Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items matching "diamond" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
6More

A Reason for Hope in Congo's Perpetual War - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...e-in-congos-perpetual-war.html congo war crisis culture
shared by grayton downing on 27 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Still, the battle was a dramatic turnaround from barely a year ago, when the rebels had the upper hand. Ill-disciplined, corrupt and often drunk, the Congolese soldiers were only somewhat more popular than the mutineer rebels who had taken up arms against them.
  • Last fall, after the rebels briefly overran Goma, the regional capital and a city of one million people, the United Nations peacekeeping forces here were exposed as little more than blue-helmeted mannequins.
  • Last week, the negotiations broke down and fighting resumed. A spokesman for M23 said the Congolese military had started the latest round of fighting, but General Bahuma said they were only responding to a rebel attack.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “You cannot compare the present army with the army of yesterday,”
  • The fighting in eastern Congo is one of the world’s most intractable, prolonged and deadly conflicts, claiming millions of lives over a decade and a half. The region is rich in gold and diamonds, and minerals like coltan and cassiterite, but instead of making its people wealthy they have only tempted invaders and local warlords. Goma, a bustling commercial hub on the Rwandan border, has been plagued by violence and poverty.
  • Last November, hundreds of rebels, machine guns on their backs, marched into Goma, setting off a national crisis. As Congolese soldiers retreated, they raped more than 102 women and 33 girls, some as young as 6, according to United Nations investigators. Riots erupted across Congo, even in the capital, Kinshasa, a thousand miles away, threatening the government of President Joseph Kabila.
11More

Shunya's Notes: Ian Morris on Why the West Rules-For Now - 0 views

blog.shunya.net/...ian-morris.html Morris western civilization china world history
shared by Javier E on 28 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Morris takes on theories which "suggest that there is something unique about western culture". His argument is simple: "from the Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea," there were philosophers wrestling with the same questions "and finding similar answers" as Socrates. "Socrates was part of a huge pattern, not a unique giant who sent the West down a superior path". What can I say? Does Morris, a specialized Professor of Classics, seriously believe that Indian and Chinese thinkers were reasoning in ways similar to Europeans? First of all, one of the exceptional qualities about the West is the continuous sequence of original thinkers in ancient Greece, in Rome, in Christian and in Modern Europe. The mere appearance of a Socrates at one point in time is not the issue. Find me in ancient Asia a continuous line of original thinkers
  • Morris brings up the Renaissance only to tell us that there were renaissances everywhere. The revivals ones sees in Asia history were always revivals of the same traditional ways of thinking; imagine Europeans for ever writing textual studies of Plato
  • Christianity? -- well, Morris says that all religions are the same. Christianity and Islam are fundamentally different religious traditions, and not only because the former has exhibited a far richer scholarly tradition, which is rather visible in the immediate fusion of Greek philosophy, Roman Law, and Christian theology in the first centuries AD, not to mention the Middle Ages, but because in Islam the idea that Allah has limits to his own powers, by making an everlasting covenant, with human beings, is unthinkable, in that Allah is viewed as absolutely transcendent; whereas for Christianity the authority of the earthly rulers is limited by God's law, which both grants rights to every person and holds that God is conterminous with Reason. There is no self-limitation to the sovereignty of Islamic rulers, and for this reason Islam has faced great difficulties producing a secular political order subject to constitutional checks and balances.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • If one is to dismiss the role of Chritianity, one should at least take on the extremely rich literature associated with such names as Edward Grant, Toby Huff, James Hannam, and others, of which Morris shows not even a minimal awareness.
  • Morris's emphasis on a common cultural humanity is consistent with the officially established academic ideology of "diversity" (see Peter Wood's book, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept), which is intended precisely to do away with the notion that Western nations have a distinctive, particular identity.
  • The argument that the Scientific Revolution was made possible by the "requirements" for new knowledge occasioned by travel and exploration across the Atlantic is true only in the sense that this was part of a much wider set of institutional and intellectual developments with a long background history. Geography always matters; it is always there, but there is no way one can draw a neat line of causation from geographical mobility and colonization to Newtonian physics. For a far better line of argumentation, see the newly release, and more intelligently argued _Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution_ (2010), by Toby Huff.
  • geography has shaped the development and the distribution of power and wealth in the world over the last 15,000 years, but at the same time the development of societies has changed what the geography means across this period. This is the core thing in the book."
  • next it is the British who are passively required to become inventive: "As the 18th century goes on, the British, in particular, find that the new wealth coming in from the new market economy is pushing up wages, making it rather difficult for the British to compete with some other European countries in their manufactures. The British, in particular, start facing the need to mechanize production and, ideally, to tap into new energy sources."
  • My view is the opposite; the Europeans who colonized the Americas and made revolutions in all spheres of life, in ancient, medieval, and modern times, were the most active, restless humans on earth. (And I might add that this disposition was nurtured by the geographical landscape of the European landmass which runs from the Pontic steppes all the way to the Atlantic). Morris's argument on British good luck in the possession of coal and colonies comes from A. G. Frank and Pomeranz; this is how Morris, apparently, integrates the long term and the short term, and, in this respect, goes beyond Diamond.
  • He finds it a bit alarming that Americans speak of decline as if it were a terrible thing; after all, "if you just substitute America and China, you get really remarkably similar kinds of things." It makes no difference if the US or China is the dominant power in the world.
  • This way of thinking is conterminous with Morris's geographical determinism and his claim that humans are all the same regardless of cultural background, religious beliefs and intellectual life. Americans and the Chinese are practically (in terms of what matters, economic growth and biological longevity) the same, or at least similarly enough that their difference don't really make much of a difference.
8More

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.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • 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.”
10More

Owner of a Credit Card Processor Is Setting a New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year - NYTime... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...minimum-wage-70000-a-year.html minimum wage income happiness research inequality CEO
shared by Javier E on 14 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Mr. Price surprised his 120-person staff by announcing that he planned over the next three years to raise the salary of even the lowest-paid clerk, customer service representative and salesman to a minimum of $70,000.
  • Mr. Price, who started the Seattle-based credit-card payment processing firm in 2004 at the age of 19, said he would pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.
  • his unusual proposal does speak to an economic issue that has captured national attention: The disparity between the soaring pay of chief executives and that of their employees.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The United States has one of the world’s largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists’ estimates. That is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker.
  • “The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Mr. Price, who said his main extravagances were snowboarding and picking up the bar bill. He drives a 12-year-old Audi
  • Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.
  • Of all the social issues that he felt he was in a position to do something about as a business leader, “that one seemed like a more worthy issue to go after.”
  • The happiness research behind Mr. Price’s announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as “the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant” — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year.
  • Of course, money above that level brings pleasures — there’s no denying the delights of a Caribbean cruise or a pair of diamond earrings — but no further gains on the emotional well-being scale.
  • As Mr. Kahneman has explained it, income above the threshold doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money can deprive you of it.
8More

Debate Over Cecil Rhodes Statue at Oxford Gains Steam - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ecil-rhodes-statue-oxford.html historiography colonial imperialism Rhodes Africa
shared by Javier E on 25 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “Like many historical figures, Rhodes did both good and bad, and things look different when today’s standards are applied,” Mr. Gerson said. “Our values today are opposed to the views of the world held by Rhodes, and much of his generation, but his bequest is forever deserving of respect.”
  • “Its wording is a political tribute, and the college believes its continuing display on Oriel property is inconsistent with our principles,” it said.The statement added that the statue raised more complex issues and that “in the absence of any context or explanation, it can be seen as an uncritical celebration of a controversial figure, and the colonialism and the oppression of black communities he represents.”
  • “Rhodes was not a campaigner against racism, but many of the scholars who are his legacy have been,” Mr. Abbott wrote.“Oxford would damage its standing as a great university if it were to substitute moral vanity for fair-minded inquiry,” he said, adding that “the university and its students should prefer improving today’s orthodoxies to imposing them on our forebears.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Mr. Abbott’s intervention, which came in an email to The Independent, argued that it was possible to lament that Rhodes “failed to oppose unjust features of his society while still celebrating the genius” that led to the Rhodes scholarships.
  • Some British politicians have sought to depict the campaign as a demonstration of political correctness and an effort to erase history, a notion that supporters reject.
  • R. W. Johnson, an author who is an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College at Oxford, compared the campaign to remove the monument to what Al Qaeda and the Islamic State “are doing in places like Mali when destroying statues.
  • “The significance of taking down the statue is simple,” he added. “Cecil Rhodes is the Hitler of southern Africa. Would anyone countenance a statue to Hitler?”
  • Brian Kwoba, a doctoral student, told The Independent newspaper that Rhodes was responsible for “stealing land, massacring tens of thousands of black Africans, imposing a regime of unspeakable labor exploitation in the diamond mines and devising pro-apartheid policies.”
3More

DR Congo signs new mining law despite companies' opposition - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-africa-43355678 mining Africa economics environment development law politics industrialization congo
shared by anonymous on 11 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo has moved to increase taxes on mining firms and increase government royalties from the industry despite fierce opposition from international mining companies. President Joseph Kabila signed a new mining code into law on Friday.The country is Africa's biggest producer of copper and cobalt, a vital component in mobile phone batteries.
  • Its mining industry - which also produces diamond, tantalum, tin and gold - is the country's largest source of export income. The law, which was passed by parliament in January, will double government royalties on all minerals.
  • The impoverished yet mineral-rich nation provides more than 60% of the world's cobalt. Prices for it more than doubled last year thanks to an increased demand for electric cars, which require cobalt for batteries.
50More

Can Liberal Democracy Survive Social Media? | by Yascha Mounk | NYR Daily | T... - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...democracy-survive-social-media democracy liberal social media myth politics
shared by Javier E on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • the basic deal that traditional elites offered to the people at the inception of our political system: “As long as you let us call the shots, we will pretend to let you rule.”
  • Today, that deal is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, and the reason is both unlikely and counterintuitive
  • Until a few decades ago, governments and big media companies enjoyed an oligopoly over the means of mass communication. As a result, they could set the standards of acceptable political discourse.
  • ...47 more annotations...
  • In one of the most subtle early analyses of what he tellingly called “Liberation Technology,” Larry Diamond argued that new digital tools would empower “citizens to report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize protest, monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the horizons of freedom.” Diamond’s article was published in the summer of 2010.
  • Twitter, Andrew Sullivan wrote in The Atlantic, had proven to be a “critical tool for organizing.” In twenty-first-century conflict, Nicholas Kristof echoed in The New York Times, “government thugs firing bullets” would increasingly come up against the resistance of “young protesters firing ‘tweets.’”
  • As Clay Shirky argued in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, even in longstanding democracies like the United States the power of digital technology made it much easier for activists to coordinate
  • thanks to Twitter, Donald Trump did not need the infrastructure of traditional media outlets. Instead, he could tweet messages directly to his millions of followers. Once he had done so, established broadcasters faced a stark choice: ignore the main subject of conversation and make themselves irrelevant—or discuss each tweet at length, thereby amplifying Trump’s message even as they ostensibly scrutinized it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they chose the latter course of action.
  • Breathless claims about digital technology’s liberating potential turned into equally breathless prognostications of doom. Social media was declared the most dangerous foe of liberal democracy.
  • The truth about social media is not that it is necessarily good or bad for liberal democracy. Nor is it that social media inherently strengthens or undermines tolerance.
  • On the contrary, it is that social media closes the technological gap between insiders and outsiders.
  • At times, this meant marginalizing passionate critics of the status quo—and thus making it harder for the weak and powerless to make their voices heard. At other times, it meant declining to publish conspiracy theories, outright lies, or racist rants—and thus stabilizing liberal democracy
  • The credibility of those claims depends on what they are compared to. So long as the memory of absolute monarchy was recent, and a more directly democratic system seemed unfeasible, liberal democracies could claim to empower the people.
  • One response has been to put pressure on Twitter and Facebook to change their algorithms and enforce stricter community guidelines; this is the tack that most tech critics have taken in the United State
  • Another response has been to limit what can be said on social media platforms by coercive legislation; this is the stance that European governments have adopted, with remarkable speed.
  • it seems at least as plausible to think that Americans won’t be willing to compromise on their First Amendment rights; that they will decamp to more freewheeling alternatives if existing social media platforms are tamed; and, indeed, that more subtle, yet no less powerful, forms of hate will continue to spread on existing platforms even if its most outrageous manifestations are suppressed.
  • There is, then, a very real possibility that the rise of digital technology, and the concomitant spread of essentially costless communication, have set up a direct clash between two of our most cherished values: freedom of speech and the stability of our political system.
  • the challenge is even more fundamental.
  • Rather, the daily experience of liking and sharing posts on social media may habituate users to a simulated form of direct democracy that makes the existing institutions of representative democracy appear intolerably outmoded.
  • Could digital natives—reared on the direct efficacy of social media—simply be less willing to tolerate the slow, indirect workings of analogue institutions designed in the eighteenth century?
  • And might they therefore be more resistant to accepting the democratic myth that has long underwritten the stability of the American Republic?
  • The political systems of countries like Great Britain and the United States were founded not to promote, but to oppose, democracy; they only acquired a democratic halo in retrospect, thanks to more recent claims that they allowed the people to rule.
  • the rise of the Internet and social media is making the ideological foundation of liberal democracy—which has had a tight hold over our imagination for the better part of two centuries—look increasingly brittle.
  • This held true for the century or so during which democracy enjoyed an unprecedented ideological hegemony. In the age of the Internet, it no longer does. As a result, the democratic myth that helped to make our institutions look uniquely legitimate is losing its hold.
  • The undemocratic roots of our supposedly democratic institutions are clearly on display in Great Britain. Parliament was not designed to put power in the hands of the people; it was a blood-soaked compromise between a beleaguered monarch and the upper echelons of the country’s elite
  • Because the US was founded in a more ideologically self-conscious manner, the same history is even more evident here. For the Founding Fathers, the election of representatives, which we have come to regard as the most democratic way to translate popular views into public policy, was a mechanism for keeping the people at bay
  • In short, the Founding Fathers did not believe a representative republic to be second best; they found it far preferable to the factious horrors of a true democracy.
  • It was only in the nineteenth century, as egalitarian sentiment rose on both sides of the Atlantic, that a set of entrepreneurial thinkers began to dress an ideologically self-conscious republic up in the unaccustomed robes of a born-again democracy.
  • Only gradually did the US make real improvements to its democratic process.
  • And crucial to that transformation was a story about the limits of democratic governance under modern conditions.
  • In ancient Athens, so the story went, the people—or at least those who were regarded as the people, which is to say adult male citizens—could rule directly because there were relatively few of them, because the territory of the state was so small, and because they had leisure to govern since so many of them owned slaves who took care of their daily needs
  • As John Adams noted, the people “can never act, consult, or reason together, because they cannot march five hundred miles, nor spare the time, nor find a space to meet.” In industrial nations that expanded over a huge territory direct democracy was thought to be impossible.
  • While representative institutions had been founded in ideological opposition to democracy, they were now re-described as the closest instantiation of that ideal possible under modern conditions. Thus, the founding myth of liberal-democratic ideology—the improbable fiction that representative government would facilitate the rule of the people—was born.
  • we have not even started to address the issue of how to make the democratic promise of our political system ring true for a new generation.
  • or a long century, the founding myth of liberal democracy retained sufficient footing in reality to keep a deep hold over the popular imagination, and help one political system conquer half the globe. But that basis is now crumbling
  • With the advent of the Internet, John Adams’s worry about the people’s inability to deliberate together has come to seem quaint
  • The physical agora of ancient Athens could be replaced by a virtual agora that would allow millions to debate and vote on policy proposals with even greater ease. As a result, citizens now have a much more instinctive sense that our democratic institutions are highly mediated.
  • They know that if we wanted to design a system of government that truly allowed the people to rule, it would not look much like the representative democracy of today.
  • The rise of the Internet and social media has thus created a giant mismatch between the direct efficiency of our digital lives and the cumbersome inefficiency of our formal institutions—and that has accentuated the contrast between our system’s promise to let the people rule and the reality that the people rarely feel as though they can have a real impact on the most important decisions facing their country
  • The Internet threatens to end the hegemony of liberal democracy not only by amplifying the voice of a small band of haters and extremists, but also by alienating a much larger number of digital natives from the decidedly analogue institutions by which they are governed.
  • We have only just begun to face up to the first big corrosive influence of digital technology on our politics: the way in which social media has helped to mainstream extremists
  • We’re only beginning to understand how we can stop vast platforms like Facebook and Twitter from spreading hate and fake news—and whether that will even prove possible without sacrificing constitutive elements of our political system
  • The rising tide of egalitarian sentiment during the nineteenth century should, by rights, have come into conflict with a set of avowedly aristocratic institutions. Instead, its fresh packaging gave the representative institutions of the United States and the United Kingdom a new lease on life. It pleased the elites who continued to get their way on the most important issues as much as it pleased the egalitarians who came to see it as a realization of their aspirations.
  • the widespread frustration with the state has less to do with excessive bureaucracy or overly cumbersome processes than it does with the underlying reality of the economy and the welfare state: what political scientists call the “performance legitimacy” of our political system has suffered from a combination of rising living costs, stagnating real wages, growing inequality, and dwindling social services.
  • More important, the real barrier to public participation in politics has always been interest, time, and expertise as much as it has been technology
  • Even if it were easy to weigh in, even vote, on every decision made at the local, county, state, and federal level, most citizens would hardly marshal the enthusiasm to be so intimately engaged with such a wide variety of questions of public policy.
  • Nor would most citizens miraculously develop the expertise to assess, for example, what kinds of regulations are needed to keep a power plant safe
  • A dozen years after the invention of Facebook, by contrast, the new technology has spread to every corner of the globe. Some two billion people actively use the platform.
  • there can be little doubt that, in the short run—which is to say, for the rest of our lives—it will make for a more chaotic world.
  • Unfettered by the constraints of the old media system, and buoyed by a growing popular cynicism about democracy’s promise, the demagogues have been willing to say whatever it takes to get elected—to flatter and deceive, to obfuscate, and even to incite hatred of their fellow citizens. Perhaps their rhetoric will prove to be unstoppable. As one state legislator recently pointed out to me, it is difficult for a rational politician to win a debate with a three-sentence answer when his rival is offering a one-sentence answer—especially when the other candidate can blast his simplistic take all over Twitter and Facebook.
  • All is not lost. But to revitalize liberal democracy in the digital age, it will not be enough to think carefully about how to enforce privacy rights or stifle the most hateful voices on the Internet. We must also think anew about how to fill the democratic promise with meaning for a new generation that has lost the belief in the democratic myth that long provided legitimacy for our political system.
25More

Poland's Fugitive King | History Today - 0 views

www.historytoday.com/...poland%E2%80%99s-fugitive-king Poland France Henry II Election
shared by manhefnawi on 13 May 18 - No Cached
  • One of the most extraordinary events of the 16th century was the election in 1573 of a French prince to the throne of Poland. The prince was Henri, the third son of Henry II of France.
  • Catherine’s two eldest sons, François and Charles, were kings of France successively. Henri also succeeded to that throne in 1574. Their sister, Marguerite, became queen of Navarre by marrying the future Henri IV of France in 1572
  • The Polish throne, unusually, was elective. Since 1386 the election had been in practice limited to members of the Jagiellon dynasty, but now, for the first time, it was to be free. Five candidates offered themselves including John III of Sweden, Ivan IV, Tsar of Muscovy, the Archduke Ernest, son of the Emperor Maximilian II, and Henri, Duke of Anjou
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • Henri seemed set to win the election when news of the massacre in Paris reached Poland. Overnight the atmosphere changed: lurid depictions of cruelty began to circulate
  • We want Henri of Valois to be our king!
  • The former provided for a Diet every two years, forbade the king to name his successor or to marry without its consent, limited his power over legislation and bound him to accept a permanent council of 16 senators. To safeguard religious toleration, the terms of the Confederation of Warsaw of 1573 were included in the Henrician Articles, together with a clause releasing the king’s subjects of their obligation of obedience if he broke the contract
  • little more than a figurehead
  • For Poland was far from backward culturally. A strong humanistic tradition had developed there in the 15th century
  • You will be powerless to do evil’, he said, ‘but all powerful to do good.
  • This meeting revealed sharp differences among the Poles over religious toleration
  • Two conditions were particularly repugnant to Henri: the obligation to hand over his private fortune to the Polish state and that which released his subjects from their obedience if he should break any condition attached to his election
  • Henri sat as king of Poland alongside his brother, Charles IX, king of France
  • Poland as such did not interest him; he was only going there to please his mother.
  • German Protestants had been outraged by the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day. Yet Henri was received courteously
  • Protestant members of the Diet feared that, once crowned, he would expel all non-Catholics from Poland
  • He sentenced Zborowski to banishment, thereby unleashing a furious reaction. Considered too harsh by the Zborowskis and too light by the Wapowskis, the sentence ignited bitter criticism of Henri
  • He was accused of breaking his oath
  • By now Henri was heartily tired of Poland
  • On June 14th, 1574, however, news of Charles IX’s death reached Henri. Keeping it to himself, he declined to take part in a tournament that evening and instead consulted four of his French councillors as to what action to take. They were equally divided: some thought a clandestine departure would do lasting damage to Henri’s reputation, while others argued that he needed to return to France urgently
  • Having decided to go, Henri asked two of his French courtiers to find out how to leave Cracow unnoticed and to prepare horses and guides. For it was essential that the Poles should not suspect that he was about to ditch them. If they tried to retain him he might lose the throne of France, which he valued far more than that of Poland. He was being pressed by his mother to return without delay. His brother Alençon remained a threat. On June 15th Henri deceitfully informed the Senate that he was not planning to leave for the time being and summoned a meeting of the Diet for September
  • In Cracow Henri’s flight was discovered. Tenczynski and a large troop of horsemen set off in pursuit. On reaching the river the chamberlain spied Henri on the far bank: ‘Your Majesty’, he cried, ‘why are you fleeing?’ He then joined Henri at Ples, a small Austrian town. ‘My friend’, explained the king, ‘while I am taking up the succession given to me by God, I am not renouncing that which He has given me by election, for my shoulders are strong enough to support both crowns
  • The king gave him a valuable diamond instead. Tenczynski then returned to Cracow, leaving Henri and his company to continue their journey
  • Discontent and confusion erupted in Poland after Henri’s flight.
  • the nobles turned instead to Stephen Bathory, Prince of Transylvania. He was acclaimed by a Diet on January 18th, 1576 and, soon afterwards, accepted the conditions laid down by the Polish nobles. He was crowned in Cracow on April 29th and married Princess Anna the next day
  • Poles felt let down. No king of theirs had ever given up his crown voluntarily. A popular saying expressed their resentment: King Henri has done the Poles a bad turn: elected at night, he came at night, and, like a traitor, he fled at night
6More

The Strange Fate of India's Peacock Throne - 0 views

www.thoughtco.com/indias-peacock-throne-3971939 peacock Throne India Mughal Empire
shared by g-dragon on 30 May 18 - No Cached
  • The Peacock Throne was a wonder to behold — a gilded platform, canopied in silk and encrusted in precious jewels.
  • Built in the 17th century for the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan,
  • When Shah Jahan ruled the Mughal Empire, it was at the height of its Golden Age, a period of great prosperity and civil accord amongst the Empire's people — covering most of India
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Shah Jahan commissioned a jewel encrusted gold throne to be built on a pedestal in the courtroom, where he could then be seated above the crowd, closer to God. Among the hundreds of rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other jewels embedded in the Peacock Throne was the famed 186-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond, which was later taken by the British.
  • 1739, when Nader Shah of Persia sacked Delhi and stole the Peacock Throne.
  • experts believe that the legs of the 1836 Qajar Throne, which was also called the Peacock Throne, might have been taken from the Mughal original.
57More

America Wasn't a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...istory-american-democracy.html democracy america American dream black African-American history
shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 19 - No Cached
  • Like all the black men and women in my family, he believed in hard work, but like all the black men and women in my family, no matter how hard he worked, he never got ahead.
  • So when I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism.
  • I had been taught, in school, through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really ours, that our history as a people began with enslavement and that we had contributed little to this great nation. It seemed that the closest thing black Americans could have to cultural pride was to be found in our vague connection to Africa, a place we had never been
  • ...54 more annotations...
  • Like most young people, I thought I understood so much, when in fact I understood so little. My father knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag. He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible, that the United States simply would not exist without us
  • Before the abolishment of the international slave trade, 400,000 enslaved Africans would be sold into America. Those individuals and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire
  • Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom
  • It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.
  • The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst
  • Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves — black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.
  • Without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different — it might not be a democracy at all.
  • In every war this nation has waged since that first one, black Americans have fought — today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military.
  • the year 1619 is as important to the American story as 1776. That black Americans, as much as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital, are this nation’s true “founding fathers.” And that no people has a greater claim to that flag than us.
  • Jefferson’s fellow white colonists knew that black people were human beings, but they created a network of laws and customs, astounding for both their precision and cruelty, that ensured that enslaved people would never be treated as such.
  • Enslavers could rape or murder their property without legal consequence. Enslaved people could own nothing, will nothing and inherit nothing. They were legally tortured, including by those working for Jefferson himself. They could be worked to death, and often were, in order to produce the highest profits for the white people who owned them.
  • Conveniently left out of our founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.
  • With the troops gone, white Southerners quickly went about eradicating the gains of Reconstruction. The systemic white suppression of black life was so severe that this period between the 1880s and the 1920 and ’30s became known as the Great Nadir, or the second slavery. Democracy would not return to the South for nearly a century.
  • we may never have revolted against Britain if the founders had not understood that slavery empowered them to do so; nor if they had not believed that independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. It is not incidental that 10 of this nation’s first 12 presidents were enslavers, and some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.
  • when it came time to draft the Constitution, the framers carefully constructed a document that preserved and protected slavery without ever using the word. In the texts in which they were making the case for freedom to the world, they did not want to explicitly enshrine their hypocrisy, so they sought to hide it
  • The Constitution contains 84 clauses. Six deal directly with the enslaved and their enslavement, as the historian David Waldstreicher has written, and five more hold implications for slavery. The Constitution protected the “property” of those who enslaved black people, prohibited the federal government from intervening to end the importation of enslaved Africans for a term of 20 years, allowed Congress to mobilize the militia to put down insurrections by the enslaved and forced states that had outlawed slavery to turn over enslaved people who had run away seeking refuge
  • The shameful paradox of continuing chattel slavery in a nation founded on individual freedom, scholars today assert, led to a hardening of the racial caste system. This ideology, reinforced not just by laws but by racist science and literature, maintained that black people were subhuman, a belief that allowed white Americans to live with their betrayal.
  • By the early 1800s, according to the legal historians Leland B. Ware, Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, white Americans, whether they engaged in slavery or not, “had a considerable psychological as well as economic investment in the doctrine of black inferiority.”
  • The Supreme Court enshrined this thinking in the law in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, ruling that black people, whether enslaved or free, came from a “slave” race. This made them inferior to white people and, therefore, incompatible with American democracy
  • This belief, that black people were not merely enslaved but were a slave race, became the root of the endemic racism that we still cannot purge from this nation to this day. If black people could not ever be citizens, if they were a caste apart from all other humans, then they did not require the rights bestowed by the Constitution, and the “we” in the “We the People” was not a lie.
  • now Lincoln was blaming them for the war. “Although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other ... without the institution of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war could not have an existence,” the president told them. “It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”
  • As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Few men ever worshiped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.” Black Americans had long called for universal equality and believed, as the abolitionist Martin Delany said, “that God has made of one blood all the nations that dwell on the face of the earth.” Liberated by war, then, they did not seek vengeance on their oppressors as Lincoln and so many other white Americans feared. They did the opposite.
  • The South, for the first time in the history of this country, began to resemble a democracy, with black Americans elected to local, state and federal offices. Some 16 black men served in Congress
  • These black officials joined with white Republicans, some of whom came down from the North, to write the most egalitarian state constitutions the South had ever seen. They helped pass more equitable tax legislation and laws that prohibited discrimination in public transportation, accommodation and housing. Perhaps their biggest achievement was the establishment of that most democratic of American institutions: the public school.
  • Led by black activists and a Republican Party pushed left by the blatant recalcitrance of white Southerners, the years directly after slavery saw the greatest expansion of human and civil rights this nation would ever see.
  • The many gains of Reconstruction were met with fierce white resistance throughout the South, including unthinkable violence against the formerly enslaved, wide-scale voter suppression, electoral fraud and even, in some extreme cases, the overthrow of democratically elected biracial governments.
  • Enslaved people could not legally marry. They were barred from learning to read and restricted from meeting privately in groups. They had no claim to their own children, who could be bought, sold and traded away from them on auction blocks alongside furniture and cattle
  • White Southerners of all economic classes, on the other hand, thanks in significant part to the progressive policies and laws black people had championed, experienced substantial improvement in their lives even as they forced black people back into a quasi slavery. As Waters McIntosh, who had been enslaved in South Carolina, lamented, “It was the poor white man who was freed by the war, not the Negroes.”
  • black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded black people almost entirely from mainstream American life — a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.
  • Despite the guarantees of equality in the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court’s landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 declared that the racial segregation of black Americans was constitutional. With the blessing of the nation’s highest court and no federal will to vindicate black rights, starting in the late 1800s, Southern states passed a series of laws and codes meant to make slavery’s racial caste system permanent by denying black people political power, social equality and basic dignity.
  • This caste system was maintained through wanton racial terrorism. And black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particular violence
  • As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”
  • Many white Americans saw black men in the uniforms of America’s armed services not as patriotic but as exhibiting a dangerous pride. Hundreds of black veterans were beaten, maimed, shot and lynched
  • During the height of racial terror in this country, black Americans were not merely killed but castrated, burned alive and dismembered with their body parts displayed in storefronts. This violence was meant to terrify and control black people, but perhaps just as important, it served as a psychological balm for white supremacy: You would not treat human beings this way
  • If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse
  • Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.
  • As the centennial of slavery’s end neared, black people were still seeking the rights they had fought for and won after the Civil War: the right to be treated equally by public institutions, which was guaranteed in 1866 with the Civil Rights Act; the right to be treated as full citizens before the law, which was guaranteed in 1868 by the 14th Amendment; and the right to vote, which was guaranteed in 1870 by the 15th Amendment.
  • In response to black demands for these rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled them with dogs, peeled back their skin with fire hoses and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.
  • For the most part, black Americans fought back alone. Yet we never fought only for ourselves. The bloody freedom struggles of the civil rights movement laid the foundation for every other modern rights struggle.
  • This nation’s white founders set up a decidedly undemocratic Constitution that excluded women, Native Americans and black people, and did not provide the vote or equality for most Americans. But the laws born out of black resistance guarantee the franchise for all and ban discrimination based not just on race but on gender, nationality, religion and ability
  • It was the civil rights movement that led to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which upended the racist immigration quota system intended to keep this country white
  • to this day, black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment
  • Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees
  • as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but black people did
  • “Out of the ashes of white denigration, we gave birth to ourselves.” For as much as white people tried to pretend, black people were not chattel. And so the process of seasoning, instead of erasing identity, served an opposite purpose: In the void, we forged a new culture all our own.
  • Today, our very manner of speaking recalls the Creole languages that enslaved people innovated in order to communicate both with Africans speaking various dialects and the English-speaking people who enslaved them.
  • Our style of dress, the extra flair, stems back to the desires of enslaved people — shorn of all individuality — to exert their own identity
  • The improvisational quality of black art and music comes from a culture that because of constant disruption could not cling to convention.
  • Black naming practices, so often impugned by mainstream society, are themselves an act of resistance. Our last names belong to the white people who once owned us. That is why the insistence of many black Americans, particularly those most marginalized, to give our children names that we create, that are neither European nor from Africa, a place we have never been, is an act of self-determination
  • We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American. But it was by virtue of our bondage that we became the most American of all.
  • It is common, still, to point to rates of black poverty, out-of-wedlock births, crime and college attendance, as if these conditions in a country built on a racial caste system are not utterly predictable. But crucially, you cannot view those statistics while ignoring another: that black people were enslaved here longer than we have been free.
  • Black people suffered under slavery for 250 years; we have been legally “free” for just 50. Yet in that briefest of spans, despite continuing to face rampant discrimination, and despite there never having been a genuine effort to redress the wrongs of slavery and the century of racial apartheid that followed, black Americans have made astounding progress, not only for ourselves but also for all Americans
  • Out of our unique isolation, both from our native cultures and from white America, we forged this nation’s most significant original culture. In turn, “mainstream” society has coveted our style, our slang and our song, seeking to appropriate the one truly American culture as its own.
  • seasoning, in which people stolen from western and central Africa
18More

More Americans Should Probably Wear Masks for Protection - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-coronavirus-face-masks.html pandemic response face equipment asia psychology
shared by Javier E on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • healthy individuals, especially those with essential jobs who cannot avoid public transportation or close interaction with others, may need to start wearing masks more regularly.
  • A new report from the C.D.C., published Friday, also suggests that several residents of a nursing facility in King County, Washington, either did not have any symptoms or developed very mild symptoms only after they had been confirmed to have a coronavirus infection.
  • Masks work by stopping infected droplets spewing from the wearer’s nose or mouth, rather than stopping the acquisition of virus from others. That is why the W.H.O. and C.D.C. recommend that people already infected with the coronavirus wear masks, to protect others who may come into close contact with them
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • if healthy individuals start stockpiling surgical masks and high-grade N95 masks, they can also make it harder for health workers to get the resources they need to help on the front lines.
  • But studies of influenza pandemics have shown that when high-grade N95 masks are not available, surgical masks do protect people a bit more than not wearing masks at all. And when masks are combined with hand hygiene, they help reduce the transmission of infections.
  • When researchers conducted systematic review of a variety of interventions used during the SARS outbreak in 2003, they found that washing hands more than 10 times daily was 55 percent effective in stopping virus transmission, while wearing a mask was actually more effective — at about 68 percent
  • Wearing gloves offered about the same amount of protection as frequent hand-washing, and combining all measures — hand-washing, masks, gloves and a protective gown — increased the intervention effectiveness to 91 percent.
  • Classified data from the Chinese government that was reported in the South China Morning Post indicated that up to a third of all people who tested positive for the coronavirus could have been silent carriers.
  • Widespread testing on the Diamond Princess showed that half of the positive cases on board the cruise ship had no symptoms.
  • While wearing a mask may not necessarily prevent healthy people from getting sick, and it certainly doesn’t replace important measures such as hand-washing or social distancing, it may be better than nothing,
  • “It’s still hard to tell what percentage of people are truly asymptomatic because many go on to develop symptoms a few days later,
  • “What we do know is that individuals can shed virus about 48 hours before they develop symptoms and masking can prevent transmission from those individuals.”
  • Wearing a mask can also reduce the likelihood that people will touch their face
  • In many Asian countries, everyone is encouraged to wear masks, and the approach is about crowd psychology and protection. If everyone wears a mask, individuals protect each other, reducing overall community transmission
  • The sick automatically have one on and are also more likely to adhere to keeping their mask on because the stigma of wearing one is removed.
  • Masks are also an important signal that it’s not business as usual during a pandemic
  • They may also serve as an act of solidarity, showing that all citizens are on board with the precautionary measures needed to bring infections under control.
  • “If everyone in the community wears a mask, it could decrease transmission,” Dr. Fishman said. “But unfortunately I think that we don’t have enough masks to make that effective policy in the U.S.”
8More

The coronavirus-themed foods bringing light relief to customers | CNN Travel - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html culture crisis economics
shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • (CNN) — Among global efforts to offer some light relief to the current crisis, bakers and chefs have been producing coronavirus-related dishes that are hopefully a lot tastier than the epidemic which has inspired them.
  • According to Reuters, the takeaway shop is currently selling around 50 of the burgers every day, which is particularly impressive considering the number of businesses that have been forced to close down as a result of the pandemic.
  • Pré told French language newspaper Le Telegramme he devised the eggs to bring some humor to the situation after growing "tired of hearing" about coronavirus.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Meanwhile in western Germany, the Schuerener Backparadies bakery has added two different coronavirus-themed creations to its selection.
  • A nod to the well-documented toilet paper shortage that's occurred across the world as consumers frantically buy up huge quantities, the marble cakes are wrapped in white fondant etched with tiny diamond shapes in the style of quilted toilet roll.
  • Like France, and many countries around the world, Germany has imposed extensive restrictions and many non-essential businesses have been forced to close.
  • Over in the US, a New York doughnut shop has dedicated its latest offering to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force who's won the public over with his straight-talking approach.
  • According to Semeraro, the shop has sold thousands of the buttercream-frosted doughnut, which features Fauci's face printed on edible paper, with customers asking for the treat to be sent to various cities and states.
12More

US coronavirus cases: First US death from coronvairus in Washington state - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html cases death state coronavirus
shared by annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • It's the first confirmed death from the coronavirus in the United States.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      yikes
  • without any related travel history, health officials say.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      weird! how did they get it then?
  • testing for the virus by the end of next week.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      this is kind of scary
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • the majority of which were repatriated passengers from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      traveling can be dangerous, i guess!
  • She visited South Korea for about two weeks earlier this month, according to Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer at Public Health of Seattle & King County. The woman returned and worked for one day before noticing symptoms. She developed a fever, cough, some nausea, a headache and a sore throat, Duchin said in a news conference Friday.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      Coronavirus seems to have very similar symptoms to the flu, if not the exact same. that means it is probably hard to tell the difference between a normal flu and the virus
  • allowing certain laboratories to use tests they developed and validated before the FDA has reviewed them.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 29 Feb 20
       
      i understand the logic here, but I also see danger in letting unapproved tests be used.
6More

North Korean diplomat in Pakistan suspected of bootlegging booze - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-41924487 politics culture policy alcohol
shared by anonymous on 09 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • A burglary at the residence of a North Korean diplomat in Pakistan has raised suspicion that the envoy might have been involved in large-scale booze bootlegging.
  • Alcohol is illegal for Muslims in Pakistan and hence hard to get. Diplomats, though, have permission for a personal allowance and there is a suspicion that some of their quota often ends up on the black market.
  • In early October, the residence of North Korean diplomat Hyon Ki-yong was broken into. He reported to the police that the burglars took off with two diamonds, several thousand US dollars, and a hefty hoard of liquor, beer and wine.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A regular burglary would probably not be newsworthy. But this one involved alcohol - and lots of it. Again there are confusing reports but Reuters put the number well above 1,000 bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label - said to be worth about $80 each on the black market
  • Pakistan is a country where the majority-Muslim population is by law not allowed to drink alcohol. Some still drink, but alcohol is notoriously hard to come by. That has created a lucrative black market across the country.
  • This could mean two things: North Korean diplomats have been able to import a lot more than they are meant to and, unless they spend most of their days utterly drunk, they might have been selling the excess booze on the black market. North Korea's embassy has not commented on the allegations.
6More

Sanctions Are Reimposed on Israeli Billionaire Granted Relief Under Trump - The New Yor... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...dan-gertler-sanctions.html
shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The Biden administration moved to reverse an action that had benefited Dan Gertler, who has been accused of corruption over mining deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
  • The reversal came after a chorus of complaints from human rights advocates, members of Congress and activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the businessman, Dan Gertler, secured access to mining rights for decades through what the Treasury Department during the Trump administration called a series of corrupt deals that had shortchanged Congo of more than $1.3 billion in revenue from the sale of minerals.
  • The State Department said on Monday that Mr. Gertler had “engaged in extensive public corruption” and that the Treasury Department in consultation with the State Department was reversing its action
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Mr. Gertler has been doing business in Congo for more than two decades, securing a series of contracts to export diamonds, gold, oil, cobalt and other minerals. The Treasury Department said in 2018 that he had “amassed his fortune through hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corrupt mining.”
  • Mr. Gertler was issued the license after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin directed the acting head of the agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to take the step, even though several Trump-era State Department officials in charge of United States relations with Africa told The New York Times that they had been unaware that such a move was about to be taken and that they opposed it.
  • “If well-connected international billionaires like Gertler think there is a chance they can get away with their corrupt actions, then they will not be deterred from doing them,” Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
7More

Asymptomatic people with coronavirus may hold the key to ending the pandemic - The Wash... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...asymptomatic-coronavirus-covid research pandemic asymptomatic
shared by Javier E on 09 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • People were wearing masks in the settings with the highest percentage of asymptomatic cases.
  • The numbers on two cruise ships were especially striking. In the Diamond Princess, where masks weren’t used and the virus was likely to have roamed free, 47 percent of those tested were asymptomatic. But in the Antarctic-bound Argentine cruise ship, where an outbreak hit in mid-March and surgical masks were given to all passengers and N95 masks to the crew, 81 percent were asymptomatic.
  • being exposed to one copy of a virus is more easily overcome than being exposed to a billion copies. Researchers refer to the infectious dose as ID50 — or the dose at which 50 percent of the population would become infected.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “They got cases,” she noted, “but fewer deaths.”
  • work on other nonlethal viruses showed that people tend to get less sick with lower doses and more sick with higher doses. A study published in late May involving hamsters, masks and SARS-CoV-2 found those given coverings had milder cases than those who did not get them.
  • In an article published this month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Gandhi noted that in some outbreaks early in the pandemic in which most people did not wear masks, 15 percent of the infected were asymptomatic. But later on, when people began wearing masks, the rate of asymptomatic people was 40 to 45 percent.
  • She said the evidence points to masks not just protecting others — as U.S. health officials emphasize — but protecting the wearer as well.
7More

Julia Lyons, a 'fake flu nurse' in Chicago during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, stole ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...sh-flu-fake-nurse-1918-chicago history US crisis
shared by anonymous on 03 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • Julia Lyons portrayed herself as a busy visiting nurse in Chicago during the great flu pandemic of 1918. But “Slick Julia,” as she came to be known, was no Florence Nightingale.
  • The 23-year-old Julia, “a woman of diamonds and furs, silken ankles, gem-studded fingers and aliases by the dozens,” was posing as a “flu nurse,” ripping off home-bound patients for cash and jewelry as they suffered and even died, the Chicago Tribune reported in late 1918.
  • A century before the coronavirus crisis, the 1918 flu was a killing machine, taking the lives of more than 675,000 people in the United States and 50 million around the world.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Julia Lyons saw an opportunity. Figuring nobody would have time to check her lack of credentials, she signed on at a home-nurse registry under various names. In late 1918, the Tribune chronicled the fake flu nurse’s escapades like a dime detective novel.
  • The police tapped the phone and learned Julia lived nearby. Detectives trailed Julia. One day she set off to marry Charlie the Greek, who ran the Victory Restaurant on West Madison Avenue. Before vows could be exchanged, Julia was in handcuffs.
  • Instead of transporting Julia to the courthouse in a patrol wagon, the deputy sheriff took her on a street car. In court, some 50 victims testified against her. She was held under $13,000 bond, the equivalent of more than $190,000 today.Deputy Hickey started back to the county jail with Julia in tow. An hour and a half later he called the police and “excitedly” told them she had jumped from a moving street car and hopped into a waiting automobile. Based on the reported location, one official speculated Hickey and his prisoner had been going to cabarets.
  • Soon Julia was back at her old tricks. In March 1919, the police traced her through the nurse registry to a home on Fullerton Boulevard. When Julia answered the door, the police nabbed her.
23More

The Pandemic's Big Mystery: How Deadly Is the Coronavirus? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-death-rate.html pandemic death fatality rate research
shared by Javier E on 05 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data suggesting that for every documented infection in the United States, there were 10 other cases on average that had gone unrecorded, probably because they were very mild or asymptomatic.
  • If there are many more asymptomatic infections than once thought, then the virus may be less deadly than it has appeared. But even that calculation is a difficult one.
  • the consensus for now was that the I.F.R. is about 0.6 percent — which means that the risk of death is less than 1 percent.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • 0.6 percent of the world’s population is 47 million people, and 0.6 percent of the American population is 2 million people. The virus remains a major threat.
  • China had reported 90,294 cases as of Friday and 4,634 deaths, which is a C.F.R. of 5 percent. The United States was very close to that mark. It has had 2,811,447 cases and 129,403 deaths, about 4.6 percent
  • So far, in most countries, about 20 percent of all confirmed Covid-19 patients become ill enough to need supplemental oxygen or even more advanced hospital care
  • it is difficult to measure fatality rates during pandemics, especially at the beginning.
  • In the chaos that ensues when a new virus hits a city hard, thousands of people may die and be buried without ever being tested, and certainly without them all being autopsied.
  • Normally, once the chaos has subsided, more testing is done and more mild cases are found — and because the denominator of the fraction rises, fatality rates fall. But the results are not always consistent or predictable.
  • Ten sizable countries, most of them in Western Europe, have tested bigger percentages of their populations than has the United States, according to Worldometer, which gathers statistics. They are Iceland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Britain, Israel and New Zealand.
  • But their case fatality rates vary wildly: Iceland’s is less than 1 percent, New Zealand’s and Israel’s are below 2 percent. Belgium, by comparison, is at 16 percent, and Italy and Britain at 14 percent
  • Those percentages are far higher rates than the 2.5 percent death rate often ascribed to the 1918 flu pandemic.
  • Whether those patients survive depends on a host of factors, including age, underlying illnesses and the level of medical care available.
  • Death rates are expected to be lower in countries with younger populations and less obesity, which are often the poorest countries. Conversely, the figures should be higher in countries that lack oxygen tanks, ventilators and dialysis machines, and where many people live far from hospitals. Those are also often the poorest countries.
  • new evidence that people with Type A blood are more likely to fall deathly ill could change risk calculations. Type A blood is relatively rare in West Africa and South Asia, and very rare among the Indigenous peoples of South America.
  • it had relied on a mix of data sent in by member countries and by academic groups, and on a meta-analysis done in May by scientists at the University of Wollongong and James Cook University in Australia.
  • Those researchers looked at 267 studies in more than a dozen countries, and then chose the 25 they considered the most accurate, weighting them for accuracy and averaged the data. They concluded that the global I.F.R. was 0.64 percent.
  • The 25 studies that the Australian researchers considered the most accurate relied on very different methodologies. One report, for example, was based on diagnostic PCR tests of all passengers and crew aboard the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that docked in Japan after it was overcome by the coronavirus. Another study drew data from an antibody survey of 38,000 Spaniards, while another included only 1,104 Swedes.
  • To arrive at the C.D.C.’s new estimate, researchers tested samples from 11,933 people for antibodies to the coronavirus in six regions in the United States. New York City reported 53,803 cases by April 1, but the actual number of infections was 12 times higher — nearly 642,000, the agency estimated.
  • The global fatality rates could still change. With one or two exceptions, like Iran and Ecuador, the pandemic first struck wealthier countries in Asia, Western Europe and North America where advanced medical care was available.
  • Many experts fear that infections and deaths will shoot up in the fall as colder weather forces people indoors, where they are more likely to infect one another. Discipline about wearing masks and avoiding breathing on one another will be even more important then.
  • In each of the eight influenza pandemics to hit the United States since 1763, a relatively mild first wave — no matter what time of year it arrived — was followed by a larger, much more lethal wave a few months later
  • More than a third of all the people killed by the Spanish flu, which lasted from March 1918 to late 1920, died in the short stretch between September and December 1918 — about six months after a first, relatively mild version of what may have been the same virus broke out in western Kansas.
16More

The key to stopping covid-19? Addressing airborne transmission. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...dressing-airborne-transmission research transmission pandemic Covid-19
shared by Javier E on 26 May 20 - No Cached
  • Airborne transmission — caused by small particles that can linger in the air for extended periods of time, unlike droplets from coughs, which settle quickly — is key to understanding why this disease spreads so rapidly in certain circumstances. It’s also key to figuring out how best to reopen our country.
  • The explosive transmission on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, as well as other coronavirus outbreaks, constituted telltale signs that airborne transmission was happening.
  • Since then, evidence has continuously pointed to airborne transmission of covid-19
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Scientists have detected the virus in places that can be reached only by air, such as ductwork; asymptomatic transmission is occurring, meaning people are spreading this without coughing or sneezing large droplets; and basic aerosol physics shows that people shed an entire continuum of particles when they cough, sneeze or talk, including large particles that settle out quickly and smaller ones that stay afloat for hours.
  • Why is airborne transmission so important? One reason: super-spreader events. Covid-19 does not spread from one person to the next equally.
  • one recent paper found that 10 percent of cases led to about 80 percent of the spread.
  • Such super-spreader events appear to be happening exclusively indoors, where airborne transmission is more likely.
  • when people sing, they emit as many aerosol particles as they do when they’re coughing. The practice also happened from 6:30 to 9 p.m., when most buildings turn off their ventilation systems.
  • Just looking at these next few statistics will tell you everything you need to know about where we need to target our intervention efforts
  • To do that, we need to do two things. First, maintain physical distancing. Six feet is good, but 10 feet is better
  • Second, we must deploy healthy building strategies, such as refreshing stale indoor air.
  • We do this by opening windows in our homes and cars and by increasing the outdoor air ventilation rate in buildings with HVAC systems
  • We also have to make sure places such as bathrooms and rooms with infected patients have enough exhaust, and are negatively pressurized relative to common areas, so any airborne virus is confined to limited areas.
  • Florence Nightingale said, "Cleanliness and fresh air from open windows, with unremitting attention to the patient are the only defence a true nurse either asks or needs."
  • it also requires that we minimize exposure to airborne pathogens, especially indoors.
  • One in 3 deaths nationally are workers or residents of senior homes; nine of the top 10 clusters in the United States occur in meatpacking plants and prisons; the death rate in hot spots is 10-fold higher in areas with lower incomes; and communities of color have nearly five times the odds of infection.
66More

Can History Predict the Future? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...616993 historiography history culture forecasting modeling population ecology
shared by Javier E on 17 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—­­to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working. (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”)
  • He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.
  • The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions.
  • ...63 more annotations...
  • In War and Peace and War (2006), his most accessible book, he likens himself to Hari Seldon, the “maverick mathematician” of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, who can foretell the rise and fall of empires. In those 10,000 years’ worth of data, Turchin believes he has found iron laws that dictate the fates of human societies.
  • The fate of our own society, he says, is not going to be pretty, at least in the near term. “It’s too late,”
  • The problems are deep and structural—not the type that the tedious process of demo­cratic change can fix in time to forestall mayhem.
  • Turchin likens America to a huge ship headed directly for an iceberg: “If you have a discussion among the crew about which way to turn, you will not turn in time, and you hit the iceberg directly.” The past 10 years or so have been discussion. That sickening crunch you now hear—steel twisting, rivets popping—­­is the sound of the ship hitting the iceberg.
  • Of the three factors driving social violence, Turchin stresses most heavily “elite overproduction”—­the tendency of a society’s ruling classes to grow faster than the number of positions for their members to fill.
  • Don’t we want everyone to be rich and educated? The problems begin when money and Harvard degrees become like royal titles in Saudi Arabia. If lots of people have them, but only some have real power, the ones who don’t have power eventually turn on the ones who do.
  • “You have a situation now where there are many more elites fighting for the same position, and some portion of them will convert to counter-elites,” Turchin said.
  • Elite jobs do not multiply as fast as elites do. There are still only 100 Senate seats, but more people than ever have enough money or degrees to think they should be running the country
  • Turchin noted that a person can be part of an ideological elite rather than an economic one.
  • Elite overproduction creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners. If commoners’ living standards slip—not relative to the elites, but relative to what they had before—they accept the overtures of the counter-elites and start oiling the axles of their tumbrels
  • Commoners’ lives grow worse, and the few who try to pull themselves onto the elite lifeboat are pushed back into the water by those already aboard.
  • The final trigger of impending collapse, Turchin says, tends to be state insolvency. At some point rising in­security becomes expensive. The elites have to pacify unhappy citizens with handouts and freebies—and when these run out, they have to police dissent and oppress people.
  • Eventually the state exhausts all short-term solutions, and what was heretofore a coherent civilization disintegrates.
  • “I gave up because I solved the problem.” Turchin published one final monograph, Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical / Empirical Synthesis (2003), then broke the news to his UConn colleagues that he would be saying a permanent sayonara to the field
  • “Does population ecology have general laws?” Turchin asked. Most ecologists said no: Populations have their own dynamics, and each situation is different.
  • All sciences go through this transition to mathematization,” Turchin told me. “When I had my midlife crisis, I was looking for a subject where I could help with this transition to a mathematized science. There was only one left, and that was history.”
  • After its long adolescence of collecting and cataloging, ecology had enough data to describe these universal laws—and to stop pretending that every species had its own idiosyncrasies. “Ecologists know these laws and should call them laws,” he said.
  • The laws Turchin applied to ecology—and his insistence on calling them laws—­generated respectful controversy at the time. Now they are cited in textbooks.
  • Having left ecology, Turchin began similar research that attempted to formulate general laws for a different animal species: human beings.
  • Turchin suggested that “there are several very general law-like propositions” that could be applied to ecology.
  • If the historians weren’t going to usher in a mathematical revolution themselves, he would storm their departments and do it for them.
  • “There is a longstanding debate among scientists and philosophers as to whether history has general laws,” he and a co-author wrote in Secular Cycles (2009). “A basic premise of our study is that historical societies can be studied with the same methods physicists and biologists used to study natural systems.”
  • he likened historians reluctant to build general principles to his colleagues in biology “who care most for the private life of warblers.” “Let history continue to focus on the particular,” he wrote. Cliodynamics would be a new science
  • To seed the journal’s research, Turchin masterminded a digital archive of historical and archaeological data.
  • The coding of its records requires finesse, he told me, because (for example) the method of determining the size of the elite-aspirant class of medieval France might differ from the measure of the same class in the present-day United States. (For medieval France, a proxy is the membership in its noble class, which became glutted with second and third sons who had no castles or manors to rule over. One American proxy, Turchin says, is the number of lawyers.)
  • Historians of religion have long pondered the relationship between the rise of complex civilization and the belief in gods—especially “moralizing gods,” the kind who scold you for sinning. Last year, Turchin and a dozen co-authors mined the database (“records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world, using 51 measures of social complexity and 4 measures of supernatural enforcement of morality”) to answer the question conclusively. They found that complex societies are more likely to have moralizing gods, but the gods tend to start their scolding after the societies get complex, not before
  • One of Turchin’s most unwelcome conclusions is that complex societies arise through war. The effect of war is to reward communities that organize themselves to fight and survive, and it tends to wipe out ones that are simple and small-scale
  • the data are clear: Darwinian processes select for complex socie­ties because they kill off simpler ones.
  • Certain aspects of this cyclical view require relearning portions of American history, with special attention paid to the numbers of elites. The industrialization of the North, starting in the mid-19th century, Turchin says, made huge numbers of people rich. The elite herd was culled during the Civil War, which killed off or impoverished the southern slaveholding class, and during Reconstruction, when America experienced a wave of assassinations of Republican politicians.
  • “There is a very close correlation between adopting democratic institutions and having to fight a war for survival.”
  • Also unwelcome: the conclusion that civil unrest might soon be upon us, and might reach the point of shattering the country. In 2012, Turchin published an analysis of political violence in the United States, again starting with a database. He classified 1,590 incidents—riots, lynchings, any political event that killed at least one person—from 1780 to 2010. Some periods were placid and others bloody, with peaks of brutality in 1870, 1920, and 1970, a 50-year cycle.
  • In 2010, when Nature surveyed scientists about their predictions for the coming decade, most took the survey as an invitation to self-promote and rhapsodize, dreamily, about coming advances in their fields. Turchin retorted with his prophecy of doom and said that nothing short of fundamental change would stop another violent turn.
  • It wasn’t until the Progressive reforms of the 1920s, and later the New Deal, that elite overproduction actually slowed, at least for a time.
  • This oscillation between violence and peace, with elite over­production as the first horseman of the recurring American apocalypse, inspired Turchin’s 2020 prediction
  • The notion that democracy finds its strength in its essential goodness and moral improvement over its rival systems is likewise fanciful. Instead, democratic societies flourish because they have a memory of being nearly obliterated by an external enemy. They avoided extinction only through collective action, and the memory of that collective action makes democratic politics easier to conduct in the present,
  • Some sound like ideas that might have come from Senator Elizabeth Warren—tax the elites until there are fewer of them
  • others, such as a call to reduce immigration to keep wages high for American workers, resemble Trumpian protectionism.
  • He opposes credential-­oriented higher education, for example, which he says is a way of mass-producing elites without also mass-­producing elite jobs for them to occupy. Architects of such policies, he told me, are “creating surplus elites, and some become counter-elites.” A smarter approach would be to keep the elite numbers small, and the real wages of the general population on a constant rise.
  • We need to stop the runaway process of elite overproduction, but I don’t know what will work to do that, and nobody else does. Do you increase taxation? Raise the minimum wage? Universal basic income?” He conceded that each of these possibilities would have unpredictable effects
  • practice “adaptive management,” changing and modulating your approach as you go.
  • Eventually, Turchin hopes, our understanding of historical dynamics will mature to the point that no government will make policy without reflecting on whether it is hurtling toward a mathematically pre­ordained disaster.
  • He says he could imagine an Asimovian agency that keeps tabs on leading indicators and advises accordingly. It would be like the Federal Reserve, but instead of monitoring inflation and controlling monetary supply, it would be tasked with averting total civilizational collapse.
  • Since at least the 19th century, the discipline has embraced the idea that history is irreducibly complex, and by now most historians believe that the diversity of human activity will foil any attempt to come up with general laws, especially predictive ones.
  • The idea that one thing causes another, and that the causal pattern can tell you about sequences of events in another place or century, is foreign territory.
  • Turchin counters that he has heard claims of irreducible complexity before, and that steady application of the scientific method has succeeded in managing that complexity.
  • One social scientist who can speak to Turchin in his own mathematical argot is Dingxin Zhao, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago who is—incredibly—­also a former mathematical ecologist.
  • in a way I am sympathetic to Turchin. If you come to social science from natural sciences, you have a powerful way of looking at the world. But you may also make big mistakes.”
  • Turchin is nonetheless filling a historiographical niche left empty by academic historians with allergies not just to science but to a wide-angle view of the past.
  • humans are much wilier social creatures, Zhao said. A woodpecker will eat a termite, but it “will not explain that he is doing so because it is his divine right.” Humans pull ideological power moves like this all the time, Zhao said, and to understand “the decisions of a Donald Trump, or a Xi Jinping,” a natural scientist has to incorporate the myriad complexities of human strategy, emotion, and belief. “I made that change,” Zhao told me, “and Peter Turchin has not.”
  • Zhao said that human beings are just much more complicated than bugs.
  • He places himself in a Russian tradition prone to thinking sweeping, Tolstoyan thoughts about the path of history. By comparison, American historians mostly look like micro-historians.
  • Rather than bending toward progress, the arc in his view bends all the way back on itself, in a never-­ending loop of boom and bust. This puts him at odds with American historians, many of whom harbor an unspoken faith that liberal democracy is the end state of all history.
  • Writing history in this sweeping, cyclical way is easier if you are trained outside the field. “If you look at who is doing these megahistories, more often than not, it’s not actual historians,”
  • The genre’s most famous book, Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), beheld 13,000 years of human history in a single volume. Its author, Jared Diamond, spent the first half of his career as one of the world’s foremost experts on the physiology of the gall­bladder.
  • Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist who studies how children acquire parts of speech, has written a megahistory about the decline of violence across thousands of years, and about human flourishing since the Enlightenment
  • Most historians I asked about these men—and for some reason megahistory is nearly always a male pursuit—used terms like laughingstock and patently tendentious to describe them.
  • Pinker retorts that historians are resentful of the attention “disciplinary carpet­baggers” like himself have received for applying scientific methods to the humanities and coming up with conclusions that had eluded the old methods.
  • “Given the noisiness of human behavior and the prevalence of cognitive biases, it’s easy to delude oneself about a historical period or trend by picking whichever event suits one’s narrative,” he says. The only answer is to use large data sets.
  • “There’s no reason that traditional history and data science can’t merge into a cooperative enterprise,” Pinker wrote. “Knowing stuff is hard; we need to use every available tool.”
  • Turchin’s conclusions are only as good as his databases, she told me, and any database that tries to code something as complex as who constitutes a society’s elites—then tries to make like-to-like comparisons across millennia and oceans—will meet with skepticism from traditional historians
  • Turchin’s data are also limited to big-­picture characteristics observed over 10,000 years, or about 200 lifetimes. By scientific standards, a sample size of 200 is small, even if it is all humanity has.
  • Privately, some historians have told me they consider the tools he uses powerful, if a little crude. Clio­dynamics is now on a long list of methods that arrived on the scene promising to revolutionize history. Many were fads, but some survived that stage to take their rightful place in an expanding historiographical tool kit
  • Turchin’s methods have already shown their power. Cliodynamics offers scientific hypotheses, and human history will give us more and more opportunities to check its predictions—­revealing whether Peter Turchin is a Hari Seldon or a mere Nostradamus.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 46 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page