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B Mannke

BBC News - Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-us-canada-25671970

shared by B Mannke on 09 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • 9 January 2014 Last updated at 14:25 ET Share this page Email Print Share this pageShareFacebookTwitter Chris Christie 'humiliated' by bridge-gridlock scandal Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "I am responsible for what happened" Continue reading the main story Related Stories Twitter drips with Christie snark Chris Christie's bridge-sized headache Christie: Republicans' best hope New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has fired an aide who allegedly orchestrated traffic mayhem to pursue a petty political vendetta. Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him.
  • Mr Christie, seen as a potential Republican White House candidate, apologised for the scandal, which he said "embarrassed and humiliated" him. The gridlock was allegedly engineered to punish a Democratic mayor who did not endorse the governor's re-election. Mr Christie denied any involvement, blaming "deceitful" staff.
  • "I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or execution," he said, "and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Asked about a 91-year-old woman who reportedly died after ambulance services were caught up in the gridlock, Mr Christie said that was "awful", though he added it was unclear whether the delay had contributed to her death.
  • "An apology today might be a bit premature. "I think this is a story that has not yet experienced its final chapter."
Javier E

Bringing Republicans to the Climate Change Table - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-the-climate-change-table.html

gop climate change compromise government

shared by Javier E on 13 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • What accounts for this remarkable collective turnaround, unique among political parties around the world, even as climate scientists have accumulated greater evidence of how humanity is dangerously altering the planet?
  • As it turned out, a well-financed push by fossil fuel interests to deny climate science dovetailed smoothly with the burst of anti-government anger that gave rise to the Tea Party from the depths of the Great Recession.
  • For the angry supporters of the Tea Party, opposed to government spending in almost any form, the prescription is anathema. “If you decide climate change is real, there must be a role for government to combat it. So the only way out is to deny it exists,” Mr. Karpinski said.
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  • This shift has made it impossible to pass any legislation through Congress to help deal with the problem. That has forced President Obama to adopt a different approach
  • After the 2010 defeat in the Senate of the so-called cap-and-trade strategy, which was originally a Republican idea, Mr. Obama has taken to using the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory powers under the Clean Air Act, circumventing Congress entirely.
  • Is it possible to turn the Republican Party around?It won’t be easy. Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are wedded to defending a declining coal industry and advancing the interests of oil companies, most clearly in their support for the Keystone pipeline. Many of the party’s lawmakers and presidential candidates get a lot of money from people like the Koch brothers, who have multimillion-dollar contributions for anybody who will stand against efforts to curb the use of fossil fuels.
  • there is more than money to the story. For many Republicans, climate change poses an existential quagmire. “To them it sounds like, ‘Everything we’ve been doing since the Industrial Revolution is going to kill us; the response must be a big government response and, by the way, it has to be international,’” said Mr. Goldston.
  • even Senator McCain has now walked away from his previous self, mocking President Obama for “saying that the biggest problem we have is climate change.”
  • climate change denial has never been particularly strong among street-level Republicans. Recent polls find that even conservative Republicans believe the climate is changing and humans are, to some extent, to blame.
  • Straight denial is getting tougher as the scientific consensus strengthens. And China’s efforts to cut emissions have defanged the argument that it is pointless for the United States to act alone.
  • In this context, the Obama administration’s strategy of using the Clean Air Act to force emissions cuts could help change the politics.
  • “Some Republican governors will start taking action because the alternative is for the federal government to impose something,” Mr. Goldston said. “This will change the politics
  • Mankiw, George W. Bush’s former top economic adviser, argues that putting a price on carbon emissions — the preferred prescription of economists across the political spectrum— could fit well within the Republican canon.
  • “People are afraid this is an excuse to raise taxes and expand government generally,” Professor Mankiw said. “We need to convince them this not a tax increase but a tax shift,” using revenue from a carbon tax to reduce, say, the Social Security payroll tax, while keeping the overall tax burden roughly the same.
Javier E

Eurozine - Multiculturalism at its limits? - Kenan Malik, Fero Sebej Managing diversity in the new Europe - 0 views

www.eurozine.com/...2011-01-18-debate-en.html

multiculturalism culture free speech politics public private racism diversity equality

shared by Javier E on 23 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • part of the problem is confusion over what we mean by multiculturalism. It can mean one of two things. First: diversity as lived experience. Second: multiculturalism as a political process.
  • To talk of diversity as lived experience is to talk of the experience of living in a society that, through mass immigration, has become more open, more vibrant and more cosmopolitan.
  • But multiculturalism as a political process has come to mean something very different, namely the process of managing that diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes. It's a process through which cultural differences are institutionalized, publicly affirmed, recognized and institutionalized; through which political
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  • why is diversity good? Diversity isn't good in and of itself; it's good because it allows us to expand our horizons, to break out of the boxes – by they cultural, ethnic, or religious – in which we find ourselves. To think about other values, other beliefs, other lifestyles, to make judgements upon those values and beliefs and lifestyles. To enter, in other words, into a dialogue, a debate, through which a more universal language of citizenship can arise. It is precisely such dialogue and debate that multiculturalism as a political process undermines and erodes in the name of "respect" and "tolerance".
  • I think the very notion of multiculturalism is an irrational one. It assumes from the start that societies are composed of cultures that somehow relate to each other externally, as it were. Here is one culture, here's another, and there's another, and these cultures then interact with each other. In fact cultures aren't like that: cultures are living, organic entities that constantly change. There is no such thing as a multicultural society. There are societies with a variety of cultural forms, beliefs, lifestyles, values – in fact, virtually every society embodies such diversity – but to say that is to say something very different thing to the claim that a society is "multicultural".
  • Societies have always been conflictual, riven by class differences, generational differences, gender differences, ideological differences. But today we tend to see social clashes in a very narrow way, in terms of religion, faith and culture, because we have come to see identity in very narrow ways. The debate about multiculturalism is a debate in which certain differences – culture, ethnicity and faith – have come to be regarded as important and others – such as class, say, or generation – as less relevant.
  • There are two ways over the past half-century in which we've stopped treating people as citizens. One is through racism. The racist says "you're not a citizen, you don't have full rights in this society because you have a different skin colour, you are foreign", etc. The second is multiculturalism. The multiculturalist says: "we treat you not as an individual citizen, but as a Muslim or a Hindu or a Sikh or a black". The irony is that multiculturalism developed as an attempt to combat the problems created by racism. But it has recreated many of the problems by treating people not as citizens but as members of groups, and by formulating public policy in relation to those groups and not in relation to the needs of individual citizens.
  • we have to say that the multicultural policies were flawed from the very beginning: it wasn't as if this was a good set of policies that somehow eroded over time. The fact is that it was a lot easier to combat racism by saying to people "go on, follow your own values, cultures, lifestyles, beliefs, we will fund your festival, your dance troupe, your cultural centre"... we used to call it the "saree, samosa and steel band brigade".
  • What has happened is that the very notion of equality has transformed over the last twenty years. Equality used to mean that everybody was treated the same despite their differences. Now it's come to me that everybody is treated differently because of those differences.
  • There are two problems with granting people rights by virtue of their belonging to a group, as opposed to their being citizens with specific social, economic and other needs. First, the group becomes a focus not only for providing rights, but also for prejudice: you deal not with the problems of individual Roma, but the imputed problems of Roma as a whole. Second, you deny the same rights to other groups, to others who don't happen to be in that group, such as Muslims.
  • As for the relationship between multiculturalism and constraints on free speech, an argument has developed that runs something like this: we live in a society where there are lots of different peoples and cultures, each with deeply set, often irreconcilable, views and beliefs. In such a society we need to restrict what people say or do in order to minimize friction between cultures and to guarantee respect for people embedded in different cultures.
  • it is precisely because we live in a plural society that we need the most robust defence of free speech possible. It seems to me that in a plural society, the giving of offence is both inevitable and necessary. It is inevitable because we do have societies with deep-seated, conflicting views. But it's far better to have those conflicts out in the open than to suppress them in the name of respect and tolerance. But most importantly, the giving of offence is necessary because no kind of social change or social progress is possible without offending some group of other. When people say, "you are offending me", what they are really saying is, "you can't say that because I don't want my beliefs to be questioned or ridiculed or abused." That seems to me deeply problematic.
  • The real issue is not actually the threat of violence from Islamists. It is something much more internal to western societies, the sense that it is morally wrong to give offence to other groups and cultures. People are frightened of doing things because they fear the repercussions, but they are also frightened of doing things because they think it is morally wrong to offend other people and other cultures. And I think that is a much greater problem. We should say it is morally right to offend people. That is what a plural society is. If we want to live in a plural society, the price of a plural society – though I don't see it as a price, I think it is the value of the plural society – is that we confront each other. That is what is good about plural society.
  • We also need to make a distinction between colour blindness and racism blindness. The two have become confused, so that in France, for instance, arguments against multiculturalism have become an argument in defence of racism. Discriminatory policies, and not just against the Roma, but also against Muslims and others, have been defended on the basis that they are necessary for assimilation. The law outlawing the burqa, for instance. In one sense assimilation means treating individuals as citizens and not as members of a particular group. That seems to me to be a very good thing. But that is not what assimilation has come to mean in practice somewhere like France, where policies of assimilation have re
  • sulted in the authorities treating different groups of people differently by pointing up their differences, insisting that certain groups – Muslims or the Roma, for example – cannot belong to our culture, to our society, because their culture, their values, their ways of life are so different and inimical to ours. That is the way assimilation policies have developd and I think that is very dangerous.
  • Part of the problem of multiculturalism is that the distinction between the public and the private realms have become eroded. We need to defend the right of people to pursue their values, their lifestyles, their beliefs in private. By "private", I don't mean in the privacy of their homes, but in those areas of life distinct from the state and state institutions. But we also need to ensure that, in the public realm, the state does not treat people differently because of their particular values, beliefs or lifestyles. The ideal plural society is one where people have perfect freedom to pursue their beliefs, values and lifestyles in private but in public are treated as citizens, whatever those lifestyles, beliefs and values are. Multiculturalism has come to mean the very opposite: people are treated differently in the public realm because of their values, beliefs and lifestyles, but at the same time restrictions are placed upon the private realm, on what one can say or do, because of fear of giving offence.
  • Fighting racism doesn't mean I have to limit freedom of expression. I hate racist jokes, but I would protect the right of people to tell them. They are really ugly and stupid, but I wouldn't dream of regulating it by law. Actually, I do not believe in collective rights. I think everyone should be treated equally, but people also need to be free to live how they prefer. Fighting violent racism is something that should be done by law enforcement authorities. But it is also the responsibility of the cultural elites: to make racism something one should be ashamed of. It's a matter of education, I think. Not of laws limiting free speech.
  • The point about free speech is this: who is it that benefits from censorship? Is it those in power, or is it those without power? It seems to me that the only people to benefit from censorship are those with the power to enforce that censorship and the need to do so. Those who have no power are much better served by as little censorship as possible. Free speech is always the weapon in the hands of those who want to challenge power and censorship is always a weapon in those who want to preserve their power. That's why I think anyone who wants to challenge racism should support of the greatest extension of free speech possible.
Javier E

A New Generation's Vanity, Heard Through Hit Lyrics - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...26tier.html

youth vanity narcissism values research

shared by Javier E on 26 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • psychologists report finding what they were looking for: a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popula
  • r music
  • the words “I” and “me” appear more frequently along with anger-related words, while there’s been a corresponding decline in “we” and “us” and the expression of positive emotions.
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  • “Late adolescents and college students love themselves more today than ever before,”
  • The researchers find that hit songs in the 1980s were more likely to emphasize happy togetherness, like the racial harmony sought by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder in “Ebony and Ivory” and the group exuberance promoted by Kool & the Gang: “Let’s all celebrate and have a good time.” Diana Ross and Lionel Richie sang of “two hearts that beat as one,” and John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” emphasized the preciousness of “our life together.” Today’s songs, according to the researchers’ linguistic analysis, are more likely be about one very special person: the singer. “I’m bringing sexy back,” Justin Timberlake proclaimed in 2006. The year before, Beyoncé exulted in how hot she looked while dancing — “It’s blazin’, you watch me in amazement.” And Fergie, who boasted about her “humps” while singing with the Black Eyed Peas, subsequently released a solo album in which she told her lover that she needed quality time alone: “It’s personal, myself and I.”
  • a meta-analysis published last year in Social Psychological and Personality Science, Dr. Twenge and Joshua D. Foster looked at data from nearly 50,000 students — including the new data from critics — and concluded that narcissism has increased significantly in the past three decades.
  • Their song-lyrics analysis shows a decline in words related to social connections and positive emotions (like “love” or “sweet”) and an increase in words related to anger and antisocial behavior (like “hate” or “kill”).
julia rhodes

South Korea Proposes Resuming Reunions of War-Divided Families - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-of-war-divided-families.html

culture crisis policy south korea north war

shared by julia rhodes on 06 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • South Korea’s president proposed Monday that the two Koreas improve their tense relations by resuming the reunions of families separated since the Korean War, a humanitarian program that seemed close to being renewed last year but was scuttled as negotiations soured.
  • President Park Geun-hye’s overture came five days after the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, urged that Seoul and Pyongyang create “a favorable climate for improved relations” in a New Year’s Day speech.
  • Ms. Park, a conservative, made two other conciliatory gestures toward the North, offering to increase humanitarian aid to the impoverished country and to let South Korean civic groups provide assistance to its farmers and ranchers. But she expressed skepticism about the prospect of meeting with Mr. Kim, whose government has until recently exhorted South Koreans to overthrow her “fascist dictatorship.”
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  • She also said it had become “impossible” to predict “what will happen to the North and what actions it will take” since the purge and execution last month of Mr. Kim’s uncle, Jang Song-thaek, who was long considered Mr. Kim’s mentor and the second-highest-ranking figure in his secretive government.
  • South Korea halted the flow of aid and investment to the North in 2008, demanding that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons. It also curtailed inter-Korean trade following the sinking of a South Korean naval ship in 2010, which Seoul says was caused by a North Korean torpedo attack.
  • After months of harsh rhetoric following the North’s nuclear test last February, North and South Korea reached an agreement last August to revive the reunions. But the North later ended the talks, blaming the South for refusing to resume an inter-Korean tourism program at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, which had been highly lucrative for Pyongyang until it was shut down in 2008.
  • The Korean War, which began in 1950, was fought to a stalemate and an ultimate cease-fire in 1953. Since then, no exchanges of letters, telephone calls or emails have been allowed between North and South Koreans, and family reunions remain a highly emotional issue and an indicator of the state of relations on the peninsula.
  • Mr. Kim made similarly conciliatory comments toward the South during his New Year’s Day speech in 2013, but they were followed by a series of provocative acts, including its February nuclear test. Just last month, Pyongyang sent a letter to Ms. Park’s office threatening “strikes without warning.”
Javier E

A 'Brave' Move by Obama Removes a Wedge in Relations With Latin America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ations-with-latin-america.html

imperialism foreign policy latin america cold war cuba obama

shared by Javier E on 19 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Mr. Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping détente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the United States in the region.
  • Washington’s isolation of Cuba has long been a defining fixture of Latin American politics, something that has united governments across the region, regardless of their ideologies. Even some of Washington’s close allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side.
  • “We never thought we would see this moment,” said Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who chided the Obama administration last year over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of her and her top aides. She called the deal with Cuba “a moment which marks a change in civilization.”
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  • “Our previous Cuba policy was clearly an irritant and a drag on our policy in the region,”
  • Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president and former Sandinista rebel, was chastising Mr. Obama just days ago, saying the United States deserved the top spot in a new list of state sponsors of terrorism. Then, on Wednesday, he saluted the “brave decisions” of the American president.
  • “We have to recognize the gesture of President Barack Obama, a brave gesture and historically necessary, perhaps the most important step of his presidency,” Mr. Maduro said.
  • “It removes an excuse for blaming the United States for things,”
  • “In the last Summit of the Americas, instead of talking about things we wanted to focus on — exports, counternarcotics — we spent a lot of time talking about U.S.-Cuba policy,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “A key factor with any bilateral meeting is, ‘When are you going to change your Cuba policy?’
  • But while sharp differences persist on many issues, other major Washington policy shifts have recently been applauded in the region, including Mr. Obama’s immigration plan and the resettlement in Uruguay of six detainees from Guantánamo Bay.
  • “There will be radical and fundamental change,” said Andrés Pastrana, a former president of Colombia. “I think that to a large extent the anti-imperialist discourse that we have had in the region has ended. The Cold War is over.”
Javier E

Undoing Netanyahu's Damage to U.S.-Israel Relations - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...387817

israel foreign policy US relations

shared by Javier E on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Goldberg: A few years ago, we thought that J Street, the Jewish left, was going to drive the agenda. But now people to the right of AIPAC (the mainstream pro-Israel lobby)  are doing much of the driving. How did that happen? Oren: There’s a very simple answer to that. J Street’s power derived from the fact that it is an extension of the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration invited J street into the room with other Jewish organizations and sent high-level officials to speak at their conventions. But the reservoir of support for J Street is not particularly large. The American Jewish community is five million people. What percentage of that number is actually involved in Jewish affairs? What percentage of those are involved with Israel, and what percentage of people involved with Israel wake up in the morning saying, ‘I care about Israel but I’m pained by Israel’s policies.’ That’s a very low percentage. The right is growing much more rapidly, even as a percentage within the Jewish community. There’s a greater percentage that is more religious, more conservative. That disparity is going to grow in favor of the right in coming years.
  • Goldberg: But on policy, what do you do? Oren: We have to understand that people who aren’t anti-Israel have criticisms of specific Israeli policies. We have to show greater flexibility on the peace issue. Israel is willing to go a serious distance on peace. We always have to show that we’re ready to sit at the table if the Palestinians are willing to act accordingly. That’s something we can do, we can make that case. Our problem has been building outside the settlement blocs and the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Those areas were recognized by the Bush-Sharon letter of 2004 as remaining within Israel’s boundaries in the event of a final-status negotiation. We should keep to that in a final-status-compatible way.  If the Palestinians don’t want to do this, then here’s what we’re going to do on our own, to make the situation better and lay the groundwork for a future peace. That’s what we have to do, and I think that this logic would be compelling to most American decision-makers.
  • Goldberg: Is the damage in any way permanent here? Oren: I think the damage could be diplomatic damage. I don’t think Americans are going to stop their work for Iron Dome (an American-funded anti-missile system). The rumors are that the U.S. is cutting back on intelligence sharing, but that would a self-inflicted wound. But we could feel the damage at the U.N., or some other international body. We don’t only rely on the U.S. for a military Iron Dome, but for a diplomatic Iron Dome as well.
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  • Oren: Foreign affairs is viewed as the poorer, younger brother of security affairs in Israel. We don’t have long-term strategic thinking about foreign affairs. We should take it more seriously here. Israel has to undergo a fundamental change – we have to realize we are not alone in the world Our relationships, not just with the United States, but with the Far East, with Europe, with Africa, are vital for us. We haven’t looked in strategic ways about how to defend ourselves against BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions.) I understand why this happens – there is the old Zionist notion that it is not important what the non-Jews think, that it's only important what the Jews do. But we can’t function in the world with this attitude.
  • The kingmaker in Tuesday's election in Israel may turn out to be Moshe Kahlon, the Libyan Jewish center-rightist whose new party, Kulanu ("All of Us") stands to win at least eight seats in the next Knesset. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger, the centrist Isaac Herzog, will need Kahlon's party with them in order to create a viable governing coalition. Kahlon's emphasis is on economic issues; his foreign policy guru is Michael Oren, who is ranked fourth on the Kulanu list. Oren served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 2009 until 2013,
katyshannon

If It Owns a Well or a Mine, It's Probably in Trouble - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...jobs-amid-commodity-slump.html

mine trouble new york times crisis gas oil mining fracking china us jobs

shared by katyshannon on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The pain among energy and mining producers worsened again on Tuesday, as one of the industry’s largest players cut its work force by nearly two-thirds and Chinese trade data amplified concerns about the country’s appetite for commodities.
  • The full extent of the shakeout will depend on whether commodities prices have further to fall. And the outlook is shaky, with a swirl of forces battering the markets.
  • The world’s biggest buyer of commodities, China, has pulled back sharply during its economic slowdown. But the world is dealing with gluts in oil, gas, copper and even some grains.
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  • The pressure on prices has been significant. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage China’s Slowdown Tarnishes Economic Boom in Copper-Rich ZambiaDEC. 2, 2015 A Global Chill in Commodity Demand Hits America’s HeartlandOCT. 23, 2015 Glencore Isn’t Out of the Woods YetOCT. 1, 2015 Prices for iron ore, the crucial steelmaking ingredient, have fallen by about 40 percent this year. The Brent crude oil benchmark is now hovering around $40 a barrel, down from more than a $110 since the summer of 2014.
  • Companies are caught in the downdraft.A number of commodity-related businesses have either declared bankruptcy or fallen behind in their debt payments
  • Even more common are the cutbacks. Nearly 1,200 oil rigs, or two-thirds of the American total, have been decommissioned since late last year. More than 250,000 workers in the oil and gas industry worldwide have been laid off, with more than a third coming in the United States.
  • The international mining company Anglo American is pulling back broadly, with a goal to reduce the company’s size by 60 percent. Along with the layoffs announced on Tuesday, the company is suspending its dividend, halving its business units, as well as unloading mines and smelters.
  • China looms large in the commodities equation.Between 2000 and last year, companies invested hundreds of billions of dollars to expand their production capacity to satisfy China in a period of rapid economic expansion. Much of the corporate growth was fueled by debt.
Megan Flanagan

Israel Holds 5 Arab Israelis Suspected of Supporting ISIS - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...alestinians-islamic-state.html

shared by Megan Flanagan on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Five Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested in recent weeks on suspicion of supporting the Islamic State
  • suggested that the suspects may have intended to carry out an assault, though there did not seem to be evidence that their activities had coalesced into a concrete plot
  • Five of those arrested have since been charged with weapons violations and support for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL
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  • range in age from 18 to 27
  • all share the same surname, Sleiman, suggesting that they are related.
  • they had not admitted to supporting the Islamic State in their interrogations.
  • About 34 Arab citizens of Israel have been arrested over the last year on suspicion of activities related to the Islamic State
  • said that there had been a slight increase in the number of Israeli citizens suspected of Islamic State-related activity in 2015 compared with 2014
  • accused of having trained for battle by slaughtering sheep and riding horses at a local farm
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel, about a fifth of the country’s population, have rarely participated in organized armed attacks.
  • some might be attracted because of longstanding grievances about discrimination in Israel.
  • most recent arrests suggested the first plot to carry out an Islamic State-inspired attack in Israel.
  • gradually heading toward people who will try to do something like that in the name of the Islamic State, similar to the attack in San Bernardino,
  • described the suspects as “wannabes who have access to guns.”
  • been “holding suspicious meetings and conducting weapons training.
  • suspects had obtained a Russian SKS semiautomatic rifle and a Carl Gustaf, a Swedish submachine gun.
  • “He used to say he was against ISIS and against terrorism.”
dangoodman

The week that changed U.S.-Iran relations, explained - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

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

US president relations

shared by dangoodman on 18 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • The week that changed U.S.-Iran relations, explained
  • President Barack Obama was still being accused by Republicans of apologizing to Iran after two small U.S. boats drifted into the country's waters, leading to 10 sailors being held
  • The United States and Iran concluded months of secret negotiations and struck a massive prisoner-swap deal. Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, former Marine Amir Hekmati, Pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari were released from Iranian custody in exchange for seven Iranians who were not convicted of violent crimes but of violating the sanctions ban against Iran.
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  • A fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, was also released by Iran, though his release was not part of the negotiated prisoner swap.
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran had fulfilled its obligations under the nuclear deal that six world powers struck with Tehran. The United States responded by announcing it would end its sanctions on Iran, freeing up $150 billion in frozen assets.
Javier E

About Japan: A Teacher's Resource | Women in Modern Japanese History | Japan Society - 0 views

aboutjapan.japansociety.org/men-in-modern-japanese-history

japan history women

shared by Javier E on 28 Aug 18 - No Cached
  • This paper addresses these assumptions about Japanese women as “behind” and suggests that their lives have been far more varied throughout history and in the present than the stereotypes suggest.
  • Rather than assuming that the west is somehow ahead of the rest of the world, I use what historians call the concept of “coevalness” throughout. By “coeval,” I mean that the situation of women around the world unfolded in relatively similar ways at roughly the same time.
  • I submit that it would be a mistake to blame Japanese women’s supposedly low status on “tradition” or “culture.” This assertion prevents us from seeing the diversity in the historical record and the ways patriarchy—that is, male dominance—was remade and even strengthened in the modern period.
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  • Western visitors drew on the writings of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and others and used the “low” status of women among other “barbaric” Japanese practices to justify the previously-mentioned series of unequal treaties.
  • The overturning of these treaties was one of the main goals of the Japanese state after 1868, a goal achieved by the mid-1890s. This focus led to considerable discussion and reform across several decades. Government officials, intellectuals, reformers in the Japan and across East Asia focused on the “woman question” as a critical part of modernization, necessary to build a strong state and attain equal status with the western powers. Strikingly, they tended to accept the idea that the status of women in East Asia was low. In the process, commentators of all stripes painted a picture of women’s status in the premodern East Asian past that was static and uniform, a view not at all in line with the richness and diversity of the past, a past where some women were highly educated and produced masterful works of art and literature and others had political power and influence.[4]
  • Let us turn briefly to the period before Japan’s transition to modernity. Until quite recently, scholars have tended to see the preceding Edo/Tokugawa (hereafter Edo) period (1600-1868) as representing the nadir of women’s status. Scholars assumed that warrior rule and Neo-Confucian discourses led to an unparalleled subordination of women. Recent studies have challenged this view and revealed a more complicated and nuanced picture, one where women’s lives varied widely by status, age, locale, and time period. In short, scholars have demonstrated that gender ideals promoted by male scholars that stress women’s inferiority tell us little about the lives of the vast majority of women. Moreover, research shows that merchant women enjoyed more property rights than women of samurai (warrior) and peasant backgrounds.
  • One example that demonstrates the variety of women’s experiences lies in the area of education. Access to education grew dramatically during the Edo period. Particularly notable are the growth of what are sometimes called temple schools, where girls and boys learned basic reading and arithmetic. As a result of this development, Japan had one of the highest literacy rates in the early modern world. Moreover, some women of means had access to quite elite forms of education equivalent to those available to elite men
  • This situation would change dramatically in the modern period, for the advent of the nation-state after 1868 and the establishment of universal education in 1872 would eliminate the variety of potential experiences women had, and replace them with a uniform education deemed appropriate to women. In short, after 1872, a greater number of women had access to education than ever before, but the content of this education was more circumscribed than it had been in the past
  • Modern times saw concrete changes in gender roles within households especially in urban settings. In the Edo period, households in villages were productive units where husbands and wives shared labor
  • But as some people moved to the cities—a trend that accelerated in the modern period—husbands went out to work leaving middle class wives at home. Urban families increasingly lived in nuclear units, rather than in extended family groups. In the process, middle class women’s lives increasingly became defined in terms of motherhood, something that had not been highly valued in the Edo period. From the turn of the twentieth century on, middle class women in particular were called upon to be “good wives and wise mothers” (ryōsai kenbo)
  • For poor women, work in the textile mills and sex work continued to be the main occupations as they had in the preceding period. Some scholars have pointed out that Japan’s successful industrial transformation in the nineteenth century was accomplished on the backs of poor women, especially those who toiled in the textile mills. Meanwhile, some women from the middle class were able to pursue a limited number of professions including work as physicians, nurses, and teachers. As Sally Hastings has demonstrated, state policy actually supported these limited opportunities for women because the work was deemed appropriate to their gender. We should not imagine that all Japanese women before 1945 were wives and mothers; professional women existed in the prewar era. In fact, this group of professional women in the 1920s and 1930s played a role in the prewar suffrage movement. They also helped authorize a public role for women and laid the groundwork for women’s enthusiastic participation in political life in the immediate post World War II years.
  • The 1920s saw the rise of a vibrant women’s rights movement in Japan, one related to the movement for women’s suffrage in the west after World War I when American and British women finally gained the vote. The Japanese government reacted to women’s demands with a gradualist approach. In 1925, it granted universal manhood suffrage and by 1930 and 1931, the lower house of the Diet (legislature) passed bills granting women’s suffrage at the local level. However, as the political situation abroad changed dramatically in the 1930s and the Japanese military began a war in China, the movement to grant women’s political rights went by the wayside. Women’s rights advocates mostly supported the state during the period, hoping that their loyalty would enable them to influence policy on mothers and children.
  • Women’s political rights were granted after the war in 1945. But the story of how they came to be deserves some attention. The main issue here is what Mire Koikari has called the “myth of American emancipation of Japanese women,” for this period has often been misunderstood. In the fall of 1945, the head of the Occupation (SCAP) General Douglas MacArthur presented a list of demands to the Japanese government, including the demand that women get the vote. However, feminist leader Ichikawa Fusae and her fellow activists had already been lobbying the Japanese cabinet to grant women’s suffrage even before the Occupation arrived. Ichikawa did not want a foreign power to be responsible for granting women the right to vote. The Japanese cabinet was supportive of her initiative. Nevertheless, the subsequent course of events—a revised electoral law granting women the right to vote and stand for office was passed in December 1945—meant that the Occupation could take credit for enfranchising women. This view overlooks the efforts of Japanese women as early as the 1920s as well as their activities in the immediate aftermath of war, as well as the Japanese government’s support of their demands.
  • Most familiar to western audiences is the story of Beate Sirota Gordon’s role in proposing the gender equality clauses in the postwar Japanese constitution (Articles 14 and 24). At the time, Gordon, who was born in Vienna to Russian-Jewish parents but grew up in Japan, had returned to work for the Occupation as a naturalized American citizen. She was part of a group of Americans charged with the task of rewriting the constitution. Gordon later published her memoir The Only Woman in the Room (1997) relating her critical role in writing this legislation. She has been celebrated in some western and Japanese circles ever since. Yet Gordon’s story has also been subject to critique from several angles. For example, Mire Koikari sheds lights on Gordon’s participation in “imperial feminism,” since Gordon portrayed herself and was portrayed by others as liberating Japanese women. As Koikari adds, “In drafting women’s rights articles, Gordon tapped into her childhood memory where the Orientalist imagery of oppressed and helpless Japanese women predominated.”[7]
  • The point here is not to ignore Gordon’s contribution to the constitution for she did indeed draft the gender equality legislation, but rather to place her work in a larger context. In fact, as we saw, Japanese women had been working for political rights for decades. The granting of women’s political rights and guarantees of gender equality cannot be seen as a case where a progressive west granted passive Japanese women political rights.  (On a different but related note, acknowledging the agency of Japanese women also means recognizing their complicity in wartime militarism and nationalism, as Koikari emphasizes.)
Javier E

Robert Gilpin, R.I.P. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...robert-gilpin-r-i-p

international relations theory hegemony crisis decline us history

shared by Javier E on 31 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • international relations professor Robert Gilpin passed away
  • I became enamored with his ideas while in graduate school and have taught many of the books above in my classes on global political economy and international relations theory. Gilpin’s books offer an excellent intellectual history of how realists thought about the politics of the world economy
  • Gipin’s greatest work will always be “War and Change in World Politics.” Although written in 1981, the theory is perhaps more trenchant now than then. Gilpin offered his variant of hegemonic stability theory. This theory posits that a rising superpower has a strong incentive to structure the global rules of the game in a manner favorable to that state’s economy and polity. In return, however, the hegemon will provide the necessary global public goods to ensure that other states prosper in this system. Peace and prosperity can thrive when this kind equilibrium holds.
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  • Gilpin’s story of hegemonic decline, which was both detailed and prescient. He argued that over time, the costs to the hegemon of maintaining the status quo would rise relative to the benefits, for several reasons. First, the leading economy eventually hits a growth slowdown because of lagging innovation. Second, the cost of leading military technologies continues to escalate at the same time that an affluent population loses its “martial spirit.” Third, personal and public consumption supplant more productive forms of investment spending. Fourth, the shift of the economy into the service sector makes productivity gains that much harder.
  • Gilpin warned about the “corrupting influence of affluence” on the hegemon. See if this sounds familiar: Perhaps the most pernicious aspect of this “corruption” (a term used in its classical sense to mean decay) is the generation in the minds of a dominant people of the belief that the world they (or, rather, their forebears) created is the right, natural, and God-given state of affairs. To such a people the idea that the world of their rule and privilege could be otherwise becomes inconceivable. The goodness and benefits of the status quo, as they know it, are so obvious that all reasonable men will assent to its worth and preservation. With such a state of mind, a people neither concedes to the just demands of rising challengers nor makes the necessary sacrifices to defend its threatened world.
  • The most widely cited book about hegemonic decline in the past century is Paul Kennedy’s “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.” I cite that book on a regular basis. But whenever I cite it about hegemonic decline, I always add Gilpin (1981). Because “War and Change in World Politics” preceded Kennedy’s masterwork by six years, and is in every way its equal.
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: The Nature of Sex - 0 views

nymag.com/...ullivan-the-nature-of-sex.html

war imperialism sex gender trans gay work capitalism culture

shared by Javier E on 01 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • it’s true that trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, as they are known, are one minority that is actively not tolerated by the LGBTQ establishment, and often demonized by the gay community. It’s also true that they can be inflammatory, offensive, and obsessive
  • what interests me is their underlying argument, which deserves to be thought through, regardless of our political allegiances, sexual identities, or tribal attachments. Because it’s an argument that seems to me to contain a seed of truth.
  • the proposed Equality Act — with 201 co-sponsors in the last Congress — isn’t simply a ban on discriminating against trans people in employment, housing, and public accommodations (an idea with a lot of support in the American public)
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  • It includes and rests upon a critical redefinition of what is known as “sex.” We usually think of this as simply male or female, on biological grounds (as opposed to a more cultural notion of gender). But the Equality Act would define “sex” as including “gender identity,” and defines “gender identity” thus: “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or characteristics, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.”
  • What the radical feminists are arguing is that the act doesn’t only blur the distinction between men and women (thereby minimizing what they see as the oppression of patriarchy and misogyny), but that its definition of gender identity must rely on stereotypical ideas of what gender expression means. What, after all, is a “gender-related characteristic”? It implies that a tomboy who loves sports is not a girl interested in stereotypically boyish things, but possibly a boy trapped in a female body
  • So instead of enlarging our understanding of gender expression — and allowing maximal freedom and variety within both sexes — the concept of “gender identity” actually narrows it, in more traditional and even regressive ways. What does “gender-related mannerisms” mean, if not stereotypes?
  • it bans single-sex facilities like changing, dressing, or locker rooms, if sex is not redefined to include “gender identity.” This could put all single-sex institutions, events, or groups in legal jeopardy. It could deny lesbians their own unique safe space, free from any trace of men
  • This is the deeply confusing and incoherent aspect of the entire debate. If you abandon biology in the matter of sex and gender altogether, you may help trans people live fuller, less conflicted lives; but you also undermine the very meaning of homosexuality.
  • If you follow the current ideology of gender as entirely fluid, you actually subvert and undermine core arguments in defense of gay rights. “A gay man loves and desires other men, and a lesbian desires and loves other women,” explains Sky Gilbert, a drag queen. “This defines the existential state of being gay. If there is no such thing as ‘male’ or ‘female,’ the entire self-definition of gay identity, which we have spent generations seeking to validate and protect from bigots, collapses.”
  • Boot argues that the U.S. should literally be the world’s policeman: “U.S. troops are … policing the frontiers of the Pax Americana. Just as the police aren’t trying to eliminate crime, so troops are not trying to eliminate terrorism but, instead, to keep it below a critical threshold that threatens the United States and our allies.”
  • We can respect the right of certain people to be identified as the gender they believe they are, and to remove any discrimination against them, while also seeing biology as a difference that requires a distinction.
  • We can believe in nature and the immense complexity of the human mind and sexuality. We can see a way to accommodate everyone to the extent possible, without denying biological reality. Equality need not mean sameness.
  • We just have to abandon the faddish notion that sex is socially constructed or entirely in the brain, that sex and gender are unconnected, that biology is irrelevant, and that there is something called an LGBTQ identity, when, in fact, the acronym contains extreme internal tensions and even outright contradictions.
  • What we may not be able to do for much longer is work profitably. If a universal basic income emerges, or if technology renders our bodies and minds unnecessary for the success of our societies, we will still need to work, to do things. But we will almost certainly have to to reimagine what work is like, what work outside of the motives of profit or efficiency can mean, what value we attach to what we do each day, and how we do it.
  • The world we live in is a product of a capitalism that has made us all immeasurably better off, even as it has made us more and more unequal. But that world is clearly beginning to repeal itself, to render unnecessary the vast bulk of humanity’s labor, and the vast capitalist system has only existed for a blink of an eye in humanity’s long history. We are fools if we think it will go on forever. We will have to generate a new culture of work
  • In fact, Boot deserves great kudos for his honesty. Richard Haass, the Pope of the Blob, deserves credit too for recognizing that “the situation on the ground is something of a slowly deteriorating stalemate … Although the U.S. and its European partners cannot expect to win the war or broker a lasting peace, it should be possible to keep the government alive and carry on the fight against terrorists.” How’s that for a pep talk!
  • There is a solution to this knotted paradox. We can treat different things differently. We can accept that the homosexual experience and the transgender experience are very different, and cannot be easily conflated. We can center the debate not on “gender identity” which insists on no difference between the trans and the cis, the male and the female, and instead focus on the very real experience of “gender dysphoria,” which deserves treatment and support and total acceptance for the individuals involved.
  • My guess is that this ever-extending police project is unstoppable in the foreseeable future. And that is true of most empires: They never unwind voluntarily. They devolve into stalemates, and collapse only when the imperial power has so bankrupted itself morally, politically, and financially that the only choice is defeat at a time not of our choosing.
runlai_jiang

North Korea Says It Is Open to Talks With U.S. About Abandoning Nuclear Weapons - WSJ - 1 views

www.wsj.com/...earization-with-u-s-1520336095

politics north korea

shared by runlai_jiang on 07 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • SEOUL—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a visiting South Korean delegation that he was willing to hold talks with the U.S. about giving up nuclear weapons and normalizing relations with Washington, officials in Seoul said Tuesday.
  • North Korea’s government issued no statement of its own on Tuesday. On Monday, state media there said Mr. Kim had exchanged “in-depth views on the issues for easing the acute military tensions” on the Korean peninsula.
  • On Tuesday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: “Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned.
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  • Previous rounds of negotiations with North Korea, some lasting years, have all failed to persuade Pyongyang to change course as it has worked to advance its ability to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. As recently as a few months ag
  • North Korea warned it was contemplating a missile attack aimed at the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
  • ushing ahead with increasingly stringent economic sanctions aimed at curbing the country’s access to funds and fuel—and forcing it to abandon its atomic ambitions.
  • “It would be the first inter-Korean summit at a neutral location, so Moon can avoid the optics of appearing to pay tribute to Kim in Pyongyang,”
  • Senior U.S. officials have expressed doubts about the opening as a propaganda ploy meant to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, but have publicly said they support South Korean efforts to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table.
  • Kim Dong-yub, a professor of security studies at Kyungnam University, said North Korea could work to divide Washington or Seoul by insisting that a security guarantee involve the removal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula. “What defines security?” he said. North Korea has said repeatedly in recent years that the only true guarantee of its security was its possession of nuclear weapons. It reiterated the same idea on Tuesday, even as the South Korean delegation prepared to return home to Seoul.
  • Seoul’s delegation to the North had expected Mr. Kim to raise issues with annual springtime military exercises with the U.S., but the North Korean leader said he understood the need for them and didn’t push the point, a senior Seoul official said. North Korea has complained about the exercises, saying they are a rehearsal for invasion. Pyongyang last month warned the two allies that going ahead with them would go “against the climate of detente on the Korean Peninsula” and spell the end of the current thaw.
  • The two Koreas agreed to hold a summit between their leaders at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone that separates the peninsula —rather than in Pyongyang, the site of the two previous inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007.
  • As the restrictions have tightened, North Korea has reached out to the South. Relations between the two began a nascent thaw ahead of the recent Winter Olympics.
  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a visiting South Korean delegation that he was willing to hold talks with the U.S. about giving up nuclear weapons and would halt weapons tests during any negotiations, officials in Seoul said Tuesday.
  • “It is unlikely Kim Jong Un has abandoned his determination to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely,” said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official who negotiated with North Korean officials during the Clinton administration.
  • American officials repeatedly have said North Korea still needs to carry out additional flight tests before it can be confident that it has the capability to strike the U.S. with a long-range, nuclear-armed missile.
  • Whether negotiations would produce more significant results is questionable.”
  • Beyond doubts about what Pyongyang will offer at the table, some U.S. officials also worry that North Korea will seek to use negotiations to create divisions between Seoul and Washington and blunt the American-led efforts to maintain tough economic sanctions.
  • Mr. Kim suggested his country might be willing to participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea and Mr. Moon responded by proposing inter-Korean talks.
  • “They may mean it is a long-term objective and we may want them to denuclearize overnight,” said Joel S. Wit, a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins and a former State Department official.
  • Other difficult issues would include negotiating a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, normalizing relations with the U.S. and determining when economic sanctions against North Korea would be eased and ultimately eliminated.
Javier E

Major Trump administration climate report says damage is 'intensifying across the country' - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...re-intensifying-across-country

climate change report crisis

shared by Javier E on 24 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • The National Climate Assessment’s publication marks the government’s fourth comprehensive look at climate-change impacts on the United States since 2000. The last came in 2014. Produced by 13 federal departments and agencies and overseen by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the report stretches well over 1,000 pages and draws more definitive, and in some cases more startling, conclusions than earlier versions.
  • The authors argue that global warming “is transforming where and how we live and presents growing challenges to human health and quality of life, the economy, and the natural systems that support us.” And they conclude that humans must act aggressively to adapt to current impacts and mitigate future catastrophes “to avoid substantial damages to the U.S. economy, environment, and human health and well-being over the coming decades.”
  • “The impacts we’ve seen the last 15 years have continued to get stronger, and that will only continue,” said Gary Yohe, a professor of economics and environmental studies at Wesleyan University who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed the report. “We have wasted 15 years of response time. If we waste another five years of response time, the story gets worse. The longer you wait, the faster you have to respond and the more expensive it will be.”
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  • hat urgency is at odds with the stance of the Trump administration, which has rolled back several Obama-era environmental regulations and incentivized the production of fossil fuels. Trump also has said he plans to withdraw the nation from the Paris climate accord and questioned the science of climate change just last month, saying on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that “I don’t know that it’s man-made” and that the warming trend “could very well go back.”
  • “This report draws a direct connection between the warming atmosphere and the resulting changes that affect Americans' lives, communities, and livelihoods, now and in the future,” the document reads, concluding that “the evidence of human-caused climate change is overwhelming and continues to strengthen, that the impacts of climate change are intensifying across the country, and that climate-related threats to Americans' physical, social, and economic well-being are rising.
  • The report finds that the continental United States already is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was 100 years ago, surrounded by seas that are on average nine inches higher and being racked by far worse heat waves than the nation experienced only 50 years ago. But those figures offer only the prelude to even more potentially severe impacts. The report suggests that by 2050, the country could see as much as 2.3 additional degrees of warming in the continental United States. By that same year, in a high-end global-warming scenario, coral reefs in Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific territories could be bleaching every single year — conditions in which their survival would be in severe doubt. A record-warm year like 2016 would become routine.
  • In another major step, the authors of the new report have begun to put dollar signs next to projected climate damage, specifically within the United States. In a worst-case climate-change scenario, the document finds, labor-related losses by the year 2090 as a result of extreme heat — the sort that makes it difficult to work outdoors or seriously lowers productivity — could amount to an estimated $155 billion annually. Deaths from temperature extremes could take an economic toll of $141 billion per year in the same year, while coastal property damage could total $118 billion yearly, researchers found
  • Of course, mitigating climate change would also mitigate this damage, by as much as 58 percent in the case of high-temperature related deaths, the report finds.
  • The categorical tone of the new assessments reflects scientists' growing confidence in the ability to detect the role of a changing climate in individual extreme events, such as heat waves and droughts. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated computer simulations now allow them to project future changes in highly specific regions of the country
  • The Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report, which examines all of North America (not just the United States), finds that over a decade, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels declined by 1 percent per year. The result is that while North America emitted 24 percent of the world’s emissions in 2004, that was down to 17 percent in 2013. This occurred in part thanks to improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency, the growth of renewable energy and the swapping of coal-burning for natural gas.
  • “For the globe, we’re still going up, but regionally, there have been these changes in how humans have been acting that have caused our emissions to go down,” said Ted Schuur, a Northern Arizona University expert on permafrost carbon
  • The report concludes that it appears possible to for economies to grow — at least in the United States, Mexico and Canada — without increasing overall emissions of greenhouse gases. That would be an important signal for the ability of the world to slow climate change over the course of the century
Javier E

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

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

climate change psychological effects mental health risks

shared by Javier E on 20 May 19 - No Cached
  • The lesser-known, and often overlooked, effects of climate change include the risks and impacts to mental health—the focus of this article.
  • the risks and impacts of climate change on mental health are already rapidly accelerating, resulting in a number of direct, indirect, and overarching effects that disproportionally affect those who are most marginalized
  • The overarching threats of a changing climate, can also incite despair and hopelessness as actions to address the ‘wicked problem’ of climate change seem intangible or insignificant in comparison to the scale and magnitude of the threats [29].
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  • Paradoxically, these same disastrous circumstances may also inspire altruism, compassion, optimism, and foster a sense of meaning and personal growth (otherwise referred to as post-traumatic growth) as people band together to salvage, rebuild, and console amongst the chaos and loss of a changing climate [30, 31].
  • Marginalized groups who tend to be the most affected by the mental and physical health implications of climate change are: Indigenous peoples, children, seniors, women, people with low-socioeconomic status, outdoor labourers, racialized people, immigrants, and people with pre-existing health conditions
  • The influential sociologist Anthony Giddens refers to this space and time distancing of the climate change problem as the Giddens Paradox [70]. The Giddens Paradox states that: “since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them. Yet waiting until such dangers become visible and acute—in the shape of catastrophes that are irrefutably the result of climate change—before being stirred to serious action will be too late” (p. 2).
  • Marshall contends that part of the time and space distancing of the climate change problem, and thus the reluctance to act, is reinforced by the Western political discourse on climate change as a future-facing problem that intentionally overlooks the centuries of industrialization, fossil fuel consumption, and land degradation that contribute to anthropogenic climate change [71]
  • Marshall calls for a reckoning with this discourse by noting:“Climate change is a future problem. But it is also a past problem and a present problem. It is better thought of as a developing process of long-term deterioration, called, by some psychologists, a “creeping problem.” The lack of a definite beginning, end, or deadline requires that we create our own timeline. Not surprisingly, we do so in ways that remove the compulsion to act. We allow just enough history to make it seem familiar but not enough to create a responsibility for our past emissions. We make it just current enough to accept that we need to do something about it but put it just too far in the future to require immediate action” [71].
  • It requires coping strategies to manage the feelings and thoughts that arise so that people can face up to, and come to terms with, these threats and consequences rather than avoiding the creeping problem of climate change.
  • Since early 2007, environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht and colleagues have taken note of emotional distress related to the awareness of the overarching problem humans face as a result of global climate change [96]
  • Albrecht et al. suggest that this awareness contributes to ‘psychoterratic syndromes’. Psychoterratic syndromes include phenomena such as ‘ecoanxiety’, ‘ecoparalysis’, and ‘solastalgia’. ‘Ecoanxiety’ refers to the anxiety people face from constantly being surrounded by the wicked and threatening problems associated with a changing climate [96]
  • Exploring the complexity of psychological responses in the book, Climate change and human well-being, Weissbecker et al., discuss the full spectrum of psychosocial consequences of climate change-related events ranging from mental illness to more positive experiences like ‘Post Traumatic Growth’ (PTG), empathy, compassion, altruism, and emotional resilience [25].
  • For many people, climate change is experienced by way of vicarious threats or as an existential threat to civilisation [37]. People may experience vicarious threats when they receive weather warnings related to future disaster seasons or when they hear about environmental stressors experienced by people in other places.
  • For many people, this is largely how climate change is experienced—not as a direct threat, but as a global threat, often distant in time and place, or as a threat to our very way of life. Qualitative research finds evidence of some people being deeply affected by feelings of loss, helplessness, and frustration as they engage with the problems of global climate change [97].
  • Psychological adaptation requires a set of responses, it requires an acknowledgement of the grave threats posed by climate change and the profoundly consequential global crisis.
  • ‘Ecoparalysis’ refers to the complex feelings of not being able to take effective action to significantly mitigate climate change risks. ‘Solastalgia’ refers to “the distress and isolation caused by the gradual removal of solace from the present state of one’s home environment” [29].
  • It also requires behavioural and psychological engagement, in which people change and adjust their behaviour and lifestyle in order to reduce the threat and protect themselves.
  • Active hope—something Macy and Johnstone champion—supports psychological adaptation. Active hope is required to move hopeful intentions from a passive state where waiting for someone else to take-on the task of addressing the climate change problem is replaced with an active process of climate change mitigation and adaptation behaviours [106]
  • This active process occurs when the reality of the problem is acknowledged as is the magnitude of the problem, intentions to address the problem are set, and engaged actions take place.
  • While these three steps may oversimplify the complexity of acting in the face of bureaucracy, climate denialism, or downright avoidance and ignorance of the magnitude of the problem area, these three steps are indeed the pivot points of transformation. These pivot points, however, need to be upheld by global political will and policy commitments that tackle the problem at the appropriate scale and speed. To do so, public awareness of the severity, magnitude and range of health impacts—current and projected—is required to pressure governments and communities to act now.
  • Also, discernible interventions are needed to demonstrate a tangible path forward to respond to the risks and impacts we face in a changing climate. Examples of these types of interventions are explored below.
  • Other innovative approaches to addressing mental health and wellbeing in a changing climate writ large include experiencing and preserving nature. Koger et al. suggest that environmental preservation provides people with a sense of stewardship and personal investment that can help people overcome feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and ecoparalysis [109]. Koger et al. suggest: “if people feel a deep connection to places, wilderness, and other species, then threats to these others are much more likely to be viewed as personal issues” [109]. Other research on the restorative benefits of natural environments and settings has found that biodiversity in natural environments is important for human health and wellbeing and has a particularly positive effect on mood, attention and cognition [110].
malonema1

Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley - TODAY.com - 0 views

www.today.com/...ting-nikki-haley-1212661827918

trump politics US

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • Trump walks back sanctions against Russia, contradicting Nikki Haley
  • President Trump is walking back plans to impose new economic sanctions against Russia announced Sunday by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The planned sanctions were an attempt to punish Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar Assad after a chemical weapons attack earlier this month. {"1222314563954":{"mpxId":"1222314563954","canonical_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","canonicalUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","legacy_url":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","playerUrl":"https://www.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","ampPlayerUrl":"https://player.today.com/offsite/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","relatedLink":"","sentiment":"Positive","shortUrl":"https://www.today.com/video/how-author-allison-pataki-s-life-was-changed-by-her-husband-s-stroke-1222314563954","description":"Daughter of former New York Gov. 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five years after her escape from the Cleveland home of Ariel Castro, who held her and two others captive for over a decade, Michelle Knight (now known as Lily Rose Lee) joins Megyn Kelly TODAY to talk about her ordeal and her new memoir, “Life After Darkness.” She talks about her recent marriage and her prospects for having a child.","title":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, marriage","thumbnail":"https://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/201804/tdy_mk_news_michelle_knight_180430.today-vid-rail.jpg","socialTitle":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, marriage","seoHeadline":"Cleveland kidnapping survivor Michelle Knight talks about new life, 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  • Amid the historic developments formally ending the Korean War, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to close down a nuclear test site in May. 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  • ...1 more annotation...
  • North Korea to close down nuclear test site in May
malonema1

Trump May Already Be Violating the Iran Deal - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...559235

US politics trump crisis

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • s anyone who reads the news knows, Donald Trump will decide by May 12 whether to “withdraw from” or “pull out of” or “abandon” or “scrap” or “jettison” (the synonyms keep coming) the nuclear deal with Iran. Why May 12? Because last October, Trump declared that Iran isn’t complying with the agreement. Under a law passed by Congress, that “decertification” means Trump can reimpose the sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear activities that were waived as part of the deal. Trump hasn’t reimposed those sanctions yet. But he’s demanded that Iran make vast new concessions. And he’s threatened that if Iran does not do so by May 12, “American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.”
  • The Trump administration has likely been violating these clauses. The Washington Post reported that at a NATO summit last May, “Trump tried to persuade European partners to stop making trade and business deals with Iran.” Then, in July, Trump’s director of legislative affairs boasted that at a G20 summit in Germany, Trump had “underscored the need for nations … to stop doing business with nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran.” Both of these lobbying efforts appear to violate America’s pledge to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.”
  • The Trump administration still issues licenses for routine personal divestment transactions: for instance, people who want to sell off their property or close their bank accounts in Iran. But as far as Ferrari can tell, the Trump administration has issued few, if any, licenses for commercial transactions. That’s hard to verify: There is no public database of OFAC licenses, and the Treasury Department didn’t respond to my request for comment. But in recent months, two close observers of the Iran deal have echoed Ferrari’s observation. As the pro–nuclear deal National Iranian American Council’s Reza Marashi reported earlier this year, “To hear senior Western diplomats tell it, the Trump administration has not approved a single Iran-related OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) license since taking office.” If true, this too likely violates the Iran deal.
Javier E

Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came From Europe, Genomes Show - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...irus-cases-europe-genomes.html

Covid-19 mutation genome tracking

shared by Javier E on 09 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • New research indicates that the coronavirus began to circulate in the New York area by mid-February, weeks before the first confirmed case, and that travelers brought in the virus mainly from Europe, not Asia.
  • The research revealed a previously hidden spread of the virus that might have been detected if aggressive testing programs had been put in place.
  • It would not be until late February that Italy would begin locking down towns and cities, and March 11 when Mr. Trump said he would block travelers from most European countries. But New Yorkers had already been traveling home with the virus.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • While conspiracy theories might falsely claim the virus was concocted in a lab, the virus’s genome makes clear that it arose in bats.
  • Sophisticated computer programs can then figure out how all of those mutations arose as viruses descended from a common ancestor. If they get enough data, they can make rough estimates about how long ago those ancestors lived. That’s because mutations arise at a roughly regular pace, like a molecular clock.
  • Tracking viral mutations demands sequencing all the genetic material in a virus — its genome. Once researchers have gathered the genomes from a number of virus samples, they can compare their mutations.
  • In January, a team of Chinese and Australian researchers published the first genome of the new virus. Since then, researchers around the world have sequenced over 3,000 more. Some are genetically identical to each other, while others carry distinctive mutations.
  • The most closely related coronavirus is in a Chinese horseshoe bat, the researchers found. But the new virus has gained some unique mutations since splitting off from that bat virus decades ago.
  • Dr. Boni said that ancestral virus probably gave rise to a number of strains that infected horseshoe bats, and perhaps sometimes other animals.
  • It’s entirely possible, Dr. Boni said, in the past 10 or 20 years, a hybrid virus arose in some horseshoe bat that was well-suited to infect humans, too. Later, that virus somehow managed to cross the species barrier.
  • already, the genomes of the virus are revealing previously hidden outlines of its history over the past few months.
  • While the coronavirus mutations are useful for telling lineages apart, they don’t have any apparent effect on how the virus works.
  • The deepest branches of the tree all belong to lineages from China. The Nextstrain team has also used the mutation rate to determine that the virus probably first moved into humans from an animal host in late 2019.
  • In January, as the scope of the catastrophe in China became clear, a few countries started an aggressive testing program. They were able to track the arrival of the virus on their territory and track its spread through their populations.
  • But the United States fumbled in making its first diagnostic kits and initially limited testing only to people who had come from China and displayed symptoms of Covid-19.“It was a disaster that we didn’t do testing,”
  • As new cases arose in other parts of the country, other researchers set up their own pipelines. The first positive test result in New York came on March 1, and after a couple of weeks, patients surged into the city’s hospitals.
  • Dr. Heguy and her colleagues found some New York viruses that shared unique mutations not found elsewhere. “That’s when you know you’ve had a silent transmission for a while,”
  • And researchers at Mount Sinai started sequencing the genomes of patients coming through their hospital. They found that the earliest cases identified in New York were not linked to later ones.“Two weeks later, we start seeing viruses related to each other,”
  • Dr. Gonzalez-Reiche and her colleagues found that these viruses were practically identical to viruses found around Europe.
  • hey write that the viruses reveal “a period of untracked global transmission between late January to mid-February.”
  • Dr. van Bakel and his colleagues found one New York virus that was identical to one of the Washington viruses found by Dr. Bedford and his colleagues. In a separate study, researchers at Yale found another Washington-related virus. Combined, the two studies hint that the coronavirus has been moving from coast to coast for several weeks.
  • Dr. Boni and his colleagues found that the genome of the new virus contains a number of mutations in common with strains of coronaviruses that infect bats.
  • Some viruses evolve so quickly that they require vaccines that can produce several different antibodies. That’s not the case for Covid-19. Like other coronaviruses, it has a relatively slow mutation rate compared to some viruses, like influenza.
Javier E

Opinion | Who Is Immune to the Coronavirus? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-immunity.html

research science Covid-19 immunity vaccine

shared by Javier E on 14 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • No such human-challenge experiments have been conducted to study immunity to SARS and MERS. But measurements of antibodies in the blood of people who have survived those infections suggest that these defenses persist for some time: two years for SARS, according to one study, and almost three years for MERS, according to another one. However, the neutralizing ability of these antibodies — a measure of how well they inhibit virus replication — was already declining during the study periods.
  • These studies form the basis for an educated guess at what might happen with Covid-19 patients. After being infected with SARS-CoV-2, most individuals will have an immune response, some better than others. That response, it may be assumed, will offer some protection over the medium term — at least a year — and then its effectiveness might decline.
  • One concern has to do with the possibility of reinfection. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 91 patients who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then tested negative for the virus later tested positive again. If some of these cases were indeed reinfections, they would cast doubt on the strength of the immunity the patients had developed.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Several of my colleagues and students and I have statistically analyzed thousands of seasonal coronavirus cases in the United States and used a mathematical model to infer that immunity over a year or so is likely for the two seasonal coronaviruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 — an indication perhaps of how immunity to SARS-CoV-2 itself might also behave.
  • Mild illness, in other words, might not always build up protection. Similarly, it will be important to study the immune responses of people with asymptomatic cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection to determine whether symptoms, and their severity, predict whether a person becomes immune.
  • the issue might be resolved by comparing the viral genome sequence from the first and the second periods of infection.
  • it is reasonable to assume that only a minority of the world’s population is immune to SARS-CoV-2, even in hard-hit areas. How could this tentative picture evolve as better data come in? Early hints suggest that it could change in either direction.
  • One recent study (not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that rather than, say, 10 times the number of detected cases, the United States may really have more like 100, or even 1,000, times the official number
  • if this one is correct, then herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 could be building faster than the commonly reported figures suggest.
  • another recent study (also not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that not every case of infection may be contributing to herd immunity. Of 175 Chinese patients with mild symptoms of Covid-19, 70 percent developed strong antibody responses, but about 25 percent developed a low response and about 5 percent developed no detectable response at all
  • An alternative possibility, which many scientists think is more likely, is that these patients had a false negative test in the middle of an ongoing infection, or that the infection had temporarily subsided and then re-emerged
  • The balance between these uncertainties will become clearer when more serologic surveys, or blood tests for antibodies, are conducted on large numbers of people. Such studies are beginning and should show results soon. Of course, much will depend on how sensitive and specific the various tests are: how well they spot SARS-CoV-2 antibodies when those are present and if they can avoid spurious signals from antibodies to related viruses.
  • Based on the volunteer experiments with seasonal coronaviruses and the antibody-persistence studies for SARS and MERS, one might expect a strong immune response to SARS-CoV-2 to protect completely against reinfection and a weaker one to protect against severe infection and so still slow the virus’s spread.
  • But designing valid epidemiologic studies to figure all of this out is not easy — many scientists, including several teams of which I’m a part — are working on the issue right now.
  • getting a handle on this fast is extremely important: not only to estimate the extent of herd immunity, but also to figure out whether some people can re-enter society safely, without becoming infected again or serving as a vector, and spreading the virus to others. Central to this effort will be figuring out how long protection lasts.
  • Experimental and statistical evidence suggests that infection with one coronavirus can offer some degree of immunity against distinct but related coronaviruses.
  • then there is the question of immune enhancement: Through a variety of mechanisms, immunity to a coronavirus can in some instances exacerbate an infection rather than prevent or mitigate it.
  • administering a vaccine against dengue fever, a flavivirus infection, can sometimes make the disease worse.
  • concern that they might be at play is one of the obstacles that have slowed the development of experimental vaccines against SARS and MERS.
  • The good news is that research on SARS and MERS has begun to clarify how enhancement works, suggesting ways around it, and an extraordinary range of efforts is underway to find a vaccine for Covid-19, using multiple approaches.
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