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Javier E

Working from home and the US-Europe divide - 0 views

www.economist.com/...-home-and-the-us-europe-divide

leisure US Europe culture policy economics

shared by Javier E on 04 May 24 - No Cached
  • there is one explanation that seems almost too simplistic: that “Americans just work harder”,
  • The numbers do in fact bear out this assertion—a rare case of national stereotypes being empirically provable
  • On average Americans work 1,811 hours per year, according to data from the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. That is 15% more than in the EU, where the average is 1,571 hours
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  • it is not just that Europeans spend a few extra weeks on the beach. The typical working day in Britain, France and Germany is half an hour shorter than in America, according to the International Labour Organisation.
  • which is the better way of living—with more money or more free time? The reality is that it is difficult for people to choose
  • Those in America work according to American schedules; those in Europe conform to European norms.
  • the more fruitful question is why Americans put in longer hours
  • The answer leads to a curious new observation: that remote work is making America’s office drones a little more European, albeit with a puritanical twist.
  • A first guess suggests that culture might account for the variation in work hours. Maybe Europeans enjoy their leisure more. They are spoilt for choice about how to spend time off
  • As for Americans, surveys indicate that they view hard work as intrinsically worthwhile. “Rugged individualism” is, after all, what built the country.
  • the difficulty with chalking up the difference to culture is that until the early 1970s many Europeans worked more
  • American working hours are basically the same now as back then. The big change is that Europeans now toil less. Hours are down a whopping 30% in Germany over the past half-century. Something beyond culture—a slow-moving, ill-defined variable—is at play.
  • Edward Prescott, an American economist, came to a provocative conclusion, arguing that the key was taxation
  • Until the early 1970s tax levels were similar in America and Europe, and so were hours worked. By the early 1990s Europe’s taxes had become more burdensome and, in Prescott’s view, its employees less motivated
  • A substantial gap persists today: American tax revenue is 28% of GDP, compared with 40% or so in Europe.
  • A recent study by Jósef Sigurdsson of Stockholm University examined how Icelandic workers responded to a one-year income-tax holiday in 1987, when the country overhauled its tax system. Although people with more flexibility—especially younger ones in part-time jobs—did indeed put in more hours, the overall increase in work was modest relative to that implied by Prescott’s model.
  • Regulation seems to matter more.
  • European rules give workers power, from generous parental-leave policies to stricter laws on firing staff. Many European countries try to put caps on working tim
  • most research agrees that they have reduced work hours.
  • Another important relationship is that, as people get richer, they typically want to work less
  • A recent paper by the IMF shows a remarkably strong link between GDP per person and hours worked in Europe. People in richer countries, such as the Netherlands, generally work less than those in poorer countries, such as Bulgaria.
  • Americans are wealthier than most Europeans, so why do they still work more?
  • Perhaps leisure is a collective-action problem. Americans may want to ask their bosses for longer holidays but are worried about being seen as slackers
  • A paper in 2005 by Alberto Alesina of Harvard University and colleagues argued that Europe’s stronger unions had in effect solved this collective-action problem by fighting for paid vacations, which ended up enshrined in law.
  • Europe’s well-regulated leisure time may then beget more leisure because it is more socially acceptable, and the market responds by supplying more good ways not to work. It is a virtuous cycle of lovely cafés.
  • One fascinating new development is a discrepancy in the rise of remote work
  • In 2023 the Global Survey of Working Arrangements found that full-time employees in America work from home 1.4 days a week, while those in Europe do so for 0.8 days
  • a striking result: Europeans and Americans now spend almost exactly the same amount of time in the office, with 1,320 hours a year for the former and 1,304 for the latter.
  • In other words, the extra 15% of work done by Americans annually is now from the comfort of their own homes—or occasionally on the beach, perhaps even one in Europe. Americans do still work harder, but rather more enjoyably than in the past
Javier E

Joseph Stiglitz: The problem with Europe is the euro | Business | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...roblem-with-europe-is-the-euro

euro europe econoi economics crisis eu

shared by Javier E on 10 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Advocates of the euro rightly argue that it was not just an economic project that sought to improve standards of living by increasing the efficiency of resource allocations, pursuing the principles of comparative advantage, enhancing competition, taking advantage of economies of scale and strengthening economic stability. More importantly, it was a political project; it was supposed to enhance the political integration of Europe, bringing the people and countries closer together and ensuring peaceful coexistence.
  • The euro has failed to achieve either of its two principal goals of prosperity and political integration: these goals are now more distant than they were before the creation of the eurozone. Instead of peace and harmony, European countries now view each other with distrust and anger. Old stereotypes are being revived as northern Europe decries the south as lazy and unreliable, and memories of Germany’s behaviour in the world wars are invoked.
  • A single currency entails a fixed exchange rate among the countries, and a single interest rate. Even if these are set to reflect the circumstances in the majority of member countries, given the economic diversity, there needs to be an array of institutions that can help those nations for which the policies are not well suited. Europe failed to create these institutions.
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  • Market fundamentalists believed, for instance, that if only the government would ensure that inflation was low and stable, markets would ensure growth and prosperity for all. While in most of the world market fundamentalism has been discredited, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, those beliefs survive and flourish within the eurozone’s dominant power, Germany. These beliefs are held with such conviction and certainty, immune to new contrary evidence, that they are rightly described as an ideology.
  • The founders of the euro were guided by a set of ideas and notions about how economies function that were fashionable at the time, but that were simply wrong. They had faith in markets, but lacked an understanding of the limitations of markets and what was required to make them work.
  • It was not simply that the eurozone was not structured to accommodate Europe’s economic diversity; it was that the structure of the eurozone, its rules and regulations, were not designed to promote growth, employment and stability.
  • Germany is talked about as a “success” only by comparison with the other countries of the eurozone.
  • It is perhaps natural that the eurozone’s leaders want to blame the victim – to blame the countries in recession or depression or reeling from a referendum result – for bringing about this state of affairs. They do not want to blame themselves and the great institutions that they have helped create, and which they now head.
  • According to Juncker, Europe is not to be held together because of the benefits that accrue – benefits that far exceed the costs, the economic prosperity, the sense of solidarity, the pride in being a European. No, Europe is to be held together by threats and fear – of what would happen if a country leaves.
  • One of the first lessons of economics is that bygones are bygones. One should always ask: given where we are, what should we do? On both sides of the Channel, politics should be directed at understanding the underlying sources of anger; how, in a democracy, the political establishment could have done so little to address the concerns of so many citizens, and figuring out how to do that now: to create within each country, and through cross-border arrangements, a new, more democratic Europe, which sees its goal as improving the wellbeing of ordinary citizens
  • There are alternatives to the current arrangements that can create a true shared prosperity: the challenge is to learn from the past to create this new economics and politics of the future. The Brexit referendum was a shock. My hope is that the shock will set off waves on both sides of the Channel that will lead to this new, reformed European Union.
Javier E

A man's discovery of bones under his pub could forever change what we know about the Irish - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...e-what-we-know-about-the-irish

ireland celtic human origins DNA migration European peoples

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • “Celtic” languages were not imports to the region but instead were developed somewhere in the British Isles or the Iberian Peninsula — and then spread eastward into continental Europe.
  • His doubts about the traditional view arose as he was studying inscriptions on artifacts from southern Portugal. The inscriptions on those artifacts strongly resembled the languages known as Celtic, yet they dated as far back as 700 B.C. This placed Celtic languages far from the Celt homelands in the middle of Europe at a very, very early date.
  • “What it shows is that the language that became Irish was already out there — before 700 B.C. and before the Iron Age,” Koch said. “It just didn’t fit with the traditional theory of Celtic spreading west to Britain and Iberia.”
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  • Numerous digs, most notably in Austria and Switzerland, have traced the outlines of the Celts. The artifacts offer evidence going back as far as about 800 B.C. The ancient Greeks and Romans also left written accounts of the Celts, and probably knew them well — the Celts sacked Rome around 390 B.C. and attacked Delphi in Greece in 279 B.C.
  • It seemed plausible that this group that had invaded Rome had invaded Ireland as well, and in the standard view, it was this people that eventually made it to Ireland.
  • For decades, however, archaeologists and other scholars have noted just how flimsy the evidence is for that standard account and how broad, nonetheless, is the application of the word.
  • n recent years, some archaeologists have proposed that the traditional story of the Celts' invasion was, in a sense, exactly wrong — the culture was not imported but exported — originating on the western edge of Europe much earlier than previously thought and spreading into the continent.
  • it flowed from the western edge of Europe, what he calls “the Atlantic zone” — into the rest of the continent. In many places of the Atlantic zone, he notes, people were buried in passages aligned with the solstices, a sign that they shared a unified belief system.
  • “From about 5,000 B.C. onwards, complicated ideas of status, art, cosmology were being disseminated along the Atlantic seaways,” Cunliffe said, and that culture then spread eastward.
  • “If we’re right, the roots of what is known as ‘Celtic’ culture go way way back in time,” Cunliffe said. “And the genetic evidence is going to be an absolute game-changer.”
  • If the new scholarship proves correct, exactly what to do with the word Celtic will probably be a matter of some dispute: Should it be applied to languages or cultures that, no matter how clearly defined, were largely uninfluenced by the historical Celts of continental Europe?
  • Complicating any answer are old ethnic antagonisms: The old notions of a distinct “Celtic race” or “Irish race” have been used not just for poetic tributes, but for scorn.
  • According to the genetic research, the Irish are at the extreme end of a genetic wave that washed across Europe, a wave of migrants that swept westward from above the Black Sea across Europe about 2,500 B.C.
  • The way to think about genetic variation in Europe is that it is more of a gradient than it is of sharp boundaries," said Bradley, the DNA researcher. "Sometimes, cultural features like language and natural borders can coincide with genetics, but most times not. Genetics is fuzzy, and it doesn't follow political and cultural borders."
  • "The public will always want a place on the map and for someone to point and say, 'This where the Irish are from,'
  • "But there’s going to be no way to do that. These groups were frequently traveling east-west across Europe, from one place to another. Everyone is a mix.”
Javier E

Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history' | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...r-biggest-error-niall-ferguson

history UK WWI

shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'worldnews'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.theguardian.com/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on theguardian.com ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } comp
  • Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history".
  • Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914,
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  • "Even if Germany had defeated France and Russia, it would have had a pretty massive challenge on its hands trying to run the new German-dominated Europe and would have remained significantly weaker than the British empire in naval and financial terms. Given the resources that Britain had available in 1914, a better strategy would have been to wait and deal with the German challenge later when Britain could respond on its own terms, taking advantage of its much greater naval and financial capability."
  • "Creating an army more or less from scratch and then sending it into combat against the Germans was a recipe for disastrous losses. And if one asks whether this was the best way for Britain to deal with the challenge posed by imperial Germany, my answer is no.
  • He continued: "The cost, let me emphasise, of the first world war to Britain was catastrophic, and it left the British empire at the end of it all in a much weakened state … It had accumulated a vast debt, the cost of which really limited Britain's military capability throughout the interwar period. Then there was the manpower loss – not just all those aristocratic officers, but the many, many, many skilled workers who died or were permanently incapacitated in the war.
  • He concedes that if Britain had stood back in 1914, it would have reneged on commitments to uphold Belgian neutrality. "But guess what? Realism in foreign policy has a long and distinguished tradition, not least in Britain – otherwise the French would never complain about 'perfidious Albion'. For Britain it would ultimately have been far better to have thought in terms of the national interest rather than in terms of a dated treaty."
lenaurick

Migrant crisis: 10,000 children may be missing, agency says - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis children politics syria europe

shared by lenaurick on 03 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • About 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children who traveled to Europe may be unaccounted for
  • Europol said the names of some suspected migrant smugglers are also appearing in the agency's human trafficking database -- indicating some of those missing might be vulnerable to exploitation.
  • That is another tragic twist in the latest story of migration to Europe and the need to protect vulnerable young people who find themselves at loose without friends in Europe and therefore vulnerable without proper mentoring and leadership."
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  • More than 1 million migrants entered Europe last year.
  • At least 3,695 either drowned or disappeared last year as they attempted to cross the sea on unseaworthy boats, according to International Organization for Migration figures. That's a rate of about 10 deaths or disappearances a day.
  • Denmark, for example, recently adopted a controversial law to seize asylum-seekers' valuables to help cover their expenses.
oliviaodon

Europe Is Annoyed, Not Grateful, After Trump Delays Tariffs - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rade-tariffs-trump-europe.html

trump europe

shared by oliviaodon on 05 May 18 - No Cached
  • American allies did not bother to conceal their annoyance Tuesday with the Trump administration’s last-minute decision to delay punitive aluminum and steel tariffs by a month, in their view leaving a sword of Damocles hanging over the global economy.In Europe, the reprieve was seen not as an act of conciliation or generosity but instead as another 30 days of precarious limbo that will disrupt supply networks and undermine what has been an unusually strong period of growth.
  • European leaders, normally circumspect, are openly irritated that President Trump’s protectionist assault is aimed at them despite decades of military alliance and shared values. The region has pushed for a permanent exemption to the American trade penalties, and threatened retaliation otherwise.They find it absurd that Mr. Trump is risking a trade war with Europe, the United States’ biggest trading partner, rather than joining forces to rein in Chinese trade practices they both oppose. And the European Union’s cautious, often ponderous approach to policymaking is now clashing directly with Mr. Trump’s unpredictability and aggressiveness.
  • The White House wants to reduce what it maintains is the United States’ trade deficit with the 28-member European Union and is seeking concessions, such as lower tariffs on American cars sold here. Speaking to a group of steel executives on Tuesday, the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted that the administration would take a tough line toward Europe.
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  • But the Europeans say they will discuss the Trump administration’s concerns only after the bloc receives a permanent, unconditional exemption from the tariffs. They regard the tariffs as illegal under global rules.“We will not negotiate under threat,” the commission said in the statement Tuesday.
  • “There is huge frustration with the way the administration is doing business,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director in London for Eurasia Group, a consultancy.
  • Economists say the biggest danger to the global economy is not so much the tariffs as the insecurity they sow among business managers trying to plan where to buy or sell products that contain steel or aluminum. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Big metals consumers like auto manufacturers and construction firms have been stockpiling supplies, girding for a disruptive trade war. “As a result, there is a visible surge in steel prices in the U.S., which negatively affects manufacturing and many other sectors,” said Max Finne, assistant professor of operations management at the University of Warwick in Britain.Mr. Trump’s provocative approach has fueled anxiety in Europe that the long-awaited economic recovery is losing momentum. The threat of a trade war adds to a list of risks that are making businesses less willing to invest and create jobs, including the imminent end of European Central Bank stimulus, Britain’s planned exit from the bloc and political deadlock in Italy.
  • The European Union regards the planned tariffs on steel and aluminum as a violation of international treaties and has already complained to the World Trade Organization, normally the arbiter of trade disputes. The complaint lays the groundwork for the bloc to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of American products — including bluejeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles — as early as mid-June.
  • The Obama administration pursued such an agreement for years, but it was largely moribund even before Mr. Trump took office, in part because of popular opposition in Germany.
  • Europe would be happy to cooperate with the United States to press China on issues such as protection of intellectual property. But in the current climate it seems unlikely that the European Union and United States are capable of joining forces.“The way Trump is going about it may not be the most effective, but he’s put it on the agenda. There is some sympathy for that,” Mr. Rahman said. “But it’s very difficult. The process seems completely broken.”
g-dragon

History of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/and-napoleonic-wars-p2-1221702

revolutionary french history napoleonic wars

shared by g-dragon on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • French Revolution
  • After the French Revolution transformed France and threatened the old order of Europe, France fought a series of wars against the monarchies of Europe to first protect and spread the revolution, and then to conquer territory. The later years were dominated by Napoleon and France’s enemy was seven coalitions of European states.
  • Austria and Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz - which asked Europe to act to restore the French monarchy – they actually worded the document to prevent war. However, France misinterpreted and decided to launch a defensive and pre-emptive war, declaring one in April 1792.
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  • The relationship between Napoleon and Russia began to fall apart, and Napoleon resolved to act quickly to overawe the Russian tsar and bring him to heel. To this end, Napoleon gathered what was probably the largest army ever assembled in Europe, and certainly a force too big to adequately support. Looking for a quick, dominant victory, Napoleon pursued a retreating Russian army deep into Russia, before winning the carnage that was the Battle of Borodino and then taking Moscow.
  • effectively mobilizing the whole of France into the army. A new chapter in warfare had been reached, and army sizes now began to rise greatly.
  • Napoleon was then given a chance to pursue a dream: attack in the Middle East, even on into threatening the British in India
  • Britain and France were briefly at peace but soon argued, the former wielding a superior navy and great wealth.
  • A group of European powers opposed to these developments was now working as the First Coalition, the start of seven such groups formed to fight France before the end of 1815. Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain and the United Provinces (Netherlands)
  • But it was a pyrrhic victory, as Moscow was set alight and Napoleon was forced to retreat through the bitter Russian winter, damaging his army and ruining the French cavalry.
  • With Napoleon on the back foot and obviously vulnerable, a new Sixth Coalition was organized in 1813, and pushed across Europe, advancing where Napoleon was absent, and retreating where he was present.
  • He was sent to the island of Elba in exile.
  • With time to think while exiled in Elba, Napoleon resolved to try again, and in 1815 he returned to Europe. Amassing an army as he marched to Paris, turning those sent against him to his service, Napoleon attempted to rally support by making liberal concessions. He soon found himself faced by another coalition, the Seventh of the French Revolutionary and Napoleon Wars, which included Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia.
  • Napoleon was defeated, retreated, and forced to abdicate once more.
  • The monarchy was restored in France, and the heads of Europe gathered at the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of Europe.
  • Europe would not be so disrupted again until World War 1 in 1914.
Javier E

How Nations Are Losing a Global Race to Tackle A.I.'s Harms - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ai-regulation-policies.html

ai threat response international

shared by Javier E on 06 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • When European Union leaders introduced a 125-page draft law to regulate artificial intelligence in April 2021, they hailed it as a global model for handling the technology.
  • E.U. lawmakers had gotten input from thousands of experts for three years about A.I., when the topic was not even on the table in other countries. The result was a “landmark” policy that was “future proof,” declared Margrethe Vestager, the head of digital policy for the 27-nation bloc.
  • Then came ChatGPT.
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  • The eerily humanlike chatbot, which went viral last year by generating its own answers to prompts, blindsided E.U. policymakers. The type of A.I. that powered ChatGPT was not mentioned in the draft law and was not a major focus of discussions about the policy. Lawmakers and their aides peppered one another with calls and texts to address the gap, as tech executives warned that overly aggressive regulations could put Europe at an economic disadvantage.
  • Even now, E.U. lawmakers are arguing over what to do, putting the law at risk. “We will always be lagging behind the speed of technology,” said Svenja Hahn, a member of the European Parliament who was involved in writing the A.I. law.
  • Lawmakers and regulators in Brussels, in Washington and elsewhere are losing a battle to regulate A.I. and are racing to catch up, as concerns grow that the powerful technology will automate away jobs, turbocharge the spread of disinformation and eventually develop its own kind of intelligence.
  • Nations have moved swiftly to tackle A.I.’s potential perils, but European officials have been caught off guard by the technology’s evolution, while U.S. lawmakers openly concede that they barely understand how it works.
  • The absence of rules has left a vacuum. Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, have been left to police themselves as they race to create and profit from advanced A.I. systems
  • At the root of the fragmented actions is a fundamental mismatch. A.I. systems are advancing so rapidly and unpredictably that lawmakers and regulators can’t keep pace
  • That gap has been compounded by an A.I. knowledge deficit in governments, labyrinthine bureaucracies and fears that too many rules may inadvertently limit the technology’s benefits.
  • Even in Europe, perhaps the world’s most aggressive tech regulator, A.I. has befuddled policymakers.
  • The European Union has plowed ahead with its new law, the A.I. Act, despite disputes over how to handle the makers of the latest A.I. systems.
  • The result has been a sprawl of responses. President Biden issued an executive order in October about A.I.’s national security effects as lawmakers debate what, if any, measures to pass. Japan is drafting nonbinding guidelines for the technology, while China has imposed restrictions on certain types of A.I. Britain has said existing laws are adequate for regulating the technology. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are pouring government money into A.I. research.
  • A final agreement, expected as soon as Wednesday, could restrict certain risky uses of the technology and create transparency requirements about how the underlying systems work. But even if it passes, it is not expected to take effect for at least 18 months — a lifetime in A.I. development — and how it will be enforced is unclear.
  • Many companies, preferring nonbinding codes of conduct that provide latitude to speed up development, are lobbying to soften proposed regulations and pitting governments against one another.
  • “No one, not even the creators of these systems, know what they will be able to do,” said Matt Clifford, an adviser to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, who presided over an A.I. Safety Summit last month with 28 countries. “The urgency comes from there being a real question of whether governments are equipped to deal with and mitigate the risks.”
  • Europe takes the lead
  • In mid-2018, 52 academics, computer scientists and lawyers met at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Brussels to discuss artificial intelligence. E.U. officials had selected them to provide advice about the technology, which was drawing attention for powering driverless cars and facial recognition systems.
  • as they discussed A.I.’s possible effects — including the threat of facial recognition technology to people’s privacy — they recognized “there were all these legal gaps, and what happens if people don’t follow those guidelines?”
  • In 2019, the group published a 52-page report with 33 recommendations, including more oversight of A.I. tools that could harm individuals and society.
  • By October, the governments of France, Germany and Italy, the three largest E.U. economies, had come out against strict regulation of general purpose A.I. models for fear of hindering their domestic tech start-ups. Others in the European Parliament said the law would be toothless without addressing the technology. Divisions over the use of facial recognition technology also persisted.
  • So when the A.I. Act was unveiled in 2021, it concentrated on “high risk” uses of the technology, including in law enforcement, school admissions and hiring. It largely avoided regulating the A.I. models that powered them unless listed as dangerous
  • “They sent me a draft, and I sent them back 20 pages of comments,” said Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who advised the European Commission. “Anything not on their list of high-risk applications would not count, and the list excluded ChatGPT and most A.I. systems.”
  • E.U. leaders were undeterred.“Europe may not have been the leader in the last wave of digitalization, but it has it all to lead the next one,” Ms. Vestager said when she introduced the policy at a news conference in Brussels.
  • In 2020, European policymakers decided that the best approach was to focus on how A.I. was used and not the underlying technology. A.I. was not inherently good or bad, they said — it depended on how it was applied.
  • Nineteen months later, ChatGPT arrived.
  • The Washington game
  • Lacking tech expertise, lawmakers are increasingly relying on Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and other A.I. makers to explain how it works and to help create rules.
  • “We’re not experts,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, who hosted Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, and more than 50 lawmakers at a dinner in Washington in May. “It’s important to be humble.”
  • Tech companies have seized their advantage. In the first half of the year, many of Microsoft’s and Google’s combined 169 lobbyists met with lawmakers and the White House to discuss A.I. legislation, according to lobbying disclosures. OpenAI registered its first three lobbyists and a tech lobbying group unveiled a $25 million campaign to promote A.I.’s benefits this year.
  • In that same period, Mr. Altman met with more than 100 members of Congress, including former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and the Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. After testifying in Congress in May, Mr. Altman embarked on a 17-city global tour, meeting world leaders including President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Sunak and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.
  • , the White House announced that the four companies had agreed to voluntary commitments on A.I. safety, including testing their systems through third-party overseers — which most of the companies were already doing.
  • “It was brilliant,” Mr. Smith said. “Instead of people in government coming up with ideas that might have been impractical, they said, ‘Show us what you think you can do and we’ll push you to do more.’”
  • In a statement, Ms. Raimondo said the federal government would keep working with companies so “America continues to lead the world in responsible A.I. innovation.”
  • Over the summer, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into OpenAI and how it handles user data. Lawmakers continued welcoming tech executives.
  • In September, Mr. Schumer was the host of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Mr. Altman at a closed-door meeting with lawmakers in Washington to discuss A.I. rules. Mr. Musk warned of A.I.’s “civilizational” risks, while Mr. Altman proclaimed that A.I. could solve global problems such as poverty.
  • A.I. companies are playing governments off one another. In Europe, industry groups have warned that regulations could put the European Union behind the United States. In Washington, tech companies have cautioned that China might pull ahead.
  • In May, Ms. Vestager, Ms. Raimondo and Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, met in Lulea, Sweden, to discuss cooperating on digital policy.
  • “China is way better at this stuff than you imagine,” Mr. Clark of Anthropic told members of Congress in January.
  • After two days of talks, Ms. Vestager announced that Europe and the United States would release a shared code of conduct for safeguarding A.I. “within weeks.” She messaged colleagues in Brussels asking them to share her social media post about the pact, which she called a “huge step in a race we can’t afford to lose.”
  • Months later, no shared code of conduct had appeared. The United States instead announced A.I. guidelines of its own.
  • Little progress has been made internationally on A.I. With countries mired in economic competition and geopolitical distrust, many are setting their own rules for the borderless technology.
  • Yet “weak regulation in another country will affect you,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India’s technology minister, noting that a lack of rules around American social media companies led to a wave of global disinformation.
  • “Most of the countries impacted by those technologies were never at the table when policies were set,” he said. “A.I will be several factors more difficult to manage.”
  • Even among allies, the issue has been divisive. At the meeting in Sweden between E.U. and U.S. officials, Mr. Blinken criticized Europe for moving forward with A.I. regulations that could harm American companies, one attendee said. Thierry Breton, a European commissioner, shot back that the United States could not dictate European policy, the person said.
  • Some policymakers said they hoped for progress at an A.I. safety summit that Britain held last month at Bletchley Park, where the mathematician Alan Turing helped crack the Enigma code used by the Nazis. The gathering featured Vice President Kamala Harris; Wu Zhaohui, China’s vice minister of science and technology; Mr. Musk; and others.
  • The upshot was a 12-paragraph statement describing A.I.’s “transformative” potential and “catastrophic” risk of misuse. Attendees agreed to meet again next year.
  • The talks, in the end, produced a deal to keep talking.
rachelramirez

Disappointed With Europe, Thousands of Iraqi Migrants Return Home - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-crisis-reverse-migration.html

europe iraqi politics policy

shared by rachelramirez on 05 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Disappointed With Europe, Thousands of Iraqi Migrants Return Home
  • Last year, beckoned by news reports of easy passage to Europe through Turkey, tens of thousands of Iraqis joined Syrians, Africans and Afghans in the great migrant wave to the Continent. Now, thousands of Iraqis are coming home.
  • Many Iraqis have stayed in Europe, of course, especially those who were displaced from lands controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Now, some Iraqis in Europe are turning to social media to warn their countrymen away
  • The International Organization for Migration said it helped almost 3,500 Iraqis return home last year — just a portion of the overall number coming back
  • He quickly spent the $8,000 he brought, mostly paying smugglers, and found himself almost broke. He hated the food (milk and toast for breakfast, he said, and cheese sandwiches for lunch). And obtaining residency and finding a decent job would take months
  • “It was 99.9 percent different from Baghdad. People here all talk in a sectarian way: He’s Sunni, he’s Shiite, he’s Kurdish.”
Javier E

Spain's far-right Vox party shot from social media into parliament overnight. How? - Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-into-parliament-overnight-how

Vox Spain far right politics history culture polarization backlash

shared by Javier E on 05 May 19 - No Cached
  • Whereas successful political movements used to have a single ideology, they can now combine several. Think about how record companies put together new pop bands: They do market research, they pick the kinds of faces that match, and then they market the band by advertising it to the most favorable demographic. New political parties can now operate like that: You can bundle together issues, repackage them and then market them, using exactly the same kind of targeted messaging — based on exactly the same kind of market research — that you know has worked in other places.
  • Opposition to Catalan and Basque separatism; opposition to feminism and same-sex marriage; opposition to immigration, especially by Muslims; anger at corruption; boredom with mainstream politics; a handful of issues, such as hunting and gun ownership, that some people care a lot about and others don’t know exist; plus a streak of libertarianism, a talent for mockery and a whiff of nostalgia
  • All of these are the ingredients that have gone into the creation of Vox.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • The important relationships between Vox and the European far right, as well as the American alt-right, are happening elsewhere.
  • there have been multiple contacts between Vox and the other far-right parties of Europe. In 2017, Abascal met Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, as Vox’s Twitter account recorded; on the eve of the election, he tweeted his thanks to Matteo Salvini, the Italian far-right leader, for his support. Abascal and Espinosa both went to Warsaw recently to meet the leaders of the nativist, anti-pluralist Polish ruling party, and Espinosa showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the D.C. area, as well.
  • these are issues that belong to the realm of identity politics, not economics. Espinosa characterized all of them as arguments with “the left
  • the nationalist parties, rooted in their own particular histories, are often in conflict with one another almost by definition.
  • The European far right has now found a set of issues it can unite around. Opposition to immigration, especially Muslim immigration, is one of them; promotion of a socially conservative worldview is another.
  • dislike of same-sex civil unions or African taxi drivers is something that even Austrians and Italians who disagree about the location of their border can share.
  • Alto Data Analytics. Alto, which specializes in applying artificial intelligence to the analysis of public data, such as that found on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other public sources, recently produced some elegant, colored network maps of the Spanish online conversation, with the goal of identifying disinformation campaigns seeking to distort digital conversations
  • three outlying, polarized conversations — “echo chambers,” whose members are mostly talking and listening only to one another: the Catalan secessionist conversation, the far-left conversation and the Vox conversation. 
  • the largest number of “abnormal, high-activity users” — bots, or else real people who post constantly and probably professionally — were also found within these three communities, especially the Vox community, which accounted for more than half of them
  • uncovered a network of nearly 3,000 “abnormal, high-activity users” that had pumped out nearly 4½ million pro-Vox and anti-Islamic messages on Twitter in the past year
  • For the past couple of years, it has focused on immigration scare stories, gradually increasing their emotional intensity
  • all of it aligns with messages being put out by Vox.
  • a week before Spain’s polling day, the network was tweeting images of what its members described as a riot in a “Muslim neighborhood in France.” In fact, the clip showed a scene from recent anti-government riots in Algeria.
  • Vox supporters, especially the “abnormal, high-activity users,” are very likely to post and tweet content and material from a very particular groups of sources: a set of conspiratorial websites, mostly set up at least a year ago, sometimes run by a single person, which post large quantities of highly partisan articles and headlines.
  • he Alto team had found exactly the same kinds of websites in Italy and Brazil, in the months before those countries’ elections in 2018
  • the websites began putting out partisan material — in Italy, about immigration; in Brazil, about corruption and feminism — during the year before the vote.
  • they served to feed and amplify partisan themes even before they were really part of mainstream politics.
  • In Spain, there are a half-dozen such sites, some quite professional and some clearly amateu
  • One of the more obscure sites has exactly the same style and layout as a pro-Bolsonaro Brazilian site, almost as though both had been designed by the same person
  • The owner of digitalSevilla — according to El Pais, a 24-year-old with no journalism experience — is producing headlines that compare the Andalusian socialist party leader to “the evil lady in Game of Thrones” and, at times, has had more readership than established newspapers
  • They function not unlike Infowars, Breitbart, the infamous partisan sites that operated from Macedonia during the U.S. presidential campaign
  • all of which produced hypercharged, conspiratorial, partisan news and outraged headlines that could then be pumped into hypercharged, conspiratorial echo chambers.
  • he Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Though the pact received relatively little mainstream media attention, in the lead-up to that gathering, and in its wake, Alto found nearly 50,000 Twitter users tweeting conspiracy theories about the pact
  • Much like the Spanish network that promotes Vox, these users were promoting material from extremist and conspiratorial websites, using identical images, linking and retweeting one another across borders.
  • A similar international network went into high gear after the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked thousands of posts from people claiming to have seen Muslims “celebrating” the fire, as well as from people posting rumors and pictures that purported to prove there had been arson
  • These same kinds of memes and images then rippled through Vox’s WhatsApp and Telegram fan groups. These included, for example, an English-language meme showing Paris “before Macron,” with Notre Dame burning, and “after Macron” with a mosque in its place, as well as a news video, which, in fact, had been made about another incident, talking about arrests and gas bombs found in a nearby car. It was a perfect example of the alt-right, the far right and Vox all messaging the same thing, at the same time, in multiple languages, attempting to create the same emotions across Europe, North America and beyond.
  • CitizenGo is part of a larger network of European organizations dedicated to what they call “restoring the natural order”: rolling back gay rights, restricting abortion and contraception, promoting an explicitly Christian agenda. They put together mailing lists and keep in touch with their supporters; the organization claims to reach 9 million people.
  • OpenDemocracy has additionally identified a dozen other U.S.-based organizations that now fund or assist conservative activists in Europe
  • she now runs into CitizenGo, and its language, around the world. Among other things, it has popularized the expression “gender ideology” — a term the Christian right invented, and that has come to describe a whole group of issues, from domestic violence laws to gay rights — in Africa and Latin America, as well as Europe.
  • In Spain, CitizenGo has made itself famous by painting buses with provocative slogans — one carried the hashtag #feminazis and an image of Adolf Hitler wearing lipstick — and driving them around Spanish cities.
  • It’s a pattern we know from U.S. politics. Just as it is possible in the United States to support super PACs that then pay for advertising around issues linked to particular candidates, so is it now possible for Americans, Russians or the Princess von Thurn und Taxis to donate to CitizenGo — and, thus, to support Vox.
  • as most Europeans probably don’t realize — outsiders who want to fund the European far right have been able to do so for some time. OpenDemocracy’s most recent report quotes Arsuaga, the head of CitizenGo, advising a reporter that money given to his group could “indirectly” support Vox, since “we actually currently totally align.”
  • “Make Spain Great Again,” he explained, “was a kind of provocation. . . . It was just intended to make the left a little bit more angry.”
  • The number of actual Spanish Muslims is relatively low — most immigration to Spain is from Latin America — and the number of actual U.S. Muslims is, relatively, even lower. But the idea that Christian civilization needs to redefine itself against the Islamic enemy has, of course, a special historic echo in Spain
  • “We are entering into a period of time when politics is becoming something different, politics is warfare by another means — we don’t want to be killed, we have to survive. . . . I think politics now is winner-takes-all. This is not just a phenomenon in Spain.
  • As Aznar, the former prime minister, said, the party is a “consequence,” though it is not only a consequence of Catalan separatism. It’s also a consequence of Trumpism, of the conspiracy websites, of the international alt-right/far-right online campaign, and especially of a social conservative backlash that has been building across the continent for years.
  • The nationalists, the anti-globalists, the people who are skeptical of international laws and international organizations — they, too, now work together, across borders, for common causes. They share the same contacts. They tap money from the same funders. They are learning from one another’s mistakes, copying one another’s language. And, together, they think they will eventually win.
Javier E

Europe's Glorious Years of Peace and Prosperity - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...an-kershaw-the-global-age.html

europe peace prosperity politics economics

shared by Javier E on 05 May 19 - No Cached
  • In synthesizing this period in European history in a long but very readable volume
  • Kershaw reminds us that the Continent has faced other large challenges in the postwar era and survived; that some long-term trends of peace, prosperity and democracy are both robust and remarkable; and that individuals have agency, and can alter the course of events — they are not mere expressions of those events.
  • Today’s Europe, thankfully, is not haunted by the specter of nuclear war. The probability of a Russian invasion of a NATO member is low.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • During this “golden age” for Europe, imperial powers had to navigate decolonization. The French wars in Indochina and Algeria and the Portuguese wars in Angola and Mozambique were difficult, regime-threatening challenge
  • Europe endured domestic violence during this golden age, be it from the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof Group in West Germany, nationalists in Northern Ireland or separatists in the Basque region.
  • war, sometimes in the form of ethnic cleansing, erupted in the Balkans in the 1990s. Brexit, immigration, populism and even Jihadist-inspired terrorism seem like much smaller challenges than genocide.
  • Kershaw traces several positive, long-term trends in European history from 1950 to 2017 that are downright miraculous. Most important, most of the Continent lived in peace during the Global Age, a sharp contrast to the horrific atrocities chronicled in Kershaw’s previous volume in this series, “To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949.”
  • Europeans on average became richer than at any time before. In Kershaw’s estimation, the period between 1950 and 1973 was especially prosperous — a “golden age” or an “economic miracle” for the western part of the Continent, and even a “silver age” for the Communist bloc
  • As Kershaw sums up, “Europe is more peaceful, more prosperous and more free than at any time in its long history.” Alongside these three positive trends of peace, prosperity and democracy, cooperation among European countries expanded dramatically, culminating in the creation of the European Union and the euro.
  • It would be premature, however, to predict a new negative trajectory. Peace, prosperity and democracy in Europe still have serious momentum.
  • Kershaw allows for the possibility that individuals — not just innate structural forces — can shape history
  • Kershaw ascribes the greatest agency of all to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. “The magnitude of Gorbachev’s personal contributions to the dramatic change, not just in the Soviet Union itself but throughout Eastern Europe, can scarcely be exaggerated.
  • European leaders should read “The Global Age” to be reminded of the incredible progress of the last 70 years — and told that such progress is something they have the power to sustain through their individual actions
manhefnawi

Europe and the Turks: The Civilization of the Ottoman Empire | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...ks-civilization-ottoman-empire

Ottoman Empire

shared by manhefnawi on 22 May 18 - No Cached
  • This year the Turks have been celebrating the 500th anniversary of their conquest of Constantinople. Turkish rule in Europe began nearly a century earlier, and was firmly established by the time that the occupation of the Imperial city rounded off the Turkish dominions and made Constantinople once again the capital of a great empire. But the anniversary may serve as the occasion for some reflections on the place of the Ottoman Empire in the history of Europe and of the world
  • the loss of Constantinople is a great historical disaster, a defeat of Christendom which has never been repaired
  • Western travellers in Turkey, who were the major source of information to the Western world, with few exceptions reinforced these prejudices. Most of them lacked the perceptiveness and imagination to realize that though the familiar good qualities that they appreciated at home were missing in Turkey, there were others present of a different kind
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Like most liberated peoples, the Balkan, and later the Arab, states tended to blame all the defects and shortcomings of their societies upon the misrule of the fallen imperial masters
  • This negative attitude to the Turks, while predominant, is not the only one. There is also what one might call a positive legend of the Turk in Europe - and here I am not speaking of the political and military considerations which from time to time led European powers to sup with the Turk, though with a long spoon
  • Turkish culture is, as one would expect, mainly Islamic, and the educated Ottoman was as familiar with the Arabic and Persian classics as his Western contemporaries with those of Greece and Rome
  • Against the charge of destructiveness that is often brought against Turkish rule, the same evidence may be cited. The registers show an increase in population and prosperity in most areas after the conquest, which the travellers - by no means friendly witnesses - confirm
  • Certainly the Sultan was no democrat; but after all, democracy, as we know and practise it, has flourished in only a few places, and in most of them is recent and precarious. The Sultan was not a true despot, but the supreme custodian of the God-given Holy Law of Islam, to which he himself was subject.
  • This security and prosperity, given to peasant agriculture by a Government which had inherited the ancient loyalty owed by the Balkan peoples to the Imperial Byzantine throne, did much to reconcile them to the other imperfections of Ottoman rule, and account in large measure for the long tranquillity that reigned in the Balkans until the explosive irruption of nationalist ideas from the West
  • Two other qualities which have been attributed to the Turks are fanaticism and intolerance. The Ottoman Turks were indeed fanatical Moslems, dedicated to the maintenance and expansion of the Islamic state. But toleration is a relative matter
  • The well-known preference of the 15th-century Greeks for Moslem rather than Frankish rule was not without its reasons. The confrontation of Christendom and Islam has sometimes been compared with the present Cold War
  • When Ottoman rule in the Balkans ended, the Balkan peoples resumed their national existence, with their own religions and languages and national cultures intact
  • With the decline of the Ottoman Empire, some of the traditional charges against the Turks become in part justified.
  • Islam is far more akin to Europe in its cultural traditions than to the true Orient, in India and China. But the Turks were familiar in a nearer and more material sense. They had been in Anatolia since the 11th century, absorbing the ancient races of the peninsula; in Europe since the 14th century
  • The loss of Constantinople was certainly a defeat of Christendom and of Europe - though perhaps not so total as was once feared.
  • Nor was it a victory of barbarism, but rather of another and not undistinguished civilization
johnsonel7

The refugee 'crisis' showed Europe's worst side to the world | Hsiao-Hung Pai | Opinion | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...terranean-racism-incarceration

refugee crisis civilizations racism history

shared by johnsonel7 on 02 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Over the last decade, migration has become an urgent political issue. The 2010s have been marked not only by the global movement of people across national borders but also attempts by governments to erect walls and fences in their path. We’ve seen nationalism winning votes and the worldview of the far right mainstreamed.
  • But the 2010s has seen a higher number of people from the south moving towards the north. In particular, Europe has seen hundreds of thousands of people from Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, fleeing chronic poverty, political instability, wars, and the climate crisis in countries often laid to ruin by western-backed institutions.
  • Throughout this time, when tens of thousands died at sea trying to reach Europe, Europe has imagined itself to be the victim of a migrant or refugee “crisis”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • This can be seen in the way migration into Europe has been portrayed as an “invasion” of different cultures and a “clash of civilisations” – in a way that is similar to the justifications of the colonial era where the colonised were cast as racially inferior beings. Colonialism still casts its shadow over the immigration debate.
rerobinson03

Middle Ages: The High Middle Ages | Infoplease - 0 views

www.infoplease.com/...the-high-middle-ages

shared by rerobinson03 on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • As Europe entered the period known as the High Middle Ages, the church became the universal and unifying institution.
  • system of guilds perpetuated the Christian and medieval spirit of economic life,
  • Strong popes, notably Gregory VII , worked for a reinvigorated Europe guided by a centralized church, a goal virtually realized under Innocent III .
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Militant religious zeal was expressed in the Crusades , which also stemmed from the growing strength of Europe. Security and prosperity stimulated intellectual life,
  • From the Crusades and other sources came contact with Arab culture, which had preserved works of Greek authors whose writings had not survived in Europe. Philosophy, science, and mathematics from the Classical and Hellenistic periods were assimilated into the tenets of the Christian faith and the prevailing philosophy of scholasticism
  • Christian values pervaded scholarship and literature,
  • Gothic architecture developed most notably in the 12th cent., against a background of the cultural and economic ascendancy of Western Europe.
anonymous

Europe averted a Covid-19 collapse -- here's what the US could learn - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 20 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The country is now in the same situation that France, Belgium and the Czech Republic were last month
  • They slowed down the epidemics by imposing lockdowns and strict mask mandates.
  • But according to official data, around 25% of ICU beds and 45% of ventilators remained available in the Czech Republic, even during the worst of the crisis. Compare that with US states like Oklahoma, where only 6% of ICU beds remain available.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • "They need to look at the European situation, and I mean, by no means what we have done in Europe is perfect, these governments are probably reacting a little bit slowly, but they are at least reacting
  • But when Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer banned indoor dining in an attempt to curb the rising spread of the virus, White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas criticized the move and urged people to "rise up" against the new public health measures.
  • one problem is that the rules across different US states remain inconsistent. "The country is so vast and population density in Nebraska is not the same as New York State for instance or California, so you maybe do need to think about slightly more local action
  • Many European countries followed in the Czech footsteps by initially refusing new lockdowns and then going for the nuclear option.
  • "Over the last 10 days, there's been a decrease in the number of new Covid-19 cases, and the positivity rate has been declining so everything suggests that we have passed a peak of the epidemic,"
  • Germany, meanwhile, took a softer approach to lockdown. It closed restaurants, bars and clubs, but shops remained open and people were only advised, rather than ordered, to stay home and limit their social contacts.
  • The country didn't see the same slowdown in new cases as France.
  • The success of a lockdown also depends on the willingness of people to follow the rules.
  • Politicians are reluctant to impose lockdowns because of their undeniable negative effects, be it on the economy or people's mental health. But scientists like Tildesley say the repeated European experience shows the effect of this is even more damaging.
ethanshilling

Schools Will Close in Germany as Cases Surge - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lose-coronavirus-lockdown.html

Europe germany us pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 14 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • This fall, even as cases surged across Europe, Germany worked hard to keep schools open, prioritizing them over other aspects of daily life like restaurants and bars.
  • On Wednesday, German schools will close along with nonessential stores and services as part of a strict lockdown that will be in effect through Christmas.
  • “The numbers were so out of control that German leaders decided they had to lock everything down, even schools,” said Melissa Eddy, a Times correspondent in Berlin.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “It sends the message that Germany lost control of the pandemic entirely,” Melissa said. “The schools got sacrificed because they failed to lock down everything else strictly enough.”
  • The coming weeks are now especially uncertain for schools. Germany, a country long committed to data privacy, has not leaned into online learning software, which makes a transition to remote learning even more difficult.
  • Similar trends are playing out across Europe and the world.
  • In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan called for schools to close early for Christmas, even as Boris Johnson, the prime minister, fought to keep them open.
  • In the Netherlands, the Dutch prime minister is expected to announce a monthlong lockdown during which schools will close
  • Coronavirus-related deaths in young people are remarkably rare. Since the pandemic began, The Times has identified only about 90 deaths involving college employees and students out of more than 397,000 infections.
  • Employees at local businesses in Ithaca, N.Y., home to Cornell University, have started a petition to shut down indoor dining, receive hazard pay and maintain clear safety protocols
  • Student athletes at Harvard University struggled through a fall semester of at-home workouts and Zoom meetings, Alex Koller and Ema Schumer reported for The Harvard Crimson, the student paper.
  • Connie Chang’s daughter started the school year in distance learning. But without constant surveillance, she could move freely through the internet with relative ease.
  • She spoke with experts and shared a few tips for other parents worried about dialing back the digital overload. Some suggestions: Normalize digital play and respect your child’s need for communication, while teaching children how to navigate the internet as a literate user.
woodlu

Nuclear energy united Europe. Now it is dividing the club | The Economist - 1 views

www.economist.com/...pe-now-it-is-dividing-the-club

shared by woodlu on 02 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • “The peaceful atom”, wrote Jean Monnet, the cognac salesman turned founding father of the EU, was to be “the spearhead for the unification of Europe”.
  • Europe was a nuclear project before it was much else. In 1957 the EU’s founding members signed the Treaty of Rome to form the European Economic Community, the club’s forebear. At the same time they put their names to a less well-known organisation: Euratom, which would oversee nuclear power on the continent.
  • Where nuclear power was once a source of unity for Europe, today it is a source of discord
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • Of the EU’s 27 countries, only 13 produce nuclear power. Some ban it. France and Germany, the two countries that dominate EU policymaking, find themselves directly opposed
  • France generates over 70% of its power from nuclear reactors
  • The reality of European politics is kaleidoscopic
  • Is nuclear power green (since it emits very little carbon dioxide) or not (because nuclear accidents, though extremely rare, are dangerous)?
  • How the EU is managing the decision reveals a lot about the club.
  • politics
  • Franco-German engine sputtering on nuclear policy, unlikely alliances have formed. France and the likes of Poland and the Czech Republic are usually sparring partners.
  • Countries in eastern Europe see the French as protectionists who suck up to Russia
  • when it comes to nuclear power the two are firm pals. It is tempting to carve the EU into simple blocs,
  • Nuclear policy is a reminder that fates in the EU are bound together, whether the topic is energy, the environment or the economy
  • Germany has pledged to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022
  • Countries from Belgium to Bulgaria followed
  • scrapping plans to build nuclear power stations and pledging to switch others off
  • Europe falling back in love with nuclear power is just one example of the many policy debates heading in a French direction
  • Nuclear power is another debate in which Paris gets its way.
  • the EU is a dealmaking machine, with consensus forged via a mix of bribery, blackmail and back-scratching.
  • Gas power is undergoing the same kinds of debate as nuclear power. While gas generates carbon emissions, it is cleaner than coal, argue its supporters.
  • If the politics are linked, so are the policy consequences
  • A likely compromise is that while stiff rules could remain for day-to-day spending, countries could be able to spend more freely in the name of the green transition. If nuclear power is labelled green in the private sector, it becomes harder to avoid a similar designation when it comes to public money
  • On paper the European Commission, which makes the initial decision on how to treat nuclear power, is full of civil servants who offer technocratic answers. In practice, they know the question of nuclear power is political. They also know that life will be easier if they answer it quickly, preferably before a new German government containing a virulently anti-nuclear Green party is formed
  • Germany is likely to be on the losing side. It gave up on nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown in Japan
  • those countries that pride themselves on only using the cleanest energy will benefit from those that rely on more debatable sources.
  • The EU is an increasingly homogenous beast, with fewer carve-outs for those who want to do things differently. Collective decisions have collective outcomes. “To approach our atomic future separately…would have been insane,” wrote Monnet. The EU will approach its atomic future together, whether some countries like it or no
sidneybelleroche

Live updates: Ukraine-Russia crisis - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis

shared by sidneybelleroche on 22 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stopped the progression of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline following Moscow’s actions in eastern Ukraine. The pipeline, which would have increased European reliance on energy from Russia, has been a major source of contention in Europe and the United States for years. Without undergoing the certification or approval process, the pipeline cannot start running. 
  • Prime Minister Boris Johnson has unveiled the "first tranche" of British sanctions on Russia, condemning Vladimir Putin's Ukraine aggression.
  • The European Commission proposed sanctions to EU members states and placed a particular emphasis that would mirror sanctions taken in Crimea after the 2014 annexation by Moscow.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Sources say US and European officials have been in intense discussions over the several past hours over how to proceed with additional sanctions against Russia.
  • Monday's sanctions were cautious in nature and Tuesday's sanctions are expected to go further but it will not be the full blow that the US has previewed, pending "further actions" by Russia.
  • President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognize breakaway eastern Ukrainian territories, calling it “unacceptable," and saying it is contrary to the Minsk Agreements.
  • China's Foreign Ministry evaded more than a dozen questions on Ukraine in its daily briefing on Tuesday. In his responses, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin reiterated that any country’s “legitimate security concerns should be respected” and urged all parties to "exercise restraint.” Beijing is navigating a complex position as it attempts to balance deepening ties with Moscow with its practiced foreign policy of staunchly defending state sovereignty.
Javier E

It's the end of the West as we know it - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-977a-1030f822fc35_story.html

foreign policy NATO alliances trump crisis policy West

shared by Javier E on 16 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • It is only with effort that the leaders of Europe have managed to compose themselves after the U.S. election, torn between pure shock over the result and the necessity of preserving what can be preserved of the West and the Atlantic relationship.
  • this is the end of the West as we know it.
  • For more than half a century, this story of phenomenal success has been built on a commitment to freedom and democracy, free trade, solid alliances and reliable friendships.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • There has been a recognition that this aim is best furthered by the process of European integration centered on the European Union. A Europe that starts fracturing will be a less stable and, in the longer perspective, also a more dangerous Europe.
  • A peaceful, free and prosperous Europe has been a key strategic U.S. interest.
  • But all of this has been either attacked or questioned by Trump.
  • When Trump receives the jubilant British anti-Europe campaigner Nigel Farage before seeing other foreign politicians, he is sending the worst possible signal to Europe. By design or by default, he transmits a signal of support to those dark forces in various countries trying to undo what generations of U.S. and European statesmen have worked to achieve.
  • But the list of European concerns certainly doesn’t end there. It also includes his talk of abrogating the Paris global climate agreement, undermining the Iran deal, questioning important free-trade agreements — signature achievements and goals of the past few years that are suddenly up in the air.
  • Europe certainly has nothing against good relations with Russia, but they have to be based on rolling back aggression against Ukraine, ceasing silent cyber-operations and respecting the rules agreed upon between nations.
  • he should see the imperative of trade deals on the free-trade terms of the West, rather than allow a world dominated by the rules-free mercantilist approach of a China that will always give priority to its own gains. A tra
maddieireland334

Europe's migrant deal with Turkey may be unraveling. But it was flawed from the start. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html

Migrant Crisis Europe Turkey Refugees

shared by maddieireland334 on 26 May 16 - No Cached
  • Growing tensions between Europe and Turkey over elements of a deal to end the refugee crisis are raising fears that the accord, signed by the two sides in March, may already be on the verge of collapse.
  • The latest sign of trouble came this week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned European leaders that he would block the deal if the European Union refused to lift visa restrictions for Turks
  • steps
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The agreement is based on the premise that Turkey, which hosts more than 2 million Syrian refugees, is safe for asylum seekers and that returning migrants to Turkish territory does not violate European or international law.
  • Last week, a Greek tribunal ruled that a Syrian national who had appealed his deportation from Europe could stay on the island of Lesbos. The court said there is no guarantee refugees will be provided full protection in Turkey.
  • More than 1 million refugees and migrants reached European shores in 2015 in one of the largest mass migration movements since World War II.
  • Most of the refugees had crossed the sea from Turkey to Greece to get to Europe, and E.U. leaders needed to strike a deal with the Turkish government.
  • The E.U. offered more than $6 billion in funds to help Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance, cope with its refugee population.
  • And policymakers agreed that for every Syrian returned to Turkey under the E.U. deal, another Syrian refugee already residing in Turkey would be resettled to Europe.
  • “The management of the deal is inadequate . . . and the Greek government is reluctant to send anyone back who might have vulnerability,” Collett said. “The challenge now is predicting whether or not [the deal] will unravel.”
  • Collett’s concerns were echoed in a report released this month by a European parliamentary delegation that visited detention facilities in Turkey.
  • In Turkey, pro-government newspapers churn out anti-E.U. columns on a near-daily basis, calling on Erdogan to spurn a “hypocritical” Europe.
  • “The deal isn’t on hold,” a senior Turkish official said this week. He spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with government protocol. “Turkey maintains an open-door policy” toward refugees, he said.
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