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For weeks, Canadian political leaders in virus hotspots have barred dine-in eating, closed gyms and theaters, and restricted large gatherings.

With a surge in cases ongoing and more holidays to come on the calendar, many hospitals in Canada are now activating surge capacity plans, adding temporary Covid-19 units and more acute care beds.

"Clearly, even though we haven't, in Canada, experienced one of the catastrophic scenarios we fretted over in April, we shouldn't feel too safe," Dr. Francois Lamontagne, a clinician and scientist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, told CNN.

But Lamontagne said he's also concerned about how some people now distrust authorities and the medical advice they dispense about the virus.

The United States has recorded more than 9.1 million infections and 230,548 deaths during the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recently released guidance on holiday gatherings and what Americans need to be aware of before traveling, hosting or attending parties -- or just gathering with family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The lowest risk for contracting the highly infectious virus or spreading it is simply celebrating Thanksgiving in your own home with members of your household and/or virtually with extended family, the CDC said.

Traveling during the holidays, on planes or public transportation, increases the chances of catching and spreading Covid-19 because it increases exposure to the virus, the CDC said in its holiday guidelines.

“I did a focus group tonight with women who voted for Trump in 2016,” Ms. Longwell wrote. “Not a single one was planning to vote for him again.”

In other words, Mr. Trump’s effort smacked of a too-late, too-lame apology to an ex who has long since moved on. It also underscored Mr. Trump’s special knack for making statements (or sending tweets) that are perfectly suited to being clipped, saved and hurled back in his face when facts contradict him later on, or in real time. Mr. Trump has proved himself, again and again, a grand master of delivering famous last words.

Mr. Trump seems to be tempting fate on a daily basis since he himself became infected.

He has said he is a “perfect physical specimen,” feels better than he did 20 years ago and is now “immune” from the disease — never mind that the course of the coronavirus has shown itself to be treacherous and unpredictable.

It kicked off on Day 2 when the first of four Trump White House press secretaries, Sean Spicer, claimed that the crowd gathered for Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” Overhead photos of Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd next to Mr. Obama’s proved this remark to be ridiculous, period.

He already boasted a long rap sheet of “unfortunate remarks,” all readily captured and spread via video, Twitter, TikTok and wherever else famous last words get immortalized these days.

“We have it totally under control,” Mr. Trump said in January on CNBC, an opening salvo of denial that would soon be hung around his neck.

He continues to insist that the virus is “disappearing,” an assertion flatly contradicted by rising rates of infection across much of the country in recent days.

Every president typically gets one or two shudder-worthy sound bites on their permanent record. President Barack Obama promised that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” under his health care plan, a proposition that proved false during the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act in 2013.

“Politicians are always going to say things they regret,” said Victoria Clarke, a longtime Republican communications strategist who has advised several elected officials and administrations

Traditionally, presidents have tried to avoid making statements that might prove embarrassing later on

But the response to the coronavirus has placed the White House’s pre-existing condition on, well, steroids.

The current outbreak in the White House has been accompanied by a video parade of “unfortunate remarks” — or, depending on your point of view, a rampage of karma.

Kayleigh McEnany, testing positive last week was accompanied by a now-infamous clip from a Fox News interview Ms. McEnany gave in February. “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here,” vowed the then-future press secretary.

Likewise, when Kellyanne Conway, a former senior White House adviser, revealed her own coronavirus diagnosis, numerous news media outlets and Twitter feeds resurrected an oft-mocked statement she made about the still-emerging outbreak in March. “It is being contained,” vowed Ms. Conway

“No president can go four years without making a comment that can be considered a ‘gotcha moment,’” said Erik Smith, a veteran Democratic spokesman and operative. “But this president seems to pile them up like cordwood and take joy in it.”

It has lent the president a level of credibility as a “straight shooter,” even as he has been caught in thousands of false statements, dubious boasts and comical reassurances.

“It affects virtually nobody!” Mr. Trump declared of the coronavirus at a packed rally in Ohio last month — another remark that would go literally viral. It did not age well.

it wears off faster among the young and energetic than among the older, more world-weary but also more patient

Middle-class Singaporean families often refer to themselves nowadays as the “sandwich generation,” by which they mean that between needing to care for elderly parents and spending heavily on tuition or tutoring and uniforms for school-age children, they have little left to spend on themselves

There are more than 10,000 cases, and numbers are rising fast. More than 800 cases were registered in just five and a half days this past week, more than the previous all-time record for a full week.

The Singaporean system lacks an open-ended entitlement akin to the U.S. Social Security system. It uses a market-based system with much to commend it, but it isn’t perfect. The system is designed to rely in part on multigenerational families taking care of the elderly, so as is the case everywhere, when a family doesn’t cohere well for one reason or another, its elderly members often suffer most.

with the coming of Singapore’s second monsoon season, the island is suffering the worst bout of dengue fever infections in more than a decade.

Few realize that military power can do more than either compel or deter. Most of the time most military power in the hands of a status quo actor like the United States neither compels nor deters; it “merely” reassures, except that over time there is nothing mere about it

He proceeded to explain that the U.S. effort in Vietnam had already bought the new nations of Southeast Asia shelter from communist onslaught for three to four precious years.

LKY’s son, current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, repeated the same conclusion in a recent Foreign Affairs essay. He added that ever since the Vietnam War era, regardless of the end of the Cold War and dramatic changes in China, the U.S. role in East Asia has been both benign—he did not say error-free—and stabilizing.

More than that, U.S. support for an expanding free-trade accented global economic order has enabled Singapore to surf the crest of burgeoning economic growth in Asia, becoming the most successful transshipment platform in history. It has enabled Singapore to benefit from several major technological developments—containerization is a good example—that have revolutionized international trade in manufactures

No country in the world has benefited more than Singapore from U.S. postwar grand strategy, except perhaps China. Which is an interesting observation, often made here, in its own right.

The most important of these reasons—and, I’ve learned, the hardest one for foreigners to understand—is that the Protestant/Enlightenment DNA baked indelibly into the American personality requires a belief in the nation’s exceptionalist virtue to justify an activist role abroad

Singapore has ridden the great whale of Asian advancement in a sea of American-guaranteed tranquility.

Singapore’s approach to dealing with China has been one of strategic hedging. There is no getting around the need to cooperate economically and functionally with China, for Chinese influence permeates the entire region. Do a simple thought experiment: Even if Singaporeans determined to avoid China, how could they avoid the emanations of Chinese relations with and influence on Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, and Korea? Impossible.

Singapore’s close relationship with the United States needs to be seen as similarly enmeshed with the greater web of U.S. relationships in littoral Asia, as well as with India and the Middle East. It is misleading, therefore, to define the issue as one of Singapore’s confidence, or lack thereof, that the United States will come to Singapore’s aid and defense en extremis.

The utility of the U.S. role vis-à-vis China is mainly one of regional balancing that indirectly benefits Singaporean security.

Singapore’s hedging strategy, which reflects a similar disposition throughout Southeast Asia with variations here and there, only works within certain ranges of enabling reality. It doesn’t work if American power or will wanes too much, and it doesn’t work if the broader Sino-American regional balance collapses into glaring enmity and major-power conflict.

Over the past dozen years the worry has been too much American waning, less of capability than of strategic attention, competence, and will. Now, over the past year or two, the worry has shifted to anxiety over potential system collapse into conflict and even outright war.

It’s no fun being a sentient ping pong ball between two behemoths with stinging paddles, so they join together in ASEAN hoping that this will deflect such incentives. It won’t, but people do what they can when they cannot do what they like.

the flat-out truth: The United States is in the process of doing something no other great power in modern history has ever done. It is knowingly and voluntarily abdicating its global role and responsibilities

One Lee Kuan Yew vignette sums up the matter. In the autumn of 1968, at a dinner in his honor at Harvard, the Prime Minister had to sit through a litany of complaints from leading scholars about President Johnson’s disastrously escalatory war policies in Vietnam. When they were through, no doubt expecting sympathy from an Asian leader, LKY, never one to bite his tongue, turned on his hosts and announced: “You make me sick.”

The recessional began already at the end of the George W. Bush Administration, set roots during the eight years of the Obama presidency, and became a bitter, relentless, tactless, and barely shy of mad obsession during the Trump presidency.

the strategy itself is unlikely to be revivified for several reasons.

It is troubled within, so is internally directed for reasons good and otherwise. Thus distracted from the rest of the world in a Hamlet-like act sure to last at least a decade, it is unlikely ever to return in full to the disinterested, active, and constructive role it pioneered for itself after World War II.

When, for justifiable reasons or not, the nation loses its moral self-respect, it cannot lift its chin to look confidently upon the world, or bring itself to ask the world to look upon America as a worthy model, let alone a leader.

That fact that most Americans today also increasingly see expansive international engagement as too expensive, too dangerous, too complex to understand, and unhelpful either to the “main street” American economy or to rock-bottom American security, is relevant too

the disappearance of a single “evil” adversary in Soviet communism, the advent of near-permanent economic anxiety punctuated by the 2008-9 Great Recession—whatever numbers the stock market puts up—and the sclerotic polarization of American politics have left most Americans with little bandwidth for foreign policy narratives.

Few listen to any member of our tenured political class with the gumption to argue that U.S. internationalism remains in the national interest. In any event, few try, and even fewer manage to make any sense when they do.

In that context, pleas from thoughtful observers that we must find a mean between trying to do too much and doing too little are likely to be wasted. No thoughtful, moderate approach to any public policy question can get an actionable hearing these days.

what has happened to “the America I knew and so admired” that its people could elect a man like Donald Trump President? How could a great country deteriorate so quickly from apparent competence, lucidity of mind, and cautious self-confidence into utterly debilitating spasms of apparent self-destruction?

The political culture as a whole has become a centrism incinerator, an immoderation generator, a shuddering dynamo of shallow intellectual impetuosity of every description.

in the wake of the George Floyd unrest one side thinks a slogan—“law and order”—that is mighty close to a dogwhistle for “shoot people of color” can make it all better, while the other side advocates defunding or abolishing the police, for all the good that would do struggling inner-city underclass neighborhoods.

To any normal person these are brazenly unserious propositions, yet they suck up nearly all the oxygen the U.S. media has the inclination to report about. The optic once it reaches Singapore, 9,650 miles away, is one of raving derangement.

Drop any policy proposal into any of the great lava flows of contemporary American irrationality and any sane center it may possess will boil away into nothingness in a matter of seconds

It’s hard for many to let go of hoary assurances about American benignity, constancy, and sound judgment

It is a little like trying to peel a beloved but thoroughly battered toy out of the hands of a four-year old. They want to hold onto it, even though at some level they know it’s time to loosen their grip.

Since then the mendacious narcissism of Donald Trump, the eager acquiescence to it of nearly the entire Republican Party, and its deadly metathesis in the COVID-19 and George Floyd contexts, have changed their questions. They no longer ask how this man could have become President. Now they ask where is the bottom of this sputtering cacophonous mess? They ask what will happen before and then on and after November 3

Singapore’s good fortune in recent decades is by no means entirely an accident of its ambient geostrategic surroundings, but it owes much to those surroundings. While Singaporeans were honing the arts of good government, saving and investing in the country, educating and inventing value-added jobs for themselves, all the while keeping intercommunal relations inclined toward greater tolerance and harmony, the world was cooperating mightily with their ambitions. At the business end of that world was the United States

The U.S. grand strategy of providing security goods to the global commons sheltered Singapore’s efforts in more ways than one over the years

In 1965, when Singapore was thrust into independence from the Malaysian union, a more fraught environment could barely have been imagined. Indonesia was going crazy in the year of living dangerously, and the konfrontasi spilled over violently onto Singapore’s streets, layering on the raw feelings of race riots here in 1964. Communist Chinese infiltration of every trade union movement in the region was a fact of life, not to exclude shards of Singapore’s, and the Cultural Revolution was at full froth in China. So when U.S. Marines hit the beach at Da Nang in February 1965 the independence-generation leadership here counted it as a blessing.

this is exactly the problem now: Those massively benign trends are at risk of inanition, if not reversal.

While China is no longer either Marxist or crazy, as it was during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, it is still Leninist, as its recent summary arrogation of Hong Kong’s negotiated special status shows. It has meanwhile grown mighty economically, advanced technologically at surprising speed, and has taken to investing grandly in its military capabilities. Its diplomacy has become more assertive, some would even say arrogant, as its Wolf Warrior nationalism has grown

The downward economic inflection of the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing economic strains

Albert Jones Jr., Warren's campaign treasurer, and Rosalind Brooks-Harris, who was the treasurer of a political action committee for Warren and now serves as Rochester's finance director, also entered not guilty pleas.

a grand jury handed up indictments, which include a first-degree charge of scheme to defraud and campaign finance violations "for the purpose of evading the contribution limits set by law."

"I don't believe this affects her ability to serve as the mayor,

While Warren has resisted calls thus far to resign, the charges will surely be damaging to her reelection prospects. She plans to seek another term when the current one expires at the end of next year

Prosecutors would not disclose the specific amount of the alleged violation, but they suggested it could be several hundred thousand dollars.

Mayoral business needs to continue. I don't want to disrupt that and I want us to continue in our community," she added.

The mayor has not commented publicly since the indictment was announced. However, an attorney for Warren told WXXI that she is innocent of the charges.

"She did not knowingly violate the law and she's anxious to get this process started and she's ready to go to trial."

Both charges are nonviolent Class E felonies, which if convicted, carry a range of sentences from no jail time to four years in prison, according to Rochester-based NPR member station WXXI. Warren could also lose her law license if found guilty. According to state law, a felony conviction would also be grounds for removal from office.

Warren's office has previously said she was not informed of the full details of Prude's death until August, roughly five months after he died following an encounter with police. Critics have called that timeline into question.

Prude had suffered from mental health issues, when was fatally restrained by police in Rochester. Prude's brother called 911 to report Prude was missing and suffering from a mental health crisis. When police encountered Prude, he was naked and there are reports that he said he had the coronavirus. Police handcuffed Prude and placed a mesh covering over his head, known as a "spit hood," to prevent him from spitting and biting.

Officers then held his head to the ground.

Last month, Warren fired then-police chief La'Ron Singletary, two weeks before he planned to step down from the post. Warren has also requested federal investigations and citywide reforms since Prude's death became widely known following the release of police footage last month. The footage sparked protests and accusations of a police cover-up.

other experts on the committee said all available evidence indicated the vaccine is safe and effective for nursing home residents and older Americans generally.

As people age, bodily defenses against pathogens weaken, and the response to vaccines also falters.

“We have a clear and present danger of Covid, and we have social isolation,” Dr. Farrell said. “We know that that’s an independent risk factor for mortality, even stronger than individual chronic diseases.”

“For many, the immune response can sometimes be diminished or dampened or delayed,”

“When you’ve come to near-death experiences twice, volunteering for a vaccine trial — it wasn’t a great sense of worry or apprehension for me,”

Some people worry, incorrectly, that the vaccine may somehow give them Covid-19. In fact, the vaccine carries instructions to make only a single protein from the virus.

Every time she gets a flu shot, Ms. Ebrani said, she feels unwell for three days, with headaches and a deep exhaustion. But she gets that vaccine anyway, because she feels healthy the rest of the year and because her doctor has told her she should.

The problem was that, once the initial euphoria wore off, the public wasn’t much interested in it. Coverage in print media remained solid, but cable-news coverage of Afghanistan dropped off quickly, especially once

“America’s not at war” was a common refrain among the troops. “We’re at war. America’s at the mall.”

now those same Americans have the full withdrawal from Afghanistan they apparently want: Some 70 percent of the public supports a pullout.

Not that they care that intensely about it; as the foreign-policy scholar Stephen Biddle recently observed, the war is practically an afterthought in U.S. politics. “You would need an electron microscope to detect the effect of Afghanistan on any congressional race in the last decade,” Biddle said early this year. “It’s been invisible.”

What the public does care about, however, is using Afghanistan as raw material for cheap patriotism and partisan attacks (some right and some wrong, but few of them in good faith) on every president since 2001.

nor did they want to think about whether “draining the swamp” and modernizing and developing Afghanistan (which would mean a lot more than a few elections) was worth the cost and effort.

Maybe it would have been worth it. Or maybe such a project was impossible. We’ll never know for certain, because American political and military leaders only tried pieces of several strategies, never a coherent whole, mostly to keep the costs and casualties down and to keep the war off the front pages and away from a public that didn’t want to hear about it

Nor did Americans ever consider whether or when Afghanistan, as a source of terrorist threats to the U.S., had been effectively neutralized. Nothing is perfect, and risks are never zero. But there was no time at which we all decided that “close enough” was good enough, and that we’d rather come home than stay.

Biden’s policy, of course, is not that different from Trump’s, despite all the partisan howling about it from Republicans. As my colleague David Frum has put it: “For good or ill, the Biden policy on Afghanistan is the same as the Trump policy, only with less lying.”

But as comforting as it would be to blame Obama and Trump, we must look inward and admit that we told our elected leaders—of both parties—that they were facing a no-win political test. If they chose to leave, they would be cowards who abandoned Afghanistan. If they chose to stay, they were warmongers intent on pursuing “forever war.”

A serious people—the kind of people we once were—would have made serious choices, long before this current debacle was upon them. They would today be trying to learn something from nearly 2,500 dead service members and many more wounded

Biden was right, in the end, to bite the bullet and refuse to pass this conflict on to yet another president

His execution of this resolve, however, looks to be a tragic and shameful mess and will likely be a case study in policy schools for years to come. But there was no version of “Stop the forever war” that didn’t end with the fall of Kabul

before we move on, before we head back to the mall, before we resume posting memes, and before we return to bickering with each other about whether we should have to mask up at Starbuck’s, let us remember that this day came about for one reason, and one reason only.Because it is what we wanted.

Growing evidence points to a connection between destructive environmental practices and emerging diseases.

Of more than 330 diseases which emerged between 1940 and 2004, nearly two-thirds were zoonotic, meaning they were transmitted from animals to humans, as with, for example, HIV/AIDS and probably covid-19.

over 70% originated in wildlife,

Replacing old-growth forests with a single crop, such as oil palm, can also lead to the transmission of disease. If predators’ habitats are destroyed and their populations dwindle, other creatures such as rodents, mosquitoes, bats and some primates can proliferate.

scientists are increasingly turning their attention to how altering land interferes with a pathogen’s journey from animals to humans

felling trees increases contact between humans and disease-carrying animals

correlation between the loss of forests in west and central Africa and outbreaks of Ebola between 2004 and 2014

Cutting down trees may also increase the threat to humans posed by viral infections transmitted through mosquito bites, such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya.

link between changes in global forest cover between 1990 and 2016 and an increase in reported epidemics, even accounting for the fact that deforestation usually means more humans living nearby

Wildlife may also move towards human settlements in search of food. Mango trees planted on pig farms in Malaysia probably attracted fruit bats carrying nipah, a virus that infected local pig farmers in 1999 and still breaks out yearly in Bangladesh.

in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person pneumonically, or through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats.

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis.

However, Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa

Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment – retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

The United States, Europe and China are, in different ways, all speeding up the transition to a green economy.

The first to go is the era of easy money. This isn’t a short-term response to President Biden’s much-needed post-pandemic fiscal stimulus. (In fact, that stimulus is exactly what kept the U.S. economy resilient while peers flagged, according to a recent New York Fed report.

This is a return to an economy that is more rational and hardheaded. Not all companies, or stocks, are created equal. Many have too much debt on their books.

Years of easy money propped up everything. A higher cost of capital will be painful temporarily, but it will give markets what they’ve needed for years — a reason for investors to sort out risky investments

Cheap energy is over, too. One outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the realization (especially in Europe) that getting crucial commodities from autocrats is never a good idea

At home, that means more wind and solar farms, more electric cars and more diverse supply chains to build it all. This will be inflationary in the short term, as it means manufacturing new products and investing in new technologies

The bond market won’t like it, and there will be calls to return to the old ways, particularly if inflation continues to bite.

But it will be strongly deflationary if we can make the shift.

Finally, the era of cheap labor has ended

Wages are rising, and we’ve seen more labor activity, including strikes, this year than in the past four decades. More will follow. This is an appropriate response to decades of wage stagnation amid record corporate profits

Unions, but also non-union workers in many areas of the economy including construction and manufacturing, have been buoyed by the largest infrastructure investment since the 1950s — which has given them negotiating power that they haven’t had in years

Meanwhile, companies in the service sector are reconsidering their usual hire-and-fire-fast approach, having been trained by the pandemic to hang onto employees as long as possible.

Yes, artificial intelligence could throw a spammer in all this. CEOs are looking to use it to bring down labor costs. But workers today are becoming more proactive about demanding more control of both trade and technology;

The end of cheap is a huge shift. It means Main Street rather than Wall Street will drive the economy. It will make for a more balanced and resilient economy.

All of that is going away or gone. A decade and a half of go-go speculation is finished. The era of cheap is kaput.

cheap isn’t really cheap. It’s just putting your troubles on layaway.

Now, students will participate in a jigsaw activity. Below are three articles about three different student populations that have been affected by the war in Ukraine. Assign each student, or have them choose, one of the articles to become an “expert” in. Make sure there are about an even number of students reading each article.

5. What are some of the fears or challenges teachers themselves are facing because of the war?6. You’ve read one of three articles about what education is like for a specific group of students. What role is school serving for the group you read about? Is there anything more schools could be doing to support these young people? If so, what and why?

What role can schools serve, even during war? How important do you think education is in a time like this? Do you believe educators should teach about what is happening in Ukraine? How do you think they should handle this sensitive subject?

Many teachers answered our call in mid-March to tell us how they were addressing the war in their classrooms. Here are some responses that show the many ways, large and small, that educators have sought to help their students understand the conflict and its roots, the plight of the Ukrainian people, the role of the United States and more. They have been edited for length and clarity.

I was shocked at how hungrily they soaked up the information, especially once Russia officially invaded Ukraine. These 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds wanted to learn more about what was happening in their world in the “right way” — via vetted news sources, exactly as you mentioned. After each episode, we discussed positives that we heard, we shared “wonders” (the things that we want to find more information on), and we shared one word to summarize the new information.

That day, my students’ remarks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine fit into five categories: empathy for the people of Ukraine, fear of World War III, criticism of Putin, criticism of memes that treat the invasion as a joke, and geopolitical curiosity.

Students then created infographics on Canva to illustrate their learning. Synthesizing that learning into smaller, digestible data bites helped them to make sense of such large, challenging concepts. Here are four examples of their work.

When discussing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that consisted of orienting everyone to where this conflict is happening geographically and what cities and countries are involved. We spoke about the history of NATO, key leaders, the concept of trade and supply chains — basically defining the common vocabulary and giving everyone the same tools for discussion.

That’s how I realized that my students needed to talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a result, I took the following steps the next day, with positive results.

As part of a larger project on the theme of “nostalgia,” students were asked to think of a family recipe that made them nostalgic. But we also talked about the food that brings us comfort no matter where we find ourselves. To help students connect to the Ukrainian people, we talked about the comforts of borscht with information from this article about a chef who is leading a drive to recognize the soup as a Ukrainian cultural heritage.

Teaching about Russia and Ukraine this spring encompassed history, vocabulary, maps, graphs, and photo analysis. We began with a brainstorm about what students had heard about what was happening with Ukraine and Russia. Then students moved on to define terms like Soviet Union, Cold War and NATO, and worked together to combine their definitions into one “best definition.” This vocabulary work set them up to read the Times article about what was happening in Ukraine as Russia invaded, annotating in the

Part of what has made the coverage of the war in Ukraine compelling is my students seeing visual inversions of their own lives. There’s a photo of a grandmother, but she’s holding an assault rifle. There are teenagers, not much older than they are, running drills. There’s a teacher, but instead of trying to manage a class, she’s barely managing to hold it together.

What do you notice about how the person is framed in the photograph?What is the posture? Where is their gaze?Imagine what they might be thinking as they gaze out of the frame.

This is an excellent piece to use when considering primary and secondary audiences, purpose, appeals, and overall effectiveness. It is also a story we can track to see if the speech moves anyone in Congress to change their position on the type of support to provide Ukraine.

Does the American government favor any countries over other countries? What is the policy that guides the American government when dealing with other countries?How does the American government handle disagreements with other countries?Which countries are American allies, or friends?Which are America’s traditional enemies? How is this determined? Does that history matter?

How does President Biden “create the enemy?” Why should America follow this course of action? What is he suggesting will happen if America does not? What does America stand to gain from this plan? Are potential losses discussed?Note patterns in rhetorical appeals, diction, values and themes. What assumptions does President Biden make about the American character or national identity? In what ways do American mythologies seem to bolster a “single story” of foreign policy?

Begins.” Students took notes on the use of ethos, pathos and logos in the construction of the podcast. They also responded to the importance of having free and independent journalists report on the war.

“We Lived Happily During the War,” “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Dancing.”

E.I.H.R. cultivates partnerships among educators globally to create materials and deliver training based on best practices in Holocaust and human rights education. Together we deliver content and strategies for teaching conflict history and prevention, and sustainable peace. They have been building resources for teachers about Ukraine since Feb. 24, including this webinar on Understanding the Crisis in Ukraine from March 19.

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis outlines the ways in which citizens should love their nations.

healthy patriotism is rooted in this deep and natural sense of home, it rebukes any sense of chauvinism or xenophobia. “In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners,” Lewis says, “How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs.” 

“As the family offers us the first step beyond self-love,” writes Lewis, “so this offers us the first step beyond family selfishness.” 

Critically, love of country rooted in love of home “is not in the least aggressive.” It “asks only to be let alone.” That’s not to say that it’s pacifistic, but “it becomes militant only to protect what it loves.” 

he uses a key word—“home.” He compares the love of your country to the “love of home, of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes; and of all places fairly near these and fairly like them; love of old acquaintances, of familiar sights, sounds and smells.” 

Because

It is this sense of peace and place that echoes in the prophet Micah’s words: “Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”

No one claims that Ukraine is a perfect country.

, it is “not in the least aggressive.” It “asks only to be let alone.” As a nation that has endured its own aggressive attacks, how can we not empathize? How can we not do what we reasonably can to deter Russian aggression and help Ukrainians defend themselves?

But this moment should cast our existing obligations in a different light, reaffirming their immense value.

In fact, it is our understanding of the value of our national home—and the deeply destabilizing and violent pain of the loss of others’ national homes—that leads to the network of defensive alliances that has maintained great power peace for so long.

NATO is not “American imperialism.” Our defensive alliances in Asia aren’t the result of “imperial overreach.” To continue the comparison to home, a defensive alliance is akin to a neighborhood watch, where neighbors look after and protect each other.

It is no coincidence, however, that the unhealthy nationalism of the modern incarnation of America First does seek to repeat those past mistakes

the reason isn’t just tactical or strategic, it’s philosophical—rooted in temptations and vices that Lewis warns against in the Four Loves. 

Essentially, the warning is against a sense of superiority—about both the past and present. As Lewis said, a love of country can lead to a “particular attitude to our country’s past” that has “not quite such good credentials as the sheer love of home.” 

“The actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doings … The heroic stories,” Lewis writes, “if taken to be typical, give a false impression of it

Why is that dangerous? Why is it so important to understand history in full?

At worst we can hold the “firm, even prosaic belief that our own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and still is markedly superior to all others.” This belief “can produce asses that kick and bite.” “On the lunatic fringe,” Lewis warned, “It may shade off into that popular Racialism which Christianity and science equally forbid.”

Interestingly enough, the sense of superiority can create the same outcome as the sense of national self-loathing you sometimes see on far-left and far-right.

The chauvinist has no concern beyond our borders. The angry critic says we have no right to demonstrate concern, so long as we are still so flawed

the result is similar—an insular people, focused on themselves.

A criminal regime is on the verge of kicking down the door of a national home, and our nation should stand with the innocent, with those who wish to be left alone. We are all Ukrainians now. 

Russia’s status in the world has abruptly and obviously changed. Russians cannot escape their isolation as long as they cannot watch Netflix, access TikTok, or see their footballers play in international competitions. Pro-regime oligarchs, who once spent holidays in Europe, bought mansions in Mayfair, and visited their children at English private schools, now face visa restrictions and asset seizures. They have been denied the ability to use the rest of the continent as their gilded playground.

When a Russian spymaster complains about his country’s cancellation, our response should not be to laugh at an idiot confusing a culture war and a real one. Instead, we should recognize that economic and social isolation is a powerful weapon, and resolve to use it with the same restraint as any other weapon.

Russia and Ukraine are major wheat exporters, while Russia and Belarus (a Russian proxy) are big in potash, an input into fertilisers.

Their delivery might be disrupted if physical infrastructure such as pipelines or Black Sea ports are destroyed. Alternatively, deeper sanctions on Russia’s commodity complex could prevent Western customers from buying from it.

Sanctions after the invasion of Crimea did not prevent BP, ExxonMobil or Shell from investing in Russia, while American penalties on Rusal, a Russian metals firm, in 2018 were short-lived.

Russia may retaliate by deliberately creating bottlenecks that raise prices. America may lean on Saudi Arabia to increase oil production and prod its domestic shale firms to ramp up output.

America is thus likely to put much tougher Huawei-style sanctions on Russian tech firms, limiting their access to cutting-edge semiconductors and software, and also blacklist Russia’s largest two banks, Sberbank and VTB, or seek to cut Russia off from the SWIFT messaging system that is used for cross-border bank transfers.

The banking restrictions will bite immediately, causing a funding crunch and impeding financial flows in and out of the country.

Russia will turn to China for its financial needs. Already trade between the two countries has been insulated from Western sanctions, with only 33% of payments from China to Russia now taking place in dollars, down from 97% in 2014.

if we are agreed that Beijing looks set to stop the largest property boom in history without unleashing a systemic financial crisis, it is doing something truly remarkable. It is setting a new standard in economic policy.

Is this perhaps what policy looks like if it actually takes financial stability seriously? And if we look in the mirror, why aren’t we applauding more loudly?

Add to real estate the other domestic factor roiling the Chinese financial markets: Beijing’s remarkable humbling of China’s platform businesses, the second-largest cluster of big tech in the world. That too is without equivalent anywhere else.

Beijing’s aim is to ensure that gambling on big tech no longer produces monopolistic rents. Again, as a long-term policy aim, can one really disagree with that?

we have two dramatic and deliberate policy-induced shocks of the type for which there is no precedent in the West. Both inflict short-term pain with a view to longer-term social, economic and financial stability.

Ultimately political economy determines the conditions for long-run growth. So if you had to bet on a regime, which might actually have what it takes to break a political economy impasse, to humble vested interests and make a “big play” on structural change, which would it be? The United States, the EU or Xi’s China?

Beijing’s challenge right now is to manage the fall out from the two most dramatic development policies the world has ever seen, the one-child policy and China’s urbanisation, plus the historic challenge of big tech — less a problem specific to China than the local manifestation of what Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism”.

no, Xi’s regime has not yet presented a fully convincing substitute plan. But, as Michael Pettis has forcefully argued, China has options. There is an entire range of policies that Beijing could put in place to substitute for the debt-fuelled infrastructure and housing boom.

demography is normally treated as a natural parameter for economic activity. But in China’s case the astonishing fact is that the sudden ageing of its workforce is also a policy-induced challenge. It is a legacy of the one-child policy — the most gigantic and coercive intervention in human reproduction ever undertaken.

China needs to spend heavily on renewable energy and power distribution to break its dependence on coal. If it needs more housing, it should be affordable. All of this would generate more balanced growth. 5 per cent? Perhaps not, but certainly healthier and more sustainable.

If it has not so far pursued an alternative growth model in a more determined fashion, some of the blame no doubt falls on the prejudices of the Beijing policy elite. But even more significant are surely the entrenched interests of the infrastructure-construction-local government-credit machine, in other words the kind of political economy factors that generally inhibit the implementation of good policy.

The problem is only too familiar in the West. In Europe and the US too, such interest group combinations hobble the search for new growth models. In the United States they put in doubt the possibility of the energy transition, the possibility of providing a healthcare system that is fit for purpose and any initiative on trade policy that involves widening market access.

First and foremost China needs a welfare state befitting of its economic development.

On balance, if you want to be part of history-making economic transformation, China is still the place to be. But it is undeniably shifting gear. And thanks to developments both inside and outside the country, investors will have to reckon with a much more complex picture of opportunity and risk. You are going to need to pick smart and follow the politics and geopolitics closely.

If on the other hand you want to invest in the green energy transition — the one big vision of economic development that the world has come up with right now — you simply have to have exposure to China, whether directly or indirectly by way of suppliers to China’s green energy sector. China is where the grand battle over the future of the climate is going to be fought. It will be a huge driver of innovation, capital accumulation and profit, the influence of which will be felt around the world.

it is one key area that both the Biden administration and the EU would like to “silo off” from other areas of conflict with China.

I worry that we may be too focused on the medium-term. Given the news out of Hong Kong and mainland China, Covid may yet come back to bite us.

Here too China is boxed in by its own success. It has successfully pursued a no-Covid policy, but due to the failing of the rest of the world, it has been left to do so in “one country”.

Until China finds some way to contain the risks, this is a story to watch. A dramatic Omicron surge across China would upend the entire narrative of the last two years, which is framed by Beijing success in containing the first wave.

Climate change isn’t the only problem. Cocoa crops in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where 60 percent of the world’s cocoa come from, may already be in “structural decline,” Debenham said, citing disease, aging cocoa trees, and illegal gold mining on farmland.

ore important, the farmers who tend to the crops can’t afford to invest in their farms to increase their yields and bolster resilience against climate change. The bleak outlook for cocoa farmers threatens to doom cocoa-growing in the region altogether. In Ghana, the average cocoa farmer is close to 50 years old. A new generation of farmers is needed to maintain the cocoa supply, but young people may just walk away from the industry.

Newer chocolate alternatives may provide more satisfying counterfeits. Win-Win isn’t the only start-up producing cocoa-free chocolate, which is similar in concept to animal-free meat. The company uses plant ingredients to emulate the flavor and texture of chocolate—as do its competitors Foreverland and Voyage Foods. Another firm, California Cultured, grows actual cacao cells in giant steel tanks.

Cocoa shortages will affect all kinds of chocolate, but mass-produced sweets may change beyond just the prices. The erratic temperatures brought about by climate change could change the flavor of beans, depending on where they are grown

Variability is a concern for commercial chocolate makers, who need to maintain consistent flavors across their products. They may counteract discrepancies among different batches of beans by combining them, then roasting them at a higher temperature,

Commercial chocolate makers may also tweak their recipes to amp up or mimic chocolate flavors without using more cocoa. These candies contain relatively little cacao to begin with; only 10 percent of a product’s weight must be cocoa in order to qualify as chocolate in the eyes of the FDA.

No matter how you look at it, the future of cocoa doesn’t look good. With less cocoa available all around, chocolate may become more expensive. For high-end chocolate brands, whose products use lots of cocoa, the recent price hikes are reportedly an existential threat.

So much of the appeal of cheap chocolate is that it’s always been there—whether in the form of a Hershey’s Kiss, Oreo cookies, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, or the shell of a fondant-filled egg. “You grow up with those tastes. It’s hard to fathom how pervasive it has been,” Carodenuto said. Chocolate lovers have weathered minor tweaks to these candies over the years, but the shifts happening today may be less tolerable—or at the very least more noticeable. The change that has been hardest to ignore is that cheap chocolate is no longer that cheap.

Those are revolutionary aspirations in that they reject not a policy consensus, but social and governing compacts that date to the Founding. (Or at least the end of the Civil War.)

Most revolutions are borne of dissatisfaction.

The Trumpian revolution, on the other hand, seems to be the product of decadent boredom commingled with casual nihilism.

Circumstances for our revolutionaries have never been better. They are so flush that they parade on their boats. And fly upside-down flags outside of their million-dollar suburban homes. And put stickers depicting a hogtied president on their $75,000 pickup trucks. All while posting angry memes to Facebook on their $1,000 iPhones.

Unlike normal revolutionaries, the Trumpist revolutionaries risk nothing. If their gambit succeeds, then they overturn the Constitutional order. And if it fails? They go back to their boats, and trucks, and good-paying jobs, and iPhones.

What’s more, this revolution has discovered that it gets as many bites at the apple as it likes. All defeats and setback are temporary. The movement lives to fight again. They can lose a dozen times—they only have to win once more.

Trumpist revolutionaries get to tell themselves that they are part of a historic, final battle—but also that if they lose, they get to keep their normal, pampered lives. And four years from now they can try again.

In sum: While the revolutionaries get to have their glamorous Götterdämmerung, over and over, the forces of the status quo have to defend against wave after wave of challenges. And it doesn’t matter how many authoritarian attempts are beaten back. There’s always another one looming.That is why you’re exhausted.

let’s be honest about human nature: Breaking things is fun. Especially when you don’t experience any consequences. But running around putting out fires, and cleaning up broken glass, and asking people to stop breaking things? That is not fun. It is enervating.

So while the revolutionary feels like a hero, you feel like a scold.

To paraphrase Mr. Cobb, once an idea has taken hold in society, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.

the Trumpist revolution’s weakness is that it has no ideas. It has goals, but these are motivated by nothing more than will-to-power. There is no logic—not even a faulty logic—behind them.7

How do we fight the exhaustion?First, we try to have some fun while we are scolding the twits and defending the imperfect status quo.Second, we remain fearless about the fight and clear eyed about reality.

Third, we organize and build communities to rally normal people to the cause of democracy.

The root causes of silence are not social solidarity but fear and futility. People bite their tongues when they doubt that it’s safe and worthwhile to speak up. Leaders who want to make informed decisions need to make it clear they value candid input.

Mr. Biden has done the opposite, declaring first that only the Lord almighty could change his mind and then saying that he’ll drop out only if polls say there’s no way for him to win. That sends a strong message

If you’re not an immortal being or a time traveler from the future, it’s pointless to share any concerns about the viability of his candidacy.

I’ve reminded them that they’re lucky to have a president who doesn’t punish dissenters with an indefinite prison sentence or a trial for treason. That diffusion of responsibility is a recipe for groupthink — if everyone leaves it to someone else, no one will end up speaking up.

Although it can help to assign devil’s advocates, it’s more effective to unearth them. Genuine dissenters argue more convincingly and get taken more seriously.

It’s time for Mr. Biden’s team to run an anonymous poll of advisers, governors and lawmakers. The results of the poll could be given to an honest broker — someone with a vested interest in winning the election rather than appeasing the president

To avoid pressure from the top, I might try a fishbowl format, asking Mr. Biden to listen first and speak last.

Over the past week, I’ve raised these ideas with several leaders close to the president who reached out for advice. They’ve each made it clear that they’re afraid to put their relationship on the line and they don’t think Mr. Biden will listen to them

Showing openness can raise people’s confidence, but it’s not always enough to quell their fear. In our research, Constantinos Coutifaris and I found that it helps for leaders to criticize themselves out loud. That way, instead of just claiming that they want the truth, they can show that they can handle the truth.

“President Biden, I know you believe that politicians shouldn’t let hubris cloud their judgment. I’m worried that people are telling you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. We know the good things that could happen if you run and win, but we also need to discuss the good things that could happen if you don’t run. You could be hailed as a hero like George Washington for choosing not to seek another term. Regardless of the result, you could make history through your selfless stewardship of the next generation. Personally, I don’t know if that’s the right decision. I just want to make sure it gets due consideration. Would you be open to hosting a meeting to hear the dissenting views?