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Javier E

Should we even go there? Historians on comparing fascism to Trumpism | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...nald-trump-historians-trumpism

fascism hitler resistance democracy

shared by Javier E on 03 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • “What are the necessary social and psychological conditions that allow populists of Hitler’s ilk to gain a mass following and attain power?”
  • “There are certain traits you can recognize that Hitler and Trump have in common,” Ullrich says. “I would say the egomania, the total egocentricity of both men, and the inclination to mix lies and truth – that was very characteristic of Hitler.”
  • Like Trump, “Hitler exploited peoples’ feelings of resentment towards the ruling elite.” He also said he would make Germany great again. Ullrich also notes both men’s talent at playing the media, making use of new technology and their propensity for stage effects.
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  • “I think the differences are still greater than the similarities,” he says. “Hitler was not only more intelligent, but craftier. He was not just a powerful orator, but a talented actor who succeeded in winning over various social milieus. So not just the economically threatened lower middle classes which Trump targeted, but also the upper middle classes. Hitler had many supporters in the German aristocracy.”
  • Trump was also democratically elected, while Hitler never had a majority vote. “He was appointed by the president of the German Reich.” Then there’s the fact that Trump does not lead a party “which is unconditionally committed to him”.
  • “A further obvious difference is that Trump doesn’t have a private militia, as Hitler did with the SA, which he used in his first months after coming to power to settle scores with his opponents, like the Communists and Social Democrats. You can’t possibly imagine something similar with Trump – that he’ll be locking Democrats up into concentration camps
  • “Finally, the American constitution is based on a system of checks and balances. It remains to be seen how far Congress will really limit Trump or if, as is feared, he can override it. It was different with Hitler, who, as we know, managed to eliminate all resistance in the shortest space of time and effectively establish himself as an all-powerful dictator. Within a few months, there was effectively no longer any opposition.”
  • “Hitler profited from the fact that his opponents always underestimated him,” Ullrich explains. “His conservative allies in government assumed they could tame or ‘civilise’ him – that once he became chancellor he’d become vernünftig (meaning sensible, reasonable). Very quickly it became clear that was an illusion.”
  • “There were many situations where he could have been stopped. For example in 1923 after the failed Munich putsch – if he’d served his full prison sentence of several years, he wouldn’t have made a political comeback. Instead, he only spent a few months behind bars, [having been released after political pressure] and could rebuild his movement.”
  • The western powers made the same mistake with their appeasement politics, indecision and indulgence. “In the 1930s Hitler strengthened, rather than weakened, his aggressive intentions,” Ullrich says. “So you could learn from this that you have to react faster and much more vigorously than was the case at the time.”
  • llrich also contends that if Hindenburg, the president of the Reich, had allowed Chancellor Brüning, of the Centre party, to remain chancellor to the end of 1934, rather than responding to pressure from conservatives to dismiss him in 1932, “then the peak of the economic crisis would have passed and it would have been very questionable whether Hitler could still have come to power”.
  • At the same time, Hitler’s ascent was no mere fluke. “There were powerful forces in the big industries, but also in the landowning class and the armed forces, which approved of a fascist solution to the crisis.”
  • If fascism “now just means aggressive nationalism, racism, patriarchy and authoritarianism, then maybe it is back on the agenda,” Bosworth continues. But today’s context is fundamentally different
  • Schama is clear: Trump is obviously not Hitler. “But, you know, if you like, he’s an entertainment fascist, which may be less sinister but is actually in the end more dangerous. If you’re not looking for jackboots and swastikas – although swastikas are indeed appearing – there’s a kind of laundry list of things which are truly sinister and authoritarian and not business as usual.”
  • Today’s “alt-right” agitators “live in a neoliberal global order where the slogan, ‘all for the market, nothing outside the market, no one against the market’ is far more unquestionably accepted than the old fascist slogan of ‘all for the state, nothing outside the state, no one against the state’”.
  • Schama also points to deeply worrying messaging, such as “the parallel universe of lies which are habitual, massive, cumulative”; the criminalization of political opponents; the threat to change the libel laws against the press and the demonization of different racial and ethnic groups, going as far as proposing a Muslim registry.
  • “What is that if it’s not racially authoritarian?” asks Schama. “If you want to call it fascist, fine. I don’t really care if it’s called that or not. It’s authoritarian, you know, ferociously authoritarian.”
  • Don’t ignore what people vote fo
  • f you’re of German heritage, it’s hard to understand how so many people could have bought Mein Kampf and gone on to vote for Hitler. Maybe no one really read it, or got beyond the first few pages of bluster, or took antisemitism seriously, you tell yourself. “Or they liked what he said,
  • “I think one of the mistakes this time around would be not to think that the people who voted for Trump were serious. They may have been serious for different reasons, but it would be a big mistake not to try and figure out what their reasons were.
  • Hitler presented himself as a “messiah” offering the public “salvation”, Ullrich points out. With austerity and hostility to the EU and to immigrants riding high, there is fertile ground for European populists next year to seduce with equally simplistic, sweeping “solutions”.
  • The problem, in Mazower’s view, is that establishment politicians currently have no response
  • “The Gestapo was piddling compared with the size and reach of surveillance equipment and operations today,
  • “Very belatedly, everyone is waking up to the fact that there was a general assumption that no government in the west would fall into the wrong hands, that it was safe to acquiesce in this huge expansion of surveillance capabilities, and the debate wasn’t as vigorous as it could have been.”
  • “Now, there is a lot of discussion about allowing this kind of surveillance apparatus in the wrong hands,” he adds. “And we’ve woken up to this a bit late in the day.”
  • Ullrich calls crises, “the elixir of rightwing populists”, and urges that politicians “do everything they can to correct the inequalities and social injustice which have arisen in the course of extreme financial capitalism in western countries”
  • Jane Caplan, a history professor at Oxford University who has written about Trump and fascism, highlights the want of “dissenting voices against marketisation and neoliberalism
  • The failure to resist the incursion of the market as the only criterion for political utility, or economic utility, has been pretty comprehensive.
  • Paranoia, bullying and intimidation are a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. They are also alive and well in our culture today, where online trolls, violent thugs at rallies, threats of expensive libel action and of course terrorist acts are equally effective in getting individuals and the press to self-censor.
Javier E

New Statesman - The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...world-secular-means-god

secularism postmodernism dogmatism truth love

shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Art & Design Books Film Ideas Music & Performance TV & Radio Food & Drink Blog Return to: Home | Culture | Books The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now By George Levine Reviewed by Terry Eagleton - 22 June 2011 82 comments Print version Email a friend Listen RSS Misunderstanding what it means to be secular.
  • Societies become truly secular not when they dispense with religion but when they are no longer greatly agitated by it. It is when religious faith ceases to be a vital part of the public sphere
  • Christianity is certainly other-worldly, and so is any reasonably sensitive soul who has been reading the newspapers. The Christian gospel looks to a future transformation of the appalling mess we see around us into a community of justice and friendship, a change so deep-seated and indescribable as to make Lenin look like a Lib Dem.“This [world] is our home," Levine comments. If he really feels at home in this crucifying set-up, one might humbly suggest that he shouldn't. Christians and political radicals certainly don't.
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  • None of these writers points out that if Christianity is true, then it is all up with us. We would then have to face the deeply disagreeable truth that the only authentic life is one that springs from a self-dispossession so extreme that it is probably beyond our power.
  • Adam Phillips writes suggestively of human helplessness as opposed to the sense of protectedness that religious faith supposedly brings us, without noticing that the signifier of God for the New Testament is the tortured and executed corpse of a suspected political criminal.
  • he suspects that Christian faith is other-worldly in the sense of despising material things. Material reality, in his view, is what art celebrates but religion does not. This is to forget that Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit. It is also to misunderstand the doctrine of Creation
  • What exactly," he enquires, "does the invocation of some supernatural being add?" A Christian might reply that it adds the obligations to give up everything one has, including one's life, if necessary, for the sake of others. And this, to say the least, is highly inconvenient.
  • The Christian paradigm of love, by contrast, is the love of strangers and enemies, not of those we find agreeable. Civilised notions such as mutual sympathy, more's the pity, won't deliver us the world we need.
  • Secularisation is a lot harder than people tend to imagine. The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time. The most successful candidate currently on offer is sport, which, short of providing funeral rites for its spectators, fulfils almost every religious function in the book.
  • If Friedrich Nietzsche was the first sincere atheist, it is because he saw that the Almighty is exceedingly good at disguising Himself as something else, and that much so-called secularisation is accordingly bogus.
  • Postmodernism is perhaps best seen as Nietzsche shorn of the metaphysical baggage. Whereas modernism is still haunted by a God-shaped absence, postmodern culture is too young to remember a time when men and women were anguished by the fading spectres of truth, reality, nature, value, meaning, foundations and the like. For postmodern theory, there never was any truth or meaning in the first place
  • Postmodernism is properly secular, but it pays an immense price for this coming of age - if coming of age it is. It means shelving all the other big questions, too, as hopelessly passé. It also involves the grave error of imagining that all faith or passionate conviction is inci­piently dogmatic. It is not only religious belief to which postmodernism is allergic, but belief as such. Advanced capitalism sees no need for the stuff. It is both politically divisive and commercially unnecessary.
Javier E

English Proficiency Falters Among the French - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ency-falters-among-french.html

English foreign language France international

shared by Javier E on 17 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Marseille’s new Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations opened in June, part of the city’s celebration of its status as this year’s European Capital of Culture.
  • Education First, an international education company, found that while English proficiency among European adults is generally increasing, proficiency in France is both low and declining.
  • According to the third EF English Proficiency Index, released last week, France ranked 35th among 60 nations where English is not the main language. The study put the country’s average English language skills in the “low proficiency” bracket, between China and the United Arab Emirates — and last among European nations.
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  • France was one of only two European countries where proficiency had decreased over the past six years. Norway was the other; but there, proficiency remained at such a high level that the change was insignificant.
  • “English is the de facto language of communication today between people who don’t share a native language,” Ms. Bell. said “Measuring English proficiency is in many ways a proxy measurement of international integration.”
  • the level of English proficiency among French adults suffers both from inadequate teaching at high school level and the reality that — despite fears of French culture’s being overwhelmed by American pop culture, very little English is actually used in everyday life.
  • France’s secondary school system, which has only recently started testing English oral skills as part of the Baccalaureate, is a major reason for poor language skills
  • Unlike its smaller northern European neighbors, France dubs most American films and television shows into French. The top English speakers in continental Europe — Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands — all tend to use subtitling.
  • Turkey, though still a “low proficiency” nation, ranked 41st in the index, was the country showing the biggest improvement in the past six years. EF researchers point to Turkey as a perfect example of economic development and international engagement that go hand-in-hand with English proficiency.
  • “The Middle East and North Africa are the weakest regions in English,” the study said, with Iraq ranked 60th, at the bottom of the list.
  • “Poor English remains one of the key competitive weaknesses of Latin America,” it added, with more than half the countries in the region in the lowest proficiency band.
Alex Trudel

Hope for the best, pre-empt the worst in Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...ddle-east-150603111154290.html

middle east crisis politics US obama culture policy

shared by Alex Trudel on 04 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Opinion
  • We are "winning", he said. The strategy is "working" against ISIL in Syria and Iraq, "politically and militarily".  Therefore, the US is going to double its efforts; it will send more arms to the Iran-supported Haider al-Abbadi government and launch more air strikes.
  • double its e
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  • efforts;
  • The regimes' repression - bloody and sectarian - has created the conditions that nurture, motivate and strengthen extremist groups like ISIL, and pave the way towards uniting the two into one bloody and protracted "civil war" in the whole of Mesopotamia.
  • ISIL is benefiting from the break-up of fragile states, the breakdown of their bankrupt regimes, and the implosion of their societies.
  • ISIL has also benefited from violence becoming the new norm in the Middle East. After millions of casualties, the toll is rising exponentially as countless more meet similar fate, alas.
  • Once it eclipsed al-Qaeda and established itself as the new caliphate with a fixed address at the cradle of the world's civilisation, ISIL became the new magnate for religious extremism.
  • In a region of instability, uncertainty and chaos, ISIL is unmistakably steadfast and clear. It espouses clarity of doctrine (terribly violent jihad), mission (fighting infidels, heretics, and apostates), and clarity of goal (establishment of the caliphate throughout the Muslim world)
  • For all these reasons, I don't share the Obama administration's optimism. In these dark times, optimism entails a large dose of myopia, naivete or cynicism.
grayton downing

BBC News - India and China in border defence agreement - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-asia-india-24633991

india china border policy

shared by grayton downing on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • India and China have signed an agreement on border defence co-operation after a stand-off between their armies in disputed territory earlier this year
  • The agreement was signed during Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Beijing.
  • The two countries disagree over the demarcation of several Himalayan border areas and fought a brief war in 1962. Tensions still flare up from time to time.
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  • "China and India are two old civilisations. Our two peoples have the wisdom and our two governments have the ability to manage our disputes along the border so that it won't affect the overall interests of our bilateral relations," the Chinese leader added.
  • The two countries signed nine agreements in total, including a deal to strengthen co-operation on trans-border rivers and transport. China is already one of India's top trading partners and the Asian neighbours are the world's two most populous countries.
Javier E

China: The debate over universal values | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/17150224

china values universal state freedom western civilization democracy

shared by Javier E on 09 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • recognition of universal values was at the heart of big issues facing China’s development, from urbanisation to the provision of public services and the ownership of state assets. “Universal values tell us that government serves the people, that assets belong to the public and that urbanisation is for the sake of people’s happiness,” he said. Supporters of the “China model”, he added, believe the opposite: that people should obey the government, the state should control assets and the interests of individuals are subordinate to those of local development.
  • conservatives feared that embracing universal values would mean acknowledging the superiority of the West’s political systems.
  • In a veiled demonstration that China has its own values, the authorities in Beijing this week staged the capital’s first large-scale celebrations of Confucius’s birthday (his 2,561st) since Communist Party rule began. Conservatives like to contrast what they see as a Confucian stress on social harmony and moral rectitude with the West’s emphasis on individual rights.
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  • the liberals’ case for Mr Wen, at least, is a strong one. He wrote in 2007 that “science, democracy, rule of law, freedom and human rights are not unique to capitalism, but are values commonly pursued by mankind over a long period of history
  • The government’s first white paper on democracy in China, in 2005, began: “Democracy is an outcome of the development of political civilisation of mankind. It is also the common desire of people all over the world”. A drafter says he now believes those words were “inappropriate”.
Javier E

Alain Finkielkraut : «Au nom de la lutte contre l'islamophobie, on sous-estime la haine des Juifs et de la France» - 1 views

www.lefigaro.fr/...-des-juifs-et-de-la-france.php

israel anti-Semitism Palestine moderate

shared by Javier E on 27 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Dès 1991, le grand orientaliste Bernard Lewis s'inquiétait de voir Israël devenir, sur le modèle du Liban, «une association difficile, une de plus, entre ethnies et groupes religieux en conflit». Et il ajoutait: «les juifs se trouveraient dans la position dominante qu'avaient autrefois les Maronites avec la perspective probable d'un destin à la libanaise en fin de parcours.» Pour empêcher cette prédiction de se réaliser, il serait urgent de faire ce qu'Ariel Sharon, à la fin de sa vie, appelait de «douloureuses concessions territoriales». Si ses successeurs y répugnent, c'est parce qu'ils se défient de leur partenaire, mais c'est surtout parce qu'ils ont peur de leurs propres extrémistes. Ils craignent la guerre civile entre Israéliens qui accompagnerait le démantèlement des implantations de Cisjordanie.
  • Si la civilisation de l'image n'était pas en train de détruire l'intelligence de la guerre, personne ne soutiendrait que les bombardements israéliens visent les civils. Avez-vous oublié Dresde? Quand une aviation surpuissante vise des civils, les morts se comptent par centaines de milliers. Non: les Israéliens préviennent les habitants de Gaza de toutes les manières possibles des bombardements à venir. Et lorsqu' on me dit que ces habitants n'ont nulle part où aller, je réponds que les souterrains de Gaza auraient dû être faits pour eux. Il y a aujourd'hui des pièces bétonnées dans chaque maison d'Israël.
  • Je critique la politique israélienne. Je plaide sans relâche depuis le début des années quatre-vingt pour la solution de deux Etats. Je condamne la poursuite des constructions dans les implantations en Cisjordanie. Je dis que l'intransigeance vis-à-vis du Hamas devrait s'accompagner d'un soutien effectif à l'autorité palestinienne.
Javier E

Economic history: When did globalisation start? | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...economic-history-1

globalization historiography economics economic history

shared by Javier E on 25 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • economic historians reckon the question of whether the benefits of globalisation outweigh the downsides is more complicated than this. For them, the answer depends on when you say the process of globalisation started.
  • it is impossible to say how much of a “good thing” a process is in history without first defining for how long it has been going on.
  • Although Adam Smith himself never used the word, globalisation is a key theme in the Wealth of Nations. His description of economic development has as its underlying principle the integration of markets over time. As the division of labour enables output to expand, the search for specialisation expands trade, and gradually, brings communities from disparate parts of the world together
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  • Smith had a particular example in mind when he talked about market integration between continents: Europe and America.
  • Kevin O’Rourke and Jeffrey Williamson argued in a 2002 paper that globalisation only really began in the nineteenth century when a sudden drop in transport costs allowed the prices of commodities in Europe and Asia to converge
  • But there is one important market that Mssrs O’Rourke and Williamson ignore in their analysis: that for silver. As European currencies were generally based on the value of silver, any change in its value would have had big effects on the European price level.
  • The impact of what historians have called the resulting “price revolution” dramatically changed the face of Europe. Historians attribute everything from the dominance of the Spanish Empire in Europe to the sudden increase in witch hunts around the sixteenth century to the destabilising effects of inflation on European society. And if it were not for the sudden increase of silver imports from Europe to China and India during this period, European inflation would have been much worse than it was. Price rises only stopped in about 1650 when the price of silver coinage in Europe fell to such a low level that it was no longer profitable to import it from the Americas.
  • The German historical economist, Andre Gunder Frank, has argued that the start of globalisation can be traced back to the growth of trade and market integration between the Sumer and Indus civilisations of the third millennium BC. Trade links between China and Europe first grew during the Hellenistic Age, with further increases in global market convergence occuring when transport costs dropped in the sixteenth century and more rapidly in the modern era of globalisation, which Mssrs O’Rourke and Williamson describe as after 1750.
  • it is clear that globalisation is not simply a process that started in the last two decades or even the last two centuries. It has a history that stretches thousands of years, starting with Smith’s primitive hunter-gatherers trading with the next village, and eventually developing into the globally interconnected societies of today. Whether you think globalisation is a “good thing” or not, it appears to be an essential element of the economic history of mankind.
aqconces

How deadly was the poison gas of WW1? - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...magazine-31042472

poison gas

shared by aqconces on 26 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • By April, German chemists had tested a method of releasing chlorine gas from pressurised cylinders and thousands of French Algerian troops were smothered in a ghostly green cloud of chlorine at the second Battle of Ypres.
  • With no protection, many died from the agonies of suffocation.
  • Within a few days, the Daily Mail published an editorial lambasting "the cold-blooded deployment of every device of modern science" by the Germans.
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  • "Owing to the repeated use by the enemy of asphyxiating gases in their attacks on our positions, I have been compelled to resort to similar methods," Sir John explained.
  • There were commanders on both sides who felt uncomfortable about this new weapon.
  • "I fear it will produce a tremendous scandal in the world... war has nothing to do with chivalry any more. The higher civilisation rises, the viler man becomes," wrote Gen Karl von Einem, commander of the German Third Army in France.
qkirkpatrick

The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan - review | Books | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...eace-margaret-macmillan-review

war WWI history culture

shared by qkirkpatrick on 17 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • This set in train the July Crisis, the moves and counter-moves that would lead to general European war, the "great black tornado", as Theodore Roosevelt called it. Sixty-five million men served in the conflict, 9 million of them died and 20 million were wounded
  • It brought down four European empires and weakened the colonial powers that ended on the winning side, Britain and France; it spawned communism and fascism, and changed relations between Europeans and non-Europeans, town and country, governments and peoples, men and women.
  • The victorious allies stuck the blame on Germany at the Versailles Peace Conference, in the "war guilt clause". The idea that Germany was the prime mover has enjoyed a brilliant, if chequered career ever since.
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  • Besides, the rapidly globalising world of the last pre-war years was meshed together by trade and communications. The War That Ended Peace begins with a scene-setting prologue on the Paris Exposition of 1900, a perfect symbol of contemporary pride in material and moral progress, a gathering "destined" – as the Berlin chamber of commerce wrote to its Parisian counterpart – "to bring the civilised nations of the world nearer to one another in the labours common to them all"
Javier E

Spartans don't hug it out. Except for Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker | Marina Hyde | Opinion | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...b-rees-mogg-steve-baker-brexit

brexit

shared by Javier E on 28 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Since it’s rather difficult to know where to start on what happened on Wednesday, let’s begin in the future. I want to assure you that when the apocalypse has come, and you’re living in the bombed-out remnants of civilisation, clad in rags and distilling drinking water from your own urine, the one crackling radio in your resistance bunker will still be bringing news of Conservative party leadership contests.
  • Still, back to the present day, where it’s arguably not all good news
  • In the House of Commons, though, control of the legislative agenda had been handed to the cry-laugh emoji
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  • Yes – huge soz to the Israelite slaves, obviously, but it turns out Moses is going to try his luck on the Egyptian career ladder after all. Bum around court a bit, knock up a couple of the Pharaoh’s daughters, tell a few hundred off-colour jokes. But you guys go ahead and he’ll totally catch you up. Save him a place in the middle of the sea. If it helps, he’s written two opposing versions of the Ten Commandments
  • As one noted American TV news presenter inquired as the indicative vote results came in: “Is there a word for something that has passed through farce and tragedy like nine times already?” Well. None of us wishes to call this one too soon, but it is, perhaps, just beginning to feel like that word might be “Brexit”.
Javier E

Europe 'coming apart before our eyes', say 30 top intellectuals | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-eyes-say-30-top-intellectuals

europe populism freedom

shared by Javier E on 25 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • “Abandoned from across the Channel and from across the Atlantic by the two great allies who in the previous century saved it twice from suicide; vulnerable to the increasingly overt manipulations of the master of the Kremlin, Europe as an idea, as will and representation, is coming apart before our eyes,” the text reads.
  • Rushdie told the Guardian: “Europe is in greater danger now than at any time in the last 70 years, and if one believes in that idea it’s time to stand up and be counted.
  • “The historical success of Europe made it easier to defend these ideas and values which are crucial to humanity all over the world,” he said. “There is no Europe besides these values except the Europe of tourism and business. Europe is not a geography first but these ideas. This idea of Europe is under attack.”
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  • Pamuk said the idea of Europe was also important to non-western countries. “Without the idea of Europe, freedom, women’s rights, democracy, egalitarianism is hard to defend in my part of the world.
  • The net result is likely to be a far more complex parliamentary make-up, delicate coalition-building, and a European parliament increasingly unable to pass legislation to deal with major challenges, such as immigration and eurozone reform.
  • the manifesto’s signatories said they “refuse to resign themselves to this looming catastrophe”. They counted themselves among the “too quiet” European patriots who understand that “three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, a new battle for civilisation is under way”.
  • Despite its “mistakes, lapses, and occasional acts of cowardice”, Europe remains “the second home of every free man and woman on the planet”, they say, noting with regret the widely held but mistaken belief of their generation that “the continent would come together on its own, without our labour”.
  • Pro-Europeans “no longer have a choice”, they say. “We must sound the alarm against the arsonists of soul and spirit that, from Paris to Rome, with stops in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna, or Warsaw, are playing with the fire of our freedoms.”
Javier E

Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions - 0 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...PMC5984805

climate change psychological effects mental health risks

shared by Javier E on 20 May 19 - No Cached
  • The lesser-known, and often overlooked, effects of climate change include the risks and impacts to mental health—the focus of this article.
  • the risks and impacts of climate change on mental health are already rapidly accelerating, resulting in a number of direct, indirect, and overarching effects that disproportionally affect those who are most marginalized
  • The overarching threats of a changing climate, can also incite despair and hopelessness as actions to address the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change seem intangible or insignificant in comparison to the scale and magnitude of the threats [29].
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  • Paradoxically, these same disastrous circumstances may also inspire altruism, compassion, optimism, and foster a sense of meaning and personal growth (otherwise referred to as post-traumatic growth) as people band together to salvage, rebuild, and console amongst the chaos and loss of a changing climate [30, 31].
  • Marginalized groups who tend to be the most affected by the mental and physical health implications of climate change are: Indigenous peoples, children, seniors, women, people with low-socioeconomic status, outdoor labourers, racialized people, immigrants, and people with pre-existing health conditions
  • The influential sociologist Anthony Giddens refers to this space and time distancing of the climate change problem as the Giddens Paradox [70]. The Giddens Paradox states that: “since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until such dangers become visible and acute—in the shape of catastrophes that are irrefutably the result of climate change—before being stirred to serious action will be too late” (p. 2).
  • Marshall contends that part of the time and space distancing of the climate change problem, and thus the reluctance to act, is reinforced by the Western political discourse on climate change as a future-facing problem that intentionally overlooks the centuries of industrialization, fossil fuel consumption, and land degradation that contribute to anthropogenic climate change [71]
  • Marshall calls for a reckoning with this discourse by noting:“Climate change is a future problem. But it is also a past problem and a present problem. It is better thought of as a developing process of long-term deterioration, called, by some psychologists, a “creeping problem.” The lack of a definite beginning, end, or deadline requires that we create our own timeline. Not surprisingly, we do so in ways that remove the compulsion to act. We allow just enough history to make it seem familiar but not enough to create a responsibility for our past emissions. We make it just current enough to accept that we need to do something about it but put it just too far in the future to require immediate action” [71].
  • It requires coping strategies to manage the feelings and thoughts that arise so that people can face up to, and come to terms with, these threats and consequences rather than avoiding the creeping problem of climate change.
  • Since early 2007, environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht and colleagues have taken note of emotional distress related to the awareness of the overarching problem humans face as a result of global climate change [96]
  • Albrecht et al. suggest that this awareness contributes to ‘psychoterratic syndromes’. Psychoterratic syndromes include phenomena such as ‘ecoanxiety’, ‘ecoparalysis’, and ‘solastalgia’. ‘Ecoanxiety’ refers to the anxiety people face from constantly being surrounded by the wicked and threatening problems associated with a changing climate [96]
  • ‘Ecoparalysis’ refers to the complex feelings of not being able to take effective action to significantly mitigate climate change risks. ‘Solastalgia’ refers to “the distress and isolation caused by the gradual removal of solace from the present state of one’s home environment” [29].
  • For many people, climate change is experienced by way of vicarious threats or as an existential threat to civilisation [37]. People may experience vicarious threats when they receive weather warnings related to future disaster seasons or when they hear about environmental stressors experienced by people in other places.
  • For many people, this is largely how climate change is experienced—not as a direct threat, but as a global threat, often distant in time and place, or as a threat to our very way of life. Qualitative research finds evidence of some people being deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration as they engage with the problems of global climate change [97].
  • Psychological adaptation requires a set of responses, it requires an acknowledgement of the grave threats posed by climate change and the profoundly consequential global crisis.
  • Exploring the complexity of psychological responses in the book, Climate change and human well-being, Weissbecker et al., discuss the full spectrum of psychosocial consequences of climate change-related events ranging from mental illness to more positive experiences like ‘Post Traumatic Growth’ (PTG), empathy, compassion, altruism, and emotional resilience [25].
  • It also requires behavioural and psychological engagement, in which people change and adjust their behaviour and lifestyle in order to reduce the threat and protect themselves.
  • Active hope—something Macy and Johnstone champion—supports psychological adaptation. Active hope is required to move hopeful intentions from a passive state where waiting for someone else to take-on the task of addressing the climate change problem is replaced with an active process of climate change mitigation and adaptation behaviours [106]
  • This active process occurs when the reality of the problem is acknowledged as is the magnitude of the problem, intentions to address the problem are set, and engaged actions take place.
  • While these three steps may oversimplify the complexity of acting in the face of bureaucracy, climate denialism, or downright avoidance and ignorance of the magnitude of the problem area, these three steps are indeed the pivot points of transformation. These pivot points, however, need to be upheld by global political will and policy commitments that tackle the problem at the appropriate scale and speed. To do so, public awareness of the severity, magnitude and range of health impacts—current and projected—is required to pressure governments and communities to act now.
  • Also, discernible interventions are needed to demonstrate a tangible path forward to respond to the risks and impacts we face in a changing climate. Examples of these types of interventions are explored below.
  • Other innovative approaches to addressing mental health and wellbeing in a changing climate writ large include experiencing and preserving nature. Koger et al. suggest that environmental preservation provides people with a sense of stewardship and personal investment that can help people overcome feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and ecoparalysis [109]. Koger et al. suggest: “if people feel a deep connection to places, wilderness, and other species, then threats to these others are much more likely to be viewed as personal issues” [109]. Other research on the restorative benefits of natural environments and settings has found that biodiversity in natural environments is important for human health and wellbeing and has a particularly positive effect on mood, attention and cognition [110].
Javier E

Laser scanning reveals 'lost' ancient Mexican city had as many buildings as Manhattan | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...as-many-buildings-as-manhattan

mexico American Indian city archaology mesoamerica history

shared by Javier E on 16 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • researchers have used the technique to reveal the full extent of an ancient city in western Mexico, about a half an hour’s drive from Morelia, built by rivals to the Aztecs.
  • light detection and ranging scanning (lidar) involves directing a rapid succession of laser pulses at the ground from an aircraft.
  • The time and wavelength of the pulses reflected by the surface are combined with GPS and other data to produce a precise, three-dimensional map of the landscape. Crucially, the technique probes beneath foliage – useful for areas where vegetation is dense.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • the Purépecha were a major civilisation in central Mexico in the early 16th century, before Europeans arrived and wreaked havoc through war and disease. Purépecha cities included an imperial capital called Tzintzuntzan that lies on the edge of Lake Pátzcuaro in western Mexico, an area in which modern Purépecha communities still live.
  • Using lidar, researchers have found that the recently-discovered city, known as Angamuco, was more than double the size of Tzintzuntzan – although probably not as densely populated – extending over 26 km2 of ground that was covered by a lava flow thousands of years ago.
  • “If you do the maths, all of a sudden you are talking about 40,000 building foundations up there, which is [about] the same number of building foundations that are on the island of Manhattan.”
  • The team also found that Angamuco has an unusual layout. Monuments such as pyramids and open plazas are largely concentrated in eight zones around the city’s edges, rather being located in one large city centre
  • more than 100,000 people are thought to have lived in Angamuco in its heyday between about 1000AD to 1350AD. “[Its size] would make it the biggest city that we know of right now in western Mexico during this period,”
  • The earliest evidence from the city, including ceramic fragments and radiocarbon dating of remnants from offerings, dates to about 900AD, with the city believed to have undergone two waves of development and one of collapse before the arrival of the Spanish.
  • Fisher adds that lidar is likely to lead to further developments. “Everywhere you point the lidar instrument you find new stuff, and that is because we know so little about the archaeological universe in the Americas right now,” he said. “Right now every textbook has to be rewritten, and two years from now[they’re] going to have to be rewritten again.”
manhefnawi

The Throne of Zog: Monarchy in Albania 1928-1939 | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...zog-monarchy-albania-1928-1939

Albania King Zog Europe Balkans

shared by manhefnawi on 15 May 18 - No Cached
  • September 1st, 1928, Europe gained a new kingdom and its only Muslim king: thirty-two year-old Zog I of Albania
  • the birth of the Kingdom of Albania – a native monarchy, not an alien imposition – did attract a flicker of international attention
  • For five decades, Albania was synonymous with hard-line Marxism-Leninism
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  • The modern state of Albania came into being as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 after 500 years of Ottoman Turkish rule
  • A population of just under one million lived in a territory about half as big again as Wales
  • The Ottomans had never really mastered these people
  • Language did act as a unifying force
  • Nominally neutral during the First World War, and without a recognised government, the country was overrun by seven foreign armies
  • Like other Balkan states, it should repudiate the legacy of the Ottoman period and strive to catch up with the rest of Europe
  • He had first been fascinated by the story of Napoleon Bonaparte during his schooldays in Istanbul. King Ahmed sounded too exclusively Islamic, so the new monarch adopted his surname (which means ‘bird’)
  • According to Zogists, the Albanian throne had a 2,500-year history
  • In 1928, Zog purported to be filling Skanderbeg’s throne, left vacant for 450 years, and he claimed the medieval hero’s helmet and sword as regalia
  • Prince Xhelal, his half-brother, played no part in royal events, remaining largely forgotten in Mati
  • The day-to-day lifestyle of Zog did not seem so lavish to upper middle-class Western European diplomats
  • Albanians endured the poorest living conditions in Europe.
  • Zog did not dare to tax the rich and powerful for fear of provoking rebellion
  • Great Britain, France, and the US had greeted the kingdom with a modicum of politeness. They wanted to believe Zog when he assured them that monarchy would help promote peace and stability
  • Though Albania was legally a sovereign nation, it was wholly subordinate to Italy in all its foreign affairs
  • The Albanian monarchy reached the peak of its publicity in April 1938
  • Zog had always wanted a Christian queen, as a Westernising influence and a mark of approval for mixed marriages in general
  • Albanian resistance was minimal, King Zog fled abroad with a considerable fortune, and the monarchy stood revealed as a failure as great as most of his other modernising schemes
  • Had their King meant any more to them than the Ottoman Sultan before him
  • King Zog himself had sometimes observed that his homeland was ‘centuries behind the rest of Europe in civilisation’
  • The King, who died in France in 1961, never abandoned his claim to the throne
manhefnawi

Thousands of Monarchs | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...thousands-monarchs

Notes on Monarchies

shared by manhefnawi on 03 Jun 18 - No Cached
  • Since the beginnings of recorded history, more than 5000 years ago, the great majority of civilised people have lived under the rule of monarchs.' Only in the fatal decade 1912-1922, in China, Russia, Germany, Austria and Turkey did 'half humanity over- throw its monarchs
  • The rulers of Russia were originally Vikings, Arab dynasties ruled as far as Indonesia, the Welfs of Hanover and Great Britain were from the same family as the Estes of Modena, the Kings of Poland in the seventeenth century were Vasas from Sweden
  • the most successful and international of all dynasties is the House of Oldenburg. Since it began to rule the region of Oldenburg in north-west Germany in the thirteenth century it has provided monarchs for Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Norway and Greece. Through Prince Philip a branch of the House of Oldenburg will one day occupy the throne of the United Kingdom
Javier E

Boris Johnson's biographer: I know too well the fire and fury lurking behind that smile | News | The Sunday Times - 0 views

www.thetimes.co.uk/...ng-behind-that-smile-03gqmxt5v

biographer character UK candidate

shared by Javier E on 23 Jun 19 - No Cached
  • Boris Johnson can change from bonhomie to a dark fury in seconds. His normally joky demeanour flashes into a sarcastic snarl, his skin reddens and blotches, his eyes dart into an intense narrow glare and on the worst occasions his lips curl back to reveal wisps of spittle.
  • The all-out favourite to be our next prime minister has the fiercest and most uncontrollable anger I have seen. A terrifying mood change can be triggered instantly by the slightest challenge to his entitlement or self-worth.
  • he was temperamentally unsuitable to be entrusted with any position of power, let alone the highest office of all, in charge of the United Kingdom and its nuclear codes.
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  • This quality, combined with his casual relationship with the truth and often callous disregard of others, has caused many people who have worked closely with him to question his fitness for office
  • A senior judge raised questions about his fitness for power because of his “recklessness” about pregnancy and the feelings of others when conducting “extramarital adulterous liaisons”.
  • the wife of one of his Bullingdon Club cohorts at Oxford (a wealthy man in a powerful job) said her husband “would not speak about Boris even off the record as he is frightened of what he might do back. A lot of people are.”
  • When I worked as Johnson’s deputy in Brussels in an office of two, it took a long time to get used to what became known as his “four o’clock rants” in which he hurled four-letter words at an innocent yucca plant for several minutes at deadline time every day to work himself into a frenzy to write his creative tracts against the EU
  • His attitude to women — endless affairs leaving a string of women and at least one pregnancy termination behind him — has long been one of entitlement and lack of respect. He has boasted to other men that he needs plenty of women on the go as he is, as he says crudely, “bursting with spunk”
  • Employees or visitors to the mayoral desk at London’s City Hall found it advisable to lose what were supposed to be enjoyable games.
  • One victim was Roger Lewis who applied in 2010 for a chair at Oxford but who had made the mistake of criticising Johnson in print four years previously. Johnson threatened to pull out all the stops to prevent Lewis from winning the chair, and indeed he came an unexpected fifth on the list.
  • That willingness to punish people who cross him was exposed after he agreed to help his criminal friend Darius Guppy track down a critical journalist to beat him up
  • Incredibly, the conversation was taped, and a copy anonymously sent to Hastings, then Johnson’s boss at the Telegraph. When Johnson was sent away with no more than a flea in his ear, his sense of entitlement and freedom from the normal rules of civilised life became even more acute
  • His casual attitude to other people’s money, leading Symonds to accuse him of being “spoilt”, was notorious during his time as a motoring columnist at GQ, when he ran up huge parking ticket bills by parking anywhere he wanted and expecting the magazine to pay
Javier E

David Attenborough: polluting planet may become as reviled as slavery | Television & radio | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...le-give-me-hope-on-environment

slavery consciousness crisis global warming

shared by Javier E on 09 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • The attitude of young people towards tackling the environmental crisis is “a source of great hope”, David Attenborough has told MP
  • he predicted that polluting the planet would soon provoke as much abhorrence as slavery.
  • the naturalist and TV presenter said radical action was required.
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  • “We cannot be radical enough in dealing with the issues that face us at the moment. The question is: what is practically possible? How can we take the electorate with us in dealing with these things?
  • “I’m OK, and all of us here are OK, because we don’t face the problems that are coming. But the problems in the next 30 years are really major problems that are going to cause social unrest, and great changes in the way that we live, and what we eat. It’s going to happen.”
  • “There was a time in the 19th century when it was perfectly acceptable for civilised human beings to think that it was morally acceptable to actually own another human being for a slave. And somehow or other, in the space of 20 or 30 years, the public perception of that totally transformed.
  • “I suspect that we are right now in the beginning of a big change. Young people in particular are the stimulus that’s bringing it about
  • “People are understanding that to chuck plastic into the ocean is an insult. To have the nerve to say: ‘This is our rubbish. We’ll give you money and you can spread it on your land instead of ours, in the far east,’ is intolerable. And for some reason or other young people understand that. And that’s a source of great hope to me.”
  • Attenborough said he nonetheless never set out to be a campaigner: “I’m not by nature a propagandist. I started making natural history programmes because I thought there was nothing I would prefer to see more than the beauty of the natural world. And I would love to just go on doing that. That’s what I enjoy.
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