the economy shuttered for nearly eight months.
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Suppression efforts inflict considerable damage on the economy, reducing activity by about $36 billion per week, the study estimates. Ms. Scherbina said the optimal durations would remain largely unchanged even if the weekly damage was twice that high.
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But the efforts would save nearly two million lives when compared with a scenario in which the government did nothing to suppress the economy and the spread of the virus
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doing nothing would impose a $13 trillion cost to the economy — equal to about two-thirds of the amount of economic activity that the United States was projected to generate this year
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Ms. Scherbina based her estimates on the models she built when she was a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers and the lead author of the September paper, “Mitigating the Impact of Pandemic Influenza Through Vaccine Innovation,
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The 2019 White House study called for new federal efforts to speed up the time it takes to develop and deploy new vaccines
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At even the highest rates it modeled, the pandemic flu in the exercise was still less contagious and less deadly than epidemiologists now say the coronavirus could be in the United States
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It assigned a value of $12.3 million per life for Americans between the ages of 18 and 49, compared with $5.3 million for those 65 and over.
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Mr. Philipson, whose academic specialty is health economics, was the acting head of the council when the September report was published
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As states grapple with reopening their economies, Trump says Brian Kemp's plan is 'just... - 0 views
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President Donald Trump says he strongly disagrees with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's plan to reopen part of that state's economy, especially by putting beauty salons and other establishments that require close personal contact back in business.
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"It's just too soon," Trump said Wednesday at the daily White House news briefing on coronavirus when asked about Kemp's timetable. "The spas and the beauty parlors and the barber shops ... I love them but they can want a little bit longer, just a little bit, not much, because safety has to predominate."
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"Our next measured step is driven by data and guided by state public health officials. We will continue with this approach to protect the lives -- and livelihoods -- of all Georgians. ... I am confident that business owners who decide to reopen will adhere to Minimum Basic Operations, which prioritize the health and well-being of employees and customers."
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The US has recorded more than 846,000 infections and at least 46,500 deaths.
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About half the states in the country should remain closed until May 25 or later, with Arizona (June 23), South Dakota (June 25), Iowa (June 26), Nebraska (June 30) and North Dakota (July 12) rounding out the bottom of the list.
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South Carolina and Georgia, which are leading the pack to get their economic engines humming again this week, should not open until June 5 and June 19, respectively, according to the model maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. It was updated Tuesday.
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To safely move forward, experts have emphasized the country should be able to track, trace and isolate cases.
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California is averaging 14,500 coronavirus tests a day, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, calling the number "still inadequate."
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One report estimates at least 3,000,000 and up to 30 million tests should be conducted weekly, while the other says the US should be conducting 20 million tests each day.
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Mis-Educating the Young - The New York Times - 0 views
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While in school, her thinking was station to station: take that test, apply to that college, aim for a degree. But in young adulthood, there are no more stations. Everything is open seas. Your main problems are not about the assignment right in front of you; they are about the horizon far away. What should you be steering toward? It requires an entirely different set of navigational skills.
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one of the oddest phenomena of modern life. Childhood is more structured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the meritocracy spits people out into a young adulthood that is less structured than it has ever been.
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There used to be certain milestones that young adults were directed toward by age 27: leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married, buying a house, having a child. But the information economy has scrambled those timetables. Current 20-somethings are much less likely to do any of those things by 30. They are less likely to be anchored in a political party, church or some other creedal community.
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When I graduated from college there was a finite number of career ladders in front of me: teacher, lawyer, doctor, business. Now college graduates enter a world with four million footstools. There are many more places to perch (a start-up, an NGO, a coffee shop, a consultancy) but few of the footstools pay a sustaining wage, seem connected with the others or lead to a clear ladder of rungs to climb upward.
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People in their 20s seem to be compelled to bounce around more, popping up here and there, quantumlike, with different jobs, living arrangements and partners while hoping that all these diverse experiences magically add up to something.
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Naturally enough, their descriptions of their lives are rife with uncertainty and anxiety
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All the while social media makes the comparison game more intrusive than ever, and nearly everybody feels as if he or she is falling behind.
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And how do we as a society prepare young people for this uncertain phase? We pump them full of vapid but haunting praise about how talented they are and how their future is limitless
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we preach a gospel of autonomy that says all the answers to the deeper questions in life are found by getting in touch with your “true self,” whatever the heck that is.
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Now I think that laissez-faire attitude trivializes the experiences of young adulthood and condescends to the people going through them.
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telling people “30 is the new 20” is completely counterproductive.
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colleges have to do much more to put certain questions on the table, to help students grapple with the coming decade of uncertainty: What does it mean to be an adult today? What are seven or 10 ways people have found purpose in life? How big should I dream or how realistic should I be? What are the criteria we should think about before shacking up? What is the cure for sadness? What do I want and what is truly worth wanting?
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Before, there were social structures that could guide young adults as they gradually figured out the big questions of life. Now, those structures are gone. Young people are confronted by the existential questions right away. They’re going to feel lost if they have no sense of what they’re pointing toward, if they have no vision of the holy grails on the distant shore.
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Culture Clash at a Chinese-Owned Plant in Ohio - The New York Times - 0 views
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Culture Clash at a Chinese-Owned Plant in Ohio
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But now the Chinese were suddenly creating them. More than 1,500 jobs, in fact.
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From 2000 to the first quarter of this year, the Chinese have invested almost $120 billion in the United States, according to the Rhodium Group, which tracks these flows. Nearly half of that amount has come since early 2016, making China one of this country’s largest sources of foreign direct investment during that time.
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The union, which began meeting with workers in 2015, escalated its public efforts in April with a fiery meeting highlighting arbitrarily enforced rules and retaliation against those who speak up.
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The company reached an agreement in March that reduced the amount to $100,000 and required corrective measures.
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In 2014, a Chinese copper tube maker called Golden Dragon opened a plant in Wilcox County, Ala., to Fuyao-esque fanfare, investing more than $100 million to create an anticipated 300 local jobs. By the end of the year, amid complaints about lax safety and low wages, workers narrowly voted to unionize.
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Mr. Vanetti said that Fuyao remained committed to its original four-to-five-year timetable for handing the plant to a predominantly American management corps, and that it recently hired two more American vice presidents.
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Merkel says EU is 'ready to start Brexit negotiations' - BBC News - 0 views
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Merkel says EU is 'ready to start Brexit negotiations'
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The German chancellor said she believed Britain would stick to the timetable, adding the European Union was "ready".
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It is her first comment since Mrs May's Conservative party lost 13 seats.The loss left the Conservatives eight MPs short of a majority in parliament, plunging negotiations into uncertainty. Mrs May called the snap election in order to secure a clear mandate for her vision of Brexit.
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"We want to negotiate quickly, we want to stick to the time plan, and so at this point I don't think there is anything to suggest these negotiations cannot start as was agreed."
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"Maybe, this is a chance that we can come up to a more reasonable Brexit negotiations because in the last time (recently) I really had the feeling that everything was just being very tough and it doesn't make sense to be tough.
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Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, said he wanted discussions to proceed without delay, while Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator for Brexit, said "negotiations should start when UK is ready".