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New Zealand To Give Free Vaccines To Entire Population And Pacific Islands : Coronaviru... - 0 views

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  • New Zealand has advance purchased two new coronavirus vaccines from pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Novavax, giving the small island country the ability to vaccinate its 5 million residents.
  • they will go a step further and provide free doses to its population as well as neighboring nations Tokelau, Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu, should they want them.
  • "Never before has the entire globe sought to vaccinate the entire population at the same time," Ardern said. "This will be a sustained rollout over months not weeks but our pre-purchase agreements means New Zealand is well positioned to get on with it as soon as it is proven safe to do so."
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  • The University of Oxford-AstraZeneca and Novavax vaccines will add to New Zealand's previously agreed upon purchases of vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Janssen Pharmaceutica. The new agreements secures access to 7.6 million doses from AstraZeneca – enough for 3.8 million people, and 10.72 million doses from Novavax– enough for 5.36 million people, according to the government. Both vaccines require two doses.
  • If the vaccines are proven to be safe and effective, the vaccination process is expected to begin early next year with border-control personnel and later other essential workers, with the general population getting the vaccines in the second half of the year.
  • "no-one misses out, even if it means we've purchased more than we need. It's an investment worth making."
  • Ardern said New Zealand is also working with Australia to support vaccination across the wider Pacific.
  • Government officials reminded the public that the start of COVID-19 vaccines doesn't mean a quick lifting of the nation's border lockdown.
  • The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the U.S. is also taking steps to ensure all Americans have access to the COVID-19 vaccines at no cost once it becomes widely available.
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Taiwan Wants China to Think Twice About an Invasion - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...671895 taiwan china invasion preparation history culture politics
shared by Javier E on 08 Nov 22 - No Cached
  • Taiwan is now on pace to spend more than $19 billion on defense in 2023. But China spends more than $200 billion a year
  • Instead of building large, conventional hardware (airplanes, tanks, submarines), military experts have urged Taiwan to focus on so-called asymmetric capabilities (anti-ship weapons, surface-to-air missiles, stockpiles of small arms and ammunition), which have served Ukraine well in repelling a larger invader. That, combined with a bigger force of civilian reserves, could make the cost of an invasion too high for China. This approach has earned a nickname in global defense circles: “the porcupine strategy.”
  • China now has the world’s largest navy, with more than 350 ships and submarines. Its rocket force maintains the world’s largest arsenal of land-based missiles, which would feature in any war with Taiwan.
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  • Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, who was chief of Taiwan’s General Staff from 2017 to 2019, has championed the shift to asymmetric capabilities and has emerged as a Cassandra-like figure in his warnings that Taiwan is not preparing fast enough
  • You may not be able to stop an invasion, Lee says, but you can stop China from subjugating Taiwan. This entails denying China the ability to control the battle space. The Chinese haven’t fought a war in several decades, and Taiwan has geographic advantages—including ample mountains and few beaches suitable for amphibious operations
  • the first three section headings: “I. Taiwan Is Part of China—This Is an Indisputable Fact,” “II. Resolute Efforts of the CPC to Realize China’s Complete Reunification,” and “III. 2fChina’s Complete Reunification Is a Process That Cannot Be Halted.”
  • Lee points to two possible scenarios. The first is a coercive approach in which China encircles and pressures Taiwan—perhaps even seizing outlying islands and engaging in missile strikes. The second is a full-scale invasion.
  • Politically, Lee said, the message from China to the U.S. and Taiwan is simple: “I can do whatever I want in Taiwan, and there’s nothing the U.S. can do about it.” This message came across unequivocally in a white paper that Beijing released in August.
  • Anti-ship missiles, anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, drones, long-range artillery, and small arms could wreak havoc on an invading force, and disrupt the supply chains necessary to sustain an occupation.
  • Lee also argues that Taiwan’s civilian population should be organized into a trained Territorial Defense Force, so that any attempted occupation would be met by the broadest possible resistance. “As long as China fails, Taiwan wins the war,”
  • “The purpose is to make China believe that if you want to invade Taiwan, you will suffer huge losses,” Lee said. “And if you still invade Taiwan, you will not be able to succeed.
  • as Lee sees it, the pace must quicken. “Taiwan needs a strategic paradigm shift,”
  • When Chiang fled to Taiwan—with roughly 2 million Chinese from the mainland—there were some 6 million people already living on an island that was just emerging from 50 years of Japanese rule. Most of the people living on the island when Chiang arrived could claim roots in Taiwan going back hundreds of years. They had their own languages and culture. So too did the island’s many Indigenous groups, such as the Amis, the Atayal, and the Paiwan.
  • To subjugate the island, Chiang killed and imprisoned tens of thousands over decades—a period known as the White Terror. He set up a military dictatorship under the leadership of his Chinese nationalist Kuomintang Party (KMT) and, from this offshore platform, vowed to reclaim mainland China.
  • After the election of President Ma Ying-jeou, in 2008, links of trade, investment, and travel helped reduce tensions with China. Ma was from the KMT, and the party’s Chinese heritage and its ties to Taiwan’s business elite eased the way to détente with Beijing.
  • But many Taiwanese, particularly the young, feared that forging too close a connection could ultimately give Beijing leverage over Taiwan. In 2014, in what became known as “the Sunflower Movement,” named for the flower that served as a symbol of hope, students occupied the Taiwan legislature to oppose a free-trade agreement with China. After a tense standoff, they succeeded in stopping the deal.
  • tus quo is really interesting, because in the American context that is what it mean
  • But the idea of it here is: There is no need to declare independence, because we are already independent. This country functions like an independent nation, but someone else says it is not.” Recent polling suggests that fewer than 5 percent of people in Taiwan identify as “only Chinese.”
  • n Chinese and KMT officials 30 years ago, an outcome
  • at represents anything but consensus. To the Chinese Communist Party, the consensus is that there is one China, and the government in Beijing is the sole legitimate authority. To the KMT, the consensus is that there is one China, but the Republic of China in Taiwan is the legitimate government. To the DPP, there is no consensus, only a fraught political reality to be managed
  • China proposes a “one country, two systems” regime, in which Taiwan becomes a formal part of China but maintains an autonomous political system. There is one big problem with this proposal: Hong Kong
  • in 2020, several “national-security laws” were passed giving the authorities broad powers to crush dissent. Activists were rounded up. Independent media were shut down. One country, two systems was dead. The fate of Hong Kong has had a profound impact on Taiwan.
  • Ukraine inspired the Taiwanese society a lot, including how Zelensky told their story,” Chiang said. He was almost matter-of-fact when he told me, “I would say war between China and Taiwan will definitely happen. We want to win.”
  • In our conversation, Tsai talked about what she had learned from Ukraine. One lesson is simply the need for international support—to defend itself or, better, to avoid a war in the first place
  • Another lesson of Ukraine is the importance of national character. Outside support, Tsai emphasized, depends on qualities only Taiwan can provide. “You need to have good leadership,” she said, “but more important is the people’s determination to defend themselves, and the Ukrainian people showed that.
  • Hanging over all of this is the role of the United States. As one Taiwanese ex
  • ert pointedly asked me: “We can make ourselves a porcupine, but what are you going to do?”
  • Would the U.S. risk the biggest naval battle since World War II to break a Chinese blockade? Would the U.S. attack an invading Chinese force knowing that U.S. military personnel in Japan, Guam, and possibly Hawaii are within range of Chinese rockets? Would the American people really support a war with the world’s most populous country in order to defend Taiwan?
  • how the U.S. can help prepare Taiwan than on what the U.S. would do in a conflict.
  • small victories only point up the scale of the challenge. Wu himself has used the term cognitive warfare to describe the comprehensive nature of China’s pressure on Taiwan. “They use missiles, air, ships, disinformation, cyberattacks, and economic coercion,” he told me. As a warning sign, China has banned hundreds of exported products from Taiwan. “They claimed that our mangoes tested positive for COVID,”
  • . If China takes Taiwan, Wu suggested that the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions could extend to the East China Sea, threatening Japan; to the South China Sea, where China has built militarized islands and claims an entire body of water bordering several nations; to the Indian Ocean, where China is expanding influence and could establish military bases; and to the Pacific Ocean, where China is working to establish security pacts with island nations
  • I sat there reading message after message, all posted in closed chat rooms, meant to bend Taiwanese minds to Beijing’s worldview. The meanings of buzzwords like cognitive warfare and resilience came into sharper focus. Facing the seemingly bottomless resources of a massive totalitarian state, here were two young people working for free on a Wednesday night, quietly insisting on the notion that there is indeed such a thing as objective reality.
  • to preserve this, Taiwan has to find some mix of the approaches that I’d heard about: preparing for a war while avoiding it; talking to China without being coerced by it; drawing closer to the U.S. without being reduced to a chess piece on the board of a great game; tending to a young democracy without letting divisions weaken it; asserting a unique identity without becoming an independent country.
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The latest maps of the world's eighth continent - BBC Future - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...of-the-worlds-eighth-continent continental geology continent history
shared by Javier E on 07 Oct 23 - No Cached
  • in 2017, the story took an unexpected turn – the seven-continent model has been a mistake all along. Enter Zealandia, a long-lost land to the southeast of Australia, otherwise known as the planet's forgotten eighth continent. Scientists had long predicted the existence of this bonus southern landmass, but it remained missing for 375 years – largely because it’s almost entirely submerged under 1-2 km (0.6-1.2 miles) of water. Now they are beginning to unravel its secrets.
  • This month, an international team of researchers released the most detailed maps of Zealandia to date – incorporating all five million square kilometres (two million sq miles) of this underwater region and its geology. In the process, they have uncovered hints as to how this mysterious continent formed – and why it has been obscured beneath the waves for the last 25 million years.
  • Zealandia is thought to have formed around 83 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous. However, its journey began up to 100 million years before that, when the supercontinent of Gondwana – which congealed much of today's land into one giant lump – started to break up. As it disintegrated, the world's smallest, thinnest and youngest continent struck out on its own, while the regions of Gondwana that had once laid directly to its north west and south west became Australia and Antarctica, respectively.
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  • It's thought that all or part of Zealandia may have existed as an island for a while. But then around 25 million years ago, it was disappeared beneath the ocean
  • The first real clues that New Zealand might represent just a tiny, visible portion of a vast incognito landmass came in 2002, when scientists used bathymetry – the study of the depth of bodies of water – to analyse the region. The ocean above what we now call Zealandia is considerably shallower than that surrounding it, suggesting that the area was not underlain by an oceanic tectonic plate – like most of the world's oceans – but a continental one.
  • The clincher came in 2017, when scientists put several lines of evidence together, including data about the kinds of rocks it contains and its relative thickness – oceanic plates tend to be thinner – to propose that this is indeed a new continent. This is not a mere continental fragment or microcontinent, as had previously been proposed, but the real deal, 95% of which is submerged underwater.
  • despite the excitement around the discovery of a new continent, and more than a decade of intensive research, many details of Zealandia's early formation have remained elusive. This is partly because of a strange event that occurred when it split from Gondwana.
  • In 2019, an international team of scientists mapped the geology of South Zealandia. Their research revealed that at some point, Zealandia had been stretched – pulled apart by tectonic forces, thinning the continent compared to regular continental plates and creating ruptures that later became oceanic crust. In the process, it became twisted and this made reconstructing its history to work out its original form much more challenging. 
  • The researchers' analysis of rocks from the lost continent revealed that the stretching happened in two stages. The first began around 89-101 million years ago, and led to a rip which became the Tasman Sea inbetween Australia and New Zealand. The second phase started 80-90 million years ago and led to Zealandia splitting off from West Antarctica and creating the Pacific Ocea
  • For the latest study, another research group – involving many of the same geologists as before – charted North Zealandia. This time, they analysed rocks that had been dredged up from the Fairway Ridge, a region of the South Pacific off the coast of Australia, which forms the northernmost tip of Zealandia. These ancient remnants, which have not had a dry day for 25 million years, included a mixture of igneous rocks – those formed by volcanic processes – and sedimentary ones made in shallow basins just off the coast of Zealandia.
  • The resulting maps of Zealandia transform it from a featureless mass into a place with many bands of distinctive geology running along its length from northwest to southeast. These fit together with the geology of West Antarctica like a jigsaw puzzle, confirming that this region and Zealandia once slotted together.
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China Feels Boxed In by the U.S. but Has Few Ways to Push Back - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 13 Apr 24 - No Cached
  • President Biden’s effort to build American security alliances in China’s backyard is likely to reinforce the Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s view that Washington is leading an all-out campaign of “containment, encirclement and suppression” of his country. And there is not much Mr. Xi can do about it.
  • To China, Mr. Biden’s campaign looks nothing short of a reprise of the Cold War, when the world was split into opposing blocs. In this view, Beijing is being hemmed in by U.S. allies and partners, in a cordon stretching over the seas on China’s eastern coast from Japan to the Philippines, along its disputed Himalayan border with India, and even across the vast Pacific Ocean to a string of tiny, but strategic, island nations.
  • The summit ended with agreements to hold more naval and coast guard joint exercises, and pledges of new infrastructure investment and technology cooperation. It builds on a groundbreaking defense pact made at Camp David last August between Mr. Biden and the leaders of Japan and South Korea, as well as on plans unveiled last year to work with Australia and Britain to develop and deploy nuclear-powered attack submarines.
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  • “China is clearly alarmed by these developments,” said Jingdong Yuan, director of the China and Asia Security Program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Chinese interpretations would be that the U.S. and its allies have clearly decided that China needs to be contained.”
  • aside from pointed words and the perfunctory maritime patrol, Beijing’s options to push back against U.S. pressure appear limited, analysts said, especially as China contends with slowing economic growth and mounting trade frictions.
  • Whether Mr. Biden’s strategy succeeds in deterring China in the long run remains to be seen. Nationalists in China view American alliances as fragile and subject to the whims of each U.S. presidential election. Then there’s Mr. Xi, who perceives the West to be in structural decline, and China’s ascendance as Asia’s dominant power to be inevitable.
  • “The Americans should not think so highly of themselves. They could not solve Afghanistan or Ukraine,” said Zheng Yongnian, an influential political scientist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s campus in Shenzhen. He said that China still hoped to resolve its disputes peacefully. “The reason we are not touching the Philippines is not that we are afraid of the United States.”
  • Beijing’s room to maneuver against Washington is limited by its struggling economy, which has been hit by a property crisis and a cratering of foreign investment. China has been increasing exports, but that has already caused friction with countries concerned about a flood of cheap Chinese goods.
  • The broader American pressure campaign may also be nudging China to avoid escalating tensions further. Despite its differences with the United States, China is engaging in talks between the countries’ leaders and senior officials. Relations with some neighbors, such as Australia, are slowly thawing. Analysts have noted that Beijing has also avoided escalating its military presence around Taiwan in recent months, despite the island’s election of a leader the Communist Party loathes.
  • “They are definitely being more cautious and demonstrating a willingness to engage,” Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said of Beijing. “They are realizing there are actual risks to letting frictions escalate. We just haven’t seen any substantive compromises yet.”
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Russia Deploys Admiral Kuznetsov Carrier - Business Insider - 0 views

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  • The Kremlin has upped the geopolitical ante by pledging to send a heavy aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, as reported by Russian news agency Interfax
  • The warship holds several sea-based fighters and helicopters, missiles, anti-submarine systems and a crew of 2,000 people.
  • The carrier is the only one in Russia's fleet, so its deployment is an unmistakable signal of Moscow's seriousness about protecting their regional interests, some of which are directly tied to the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syria port of Tartus.
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  • In November Russia sent six warships from its Black Sea Fleet to the Mediterranean in response to the Israel-Gaza conflict. That month the U.S. also began making moves to increase the American military presence in the east Mediterranean.
  • In May a detachment from Russia’s Pacific Fleet entered the Mediterranean waters for the first time since the Cold War.
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Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition - Richard Florida and Sara Johnson - The At... - 0 views

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  • Maps Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition Richard Florida and Sara Johnson 11:05 AM ET 9 Comments inShare4 Share Print Share on emailEmail Author's Note: This is the 11th of a series of posts that explore the class divides across America's largest cities and metros. Using data from the American Community Survey, each post explores the geography of class within a large city and metro area. For a detailed description of methodology, see the first post in the series. The map above charts the geography of class for the city of San Francisco. The creative class lives in the areas that are shaded in purple, the red areas are primarily service class, and the blue are working class. Each colored space on the map is a Census tract, a small area within a city or county that can be even smaller than a neighborhood.
  • Most of the city proper is purple, reflecting a large creative class concentration in some of the most sought-after neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights and Russian Hill. SoMa or South of Market, which stretches below Market Street along the eastern part of the city south of the Bay Bridge, is an area of mixed-use and warehouse buildings that are now home to the city's tech scene, including lots of start-up companies as well as big names like Twitter, Zynga, and Airbnb.
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Why Won't Hillary Clinton Defend Trade Deals? - The Atlantic - 0 views

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  • crimped construct leaves no room for the very different perspective of someone like architect Charles Kelley in Portland, Oregon
  • “Portland,” Kelley said, “has become responsible for setting the frame for how China will look at urbanism for the next 50 years.”
  • consult with cities around the world to develop sustainable communities through everything from promoting renewable energy to opening bike lanes.
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  • “Now … I can’t imagine what the region would be like if we didn’t have the level of trade we have [today].”
  • Donald Trump insists that trade and immigration are undermining wages and devouring jobs
  • has also refused to defend the North American Free Trade Agreement that her husband Bill Clinton signed—an agreement Trump routinely calls “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.”
  • But her resistance to expanded trade reflects outdated assumptions about the Democratic coalition
  • Clinton may rely even more than previous Democratic nominees on these pro-trade groups
  • Democratic partisans are now much more likely than Republicans to view globalization and trade as a positive force on all those fronts
  • the movement of blue-collar whites largely skeptical of trade into the GOP, and their replacement in the Democratic coalition by minorities,
  • international trade specifically as beneficial for the U.S. economy, consumers and their own living standards,
  • voters from all parties worry that trade can eliminate domestic jobs.
  • NAFTA has likely saved many U.S. jobs that might otherwise have migrated elsewhere
  • “If you are able to produce parts of your finished product in Mexico and lower your cost, you can increase your share of the market,”
  • creates an undeniable need for fresh thinking on how to connect those displaced workers with the economy’s new opportunities.
  • her conditional early support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership that President Obama negotiated with 11 Asian nations, but has also refused to defend the North American Free Trade Agreement that her husband Bill Clinton signed—an agreement Trump routinely calls “the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.”
  • Kelley works with about a dozen cities across six countries, with a special concentration in Asia. “Portland,” Kelley said, “has become responsible for setting the frame for how China will look at urbanism for the next 50 years.”
  • Threatening tariffs and walls, Donald Trump insists that trade and immigration are undermining wages and devouring jobs (while also presenting migration from Mexico and the Middle East as a security threat). Clinton has defended immigration, but effectively surrendered to Trump on trade.
  • “We Build Green Cities,” a loose consortium of Portland-based engineering, architectural, and environmental science firms that consult with cities around the world to develop sustainable communities through everything from promoting renewable energy to opening bike lanes.
  • While Trump has never appeared more confident than when he’s denouncing TPP or NAFTA, Clinton has been tongue-tied.
  • Clinton’s suspicion of trade isn’t just a tactical maneuver: Veterans of the Bill Clinton administration say that internally she was always dubious about pursuing NAFTA. But her resistance to expanded trade reflects outdated assumptions about the Democratic coalition.
  • But the latest Chicago Council survey, released last month, shows that Democratic partisans are now much more likely than Republicans to view globalization and trade as a positive force on all those fronts. (Over two-thirds of Democrats now say trade benefits both the overall U.S. economy and their own living standards.)
  • With Trump centering his campaign on mobilizing working-class whites, Clinton may rely even more than previous Democratic nominees on these pro-trade groups—even as she further sublimates their views.
  • The reason: It’s encouraged an integrated North American supply chain that allows American firms to produce autos and other products at less cost overall by shifting some manufacturing to Mexico.
  • Wood acknowledges that U.S. manufacturing workers who lose jobs in this exchange often are not equipped to compete for the new positions that the integration process creates. That creates an undeniable need for fresh thinking on how to connect those displaced workers with the economy’s new opportunities.
  • If she wins, she’ll eventually need to acknowledge the same about economic globalization
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Clinton eyes Biden for secretary of state - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...iden-secretary-of-state-230428 clinton biden politics us
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  • Clinton eyes Biden for secretary of state
  • Joe Biden is at the top of the internal short list Hillary Clinton’s transition team is preparing for her pick to be secretary of state
  • According to the source, they’re strategizing about how to make the approach to the vice president, who almost ran against her in the Democratic primaries but has since been campaigning for her at a breakneck pace all over the country in these final months.
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  • , as will a concern within Clinton’s circle and throughout the current White House that Donald Trump’s campaign has created lasting damage to America’s relationships around the world.
  • In August, he traveled to Latvia to assure NATO allies that America’s commitment to them will hold, despite Trump’s questioning of the alliance’s value and worries especially within the Baltic region about Russian aggression.
  • They both lost to Obama in the 2008 primaries and went on to serve together in his administration — and though they had regular lunches and a warm personal relationship, feelings became rougher as her 2016 run came into focus and the chances of his running again faded.
  • But she’d also be choosing someone with whom she repeatedly clashed as secretary of state, with the vice president often playing the skeptic while she supported more aggressive action.
  • Among the names most discussed: former undersecretary of state Wendy Sherman, the point person on the Iran deal and a favorite within the State Department; former Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, who now heads the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Nick Burns, the former under secretary of state of political affairs under George W. Bush who’s been an active advocate for Clinton this year; Kurt Campbell, Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs when she was in the job; Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state during Bill Clinton’s first term and a longtime friend of the Clintons who’s now the president of the Brookings Institution; and James Stavridis, the retired admiral who earlier this summer made it into consideration as the sleeper pick to be her running mate.
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Bernie Sanders Picks Up Washington Delegates; Hillary Clinton Wins Guam - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hillary-clinton-wins-guam.html
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  • Mr. Sanders handily won the Washington caucuses on March 26, taking 25 of the 34 delegates awarded that day
  • Still, even with the additional delegates, Mr. Sanders’s mathematical chances of winning the nomination have not improved.
  • uam’s Democratic Party said Mrs. Clinton had won 60 percent of the vote to earn four of the seven delegates at stake. The Pacific island is one of five United States territories that cast votes
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  • Guam drew attention from both candidates, who ran radio advertisements in an effort to scoop up any possible delegates in the final stretch of primaries and caucuses.
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How to avert America's Brexit - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-9d2f-b1a3564181a1_story.html business fairness politics crisis social working class government Policy
shared by Javier E on 17 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • there is a meaningful chance that 2016 could begin a retreat of the United States from the mix of economic policies and the global engagement that U.S. businesses have regarded for decades as central to their success — unless business leaders can move decisively to redefine their goals as harmonious with those of working- and middle-class families.
  • The key question is how we rise up in more muscular defense of the interests of U.S. workers and industries without doing permanent damage to our economy. We must also demonstrate that government can function and that business can be a constructive partner to it.
  • every generation, we seem to witness an election that startles us, triggering tectonic shocks that change our politics and policies for decades to come. This could be one of those elections. Very much like the realignment revealed by the vote in Britain to leave the European Union, U.S. politics might be transforming into a debate less between right and left and more between those voters who are advantaged by globalization and those who are not.
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  • For decades, the United States has led the way as the world’s markets for manufacturing, labor and capital have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent. This has benefited poorer nations around the world — most prominently China — as well as large multinational corporations with the reach and balance sheets to compete globally. It has also contributed to a surge in the incomes of well-educated professionals with globally competitive skills.
  • our leaders in business and government have offered up a consensus view that chief among the gains from open trade is a small financial benefit — reflected mostly in lower prices for a host of imported goods — spread in a thin layer over an enormous number of people, which in the aggregate offsets the narrowly focused devastation wreaked on discrete industries, workers and communities.
  • today’s practical lesson is much simpler: The deal on offer to the U.S. working and middle classes from globalization is in tatters. We have ignored at our peril the dislocations and the uneven distribution of the benefits.
  • We need a new agenda promising fairness and growth in equal measure.
  • The business community’s agenda for accelerating economic growth is straightforward. It includes making our corporate tax system simpler and more globally competitive; subjecting regulations to rigorous cost-benefit criteria; reforming our immigration laws to admit more highly educated and skilled workers, particularly in the technology and engineering fields; and adopting more free-trade agreements, most notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, to stimulate global flows of goods and services. Corporate leaders (and many economists) are convinced that this is the clear path to accelerated growth and job formation.
  • in order to create the social circumstances necessary to make this commercial agenda at all politically feasible, the business community must find a way to support — and especially be willing to pay for — an array of policies designed to foster economic fairness that are traditionally opposed by the business lobby.
  • This list is long but would include increasing the minimum wage, expanding the earned-income tax credit and reforming unemployment programs; investing in early-childhood education, vocational training, prison-to-work assistance, apprenticeships and college affordability; financing a large-scale infrastructure building program; implementing robust transition assistance for workers dislocated by foreign competition and technological change; and ensuring health-care and retirement income for aging citizens in need.
  • The cost of all of this would be, of course, high. But the price of inaction is certainly far more dear. One of the best ways to finance it all might be a national sales levy along the lines of a progressive value-added tax
  • To restore credibility to the business community’s agenda, we must work to set in motion the policies necessary to stimulate growing incomes and rising equality. In actuality, growth and fairness agendas are compatible and mutually reinforcing because a stronger middle class — and healthier consumer — would be as good for business as it is for society.
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Richard Rorty's 1998 Book Suggested Election 2016 Was Coming - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 24 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • Three days after the presidential election, an astute law professor tweeted a picture of three paragraphs, very slightly condensed, from Richard Rorty’s “Achieving Our Country,” published in 1998. It was retweeted thousands of times, generating a run on the book
  • It’s worth rereading those tweeted paragraphs:[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. … One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
  • His basic contention is that the left once upon a time believed that our country, for all its flaws, was both perfectible and worth perfecting.
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  • But during the 1960s, shame — over Vietnam, over the serial humiliation of African-Americans — transformed a good portion of the left, at least the academic left, into a disaffected gang of spectators, rather than agitators for change
  • . A formalized despair became its philosophy. The system was beyond reform. The best one could do was focus on its victims.
  • The result was disastrous. The alliance between the unions and intellectuals, so vital to passing legislation in the Progressive Era, broke down. In universities, cultural and identity politics replaced the politics of change and economic justice.
  • at the very moment “socially accepted sadism” — good phrase, that — was diminishing, economic instability and inequality were increasing, thanks to globalization.
  • “This world economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900.”
  • People are furiously arguing about what played a key role in this election — whether it was white working-class despair, a racist backlash or terror about the pace of cultural change. It seems reasonable to think that all three played a part.
  • Which left the white working-class guy and gal up for grabs — open to right-wing populists, maybe even strongmen.
  • “Outside the academy,” he wrote, “Americans still want to feel patriotic. They still want to feel part of a nation which can take control of its destiny and make itself a better place.”
  • “Why could not the left,” he asked, “channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed?”
  • Right through the ’90s and into the 2000s, we had left-of-center politicians singing the praises of hope, rather than the hopelessness that Mr. Rorty decries. Bill Clinton explicitly campaigned as the “man from Hope,” and Barack Obama would later campaign on a platform of “hope” and “change.” In passing health care reform, Mr. Obama genuinely did something for the immiserated underclass, and both men, in their ways, rejected identity politics.
  • But it wasn’t enough, obviously. “Under Presidents Carter and Clinton,” Mr. Rorty wrote, “the Democratic Party has survived by distancing itself from the unions and from any mention of redistribution.” Mr. Clinton was particularly guilty of this charge, passing Nafta, appointing Robert Rubin as his Treasury secretary and enthusiastically embracing financial deregulation. Mr. Obama pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And he was one of those fancy elites.
  • This group included intellectuals, by the way, who, he wrote, are “ourselves quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization.”
  • What’s so striking about “Achieving Our Country” is that it blends these theories into a common argument: The left, both cultural and political, eventually abandoned economic justice in favor of identity politics, leaving too many people feeling freaked out or ignored.
  • “It is as if the American Left could not handle more than one initiative at a time,” Mr. Rorty wrote. “As if it either had to ignore stigma in order to concentrate on money, or vice versa.”
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Australia, Japan boost defense ties amid instability in Asia | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...-amid-instability-in-asia.html usa asia australia military china north korea
shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Australia, Japan boost defense ties amid instability in Asia
  • The leaders of Australia and Japan agreed on Saturday to boost cooperation between their militaries, as Japan tries to shore up security ties throughout the Asia-Pacific region amid concern over China's growing military might.
  • Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull said they had signed an upgraded defense agreement after talks in Sydney on trade and regional security issues. The leaders said the pact would allow their militaries to provide each other with logistical support during exercises, and are working toward an agreement that would make it easier to participate in joint military exercises.
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  • Following their meeting, Abe said the countries would enhance their coordination on activity in the disputed South China Sea and the nuclear threat posed by North Korea.
  • "For both of our nations, the United States remains the cornerstone of our strategic and security arrangements," Turnbull said. "And our respective alliances for the United States are as relevant and important today as they have ever been. We'll work closely with the incoming administration as we have been to advance the region's interests and our shared goals."
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The Hidden Grave of History's Greatest Warrior - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/istorys-greatest-warrior-63527 genhis khan
shared by fischerry on 17 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • In the eight hundred years since his death, people have sought in vain for the grave of Genhis Khan, the 13th-century conqueror and imperial ruler who, at the time of his death, occupied the largest contiguous empire, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific. In capturing most of central Asia and China, his armies killed and pillaged but also forged new links between East and West. One of history’s most brilliant and ruthless leaders, Khan remade the world.
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Was Barack Obama Bad for Democrats? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...k-obama-bad-for-democrats.html obama presidency history politics legacy
shared by Javier E on 23 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • His legacy regrettably includes the more than 1,000 Democrats who lost their elections during his two terms. Republicans now have total control in half of America’s states.
  • Why such political carnage?
  • Faced with the economy’s potential collapse as he took office, Mr. Obama devoted his presidency to the economic recovery, starting with restoring the financial sector. But he never made wage stagnation and growing inequality central to his economic mission
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  • At the same time, Mr. Obama declined to really spend time and capital explaining his initiatives in an effective way. He believed that positive changes on the ground, especially from economic policies and the Affordable Care Act, would succeed, vindicating his judgment and marginalizing his opponents.
  • When President Obama began focusing on those “left behind” by the recovery, he called for building “ladders of opportunity.” That communicated that the president believed the country’s main challenges were unrealized opportunity for a newly ascendant, multicultural America, rather than the continuing economic struggle experienced by a majority of Americans.
  • Mr. Obama also offered only tepid support to the most important political actor in progressive and Democratic politics: the labor movement.
  • In fact, he spent the last couple of years of his presidency pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a free trade law vociferously opposed by the labor movement. Under President Obama, union membership has declined to 11.1 percent from 12.3 percent.
  • Models, it appears, do not substitute for the hard work of organizing and engaging voters in nonpresidential years; models that apparently drove nearly every decision made by the Clinton campaign are no substitute for listening to voters.
  • On the eve of the 2016 election, the president used the refrain: “We’ve seen America turn recession into recovery” and 15.5 million new jobs. Pointedly, he said, “Incomes are rising. Poverty is falling.”
  • The public’s reaction was stark from the beginning. People did not believe his view on the economy, and his approval ratings fell in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2010 and in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2014 — the states that led the working-class move away from the Democrats.
  • Just as important, however, was the discontent brewing with the Democrats’ own base. Combined, the approximately 40 percent of minority, unmarried female and millennial voters disapproved of how President Obama was handling his job in 2010 and 2014, and many stayed home during the off-year elections. Mitt Romney carried white millennials by 7 percentage points in 2012.
  • The president will leave office with a rising approval rating near the same league of Ronald Reagan, an economy nearing full employment and real wages tipping up. Yet a majority of voters in the last election said the economy was the top issue in their vote.
  • We think voters were sending a clear message: They want more than a recovery. They want an economy and government that works for them, and that task is unfinished.
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Trump's China Policy: 'This Is How You Stumble Into a Crisis' | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...-how-you-stumble-into-a-crisis trump china policy foreign policy
shared by Javier E on 30 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, stunned lawmakers and foreign governments at his Jan. 11 Senate confirmation hearing when he said that the United States would be ready to block China’s access to artificial islands it is building in the South China Sea. Seemingly just a gaffe, the White House later appeared to double down on Tillerson’s stance, which taken at face value would be tantamount to an act of war.
  • The comments suggest President Donald Trump’s White House is eager to take an aggressive tone with Beijing, but lacks a coherent strategy to deal with China or a basic grasp of the legal and security issues at stake in the South China Sea, said former officials, diplomats, Asia experts and congressional aides.
  • Tillerson’s threat that America would bar China’s access to disputed reefs and islands in the South China Sea would mark a radical break with long established U.S. policies dating back to the 1990s
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  • Taken literally, Tillerson’s proposed approach would violate international law and require a naval blockade, which would be an act of war, experts said.
  • After the hearing, lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave Tillerson a chance to clarify what they assumed was an ill-informed gaffe, but neither he nor the White House took up the offer, aides told Foreign Policy.
  • The bellicose words on the South China Sea follow a host of other provocative statements and actions by Trump since his election. H
  • The idea behind Trump’s approach seems to be that the United States has been weak in its dealings with Beijing, and that a strong hand is needed. Experts said the Trump administration is testing the hypothesis that if the Washington simply gets tougher with China, Beijing will back down.
  • Washington and Beijing could be headed on a collision course, as both countries could be overestimating their own power and misjudging how the other side will respond, former officials and policy analysts said.
  • “They have been signaling subtly but clearly that they have cards to play as well and that they’re not going to back down,” one congressional aide said.
  • military leaders are not keen on provoking tensions with China or threatening a naval blockade that Washington won’t be ready to enforce.
  • Even as it seeks to squeeze China, the Trump administration has lost crucial economic and diplomatic leverage in the region by abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation trade pact with strong support among Asian allies and partners. It offered a counterbalance to Beijing’s economic heft, particularly among countries with rival claims in the South China Sea.
  • China is trying to fill the void, eagerly expanding its own trade grouping to attract countries like Japan and Malaysia. For Asian states gauging U.S. power, “their measuring stick isn’t just one or two aircraft carriers, it’s trade flows,” the congressional staffer said.
  • Allies are dismayed by the administration’s embrace of protectionism, its aggressive and improvised rhetoric toward China, and the wide gap between the president’s views and those of his Cabinet, said diplomats and former official
  • long-established allies are looking at exploring other trade and diplomatic options if the U.S. loses its status as a reliable partner.
  • While Tokyo and other foreign capitals have been reassured somewhat by officials named or expected to serve in the Trump administration on Asia policy, the president’s unpredictable tweets and impulsive policy making are a source of anxiety.
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Drought and 'Rice First' Policy Imperil Vietnamese Farmers - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...mperil-vietnamese-farmers.html Vietnam Policy Crisis Rice History
shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • When the rice shoots began to wither on Lam Thi Loi’s farm in the heart of the Mekong Delta, a usually verdant region of Vietnam, she faced a hard choice: Let them die in the parched earth, or pump salty water from the river to give them a chance.
  • The Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s premier rice growing region, is suffering its worst drought since French colonial administrators began recording statistics in 1926.
  • The increasingly dramatic effect of El Niño, the weather phenomenon that causes excessive heat and reduced rainfall in Southeast Asia, is the prime reason for the crop failures in the delta, scientists say. But it is not the only one.
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  • The Communist government’s insistence that farmers grow three rice crops a year, instead of the traditional one or two, has depleted the soil of nutrients, exacerbating the impact of the drought, they say.
  • And water from the sea has invaded the lower reaches of the Mekong River, which is more shallow than usual, sweeping saline water farther up the delta than ever before and wiping out rice fields
  • Saline water has long been invading the delta, but because of the drought there is not enough fresh water in the river and its distributaries to dilute the seawater.
  • The rice crop crisis has highlighted the need for the government to adjust its heavy emphasis on rice growing, and to encourage shrimp farming as a more profitable and practical substitute,
  • “Vietnam is the second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand,”
  • The government is stuck on a “rice first” policy that harks back to the 1970s, after the Communist victory in the Vietnam War, when the people were hungry and the country was isolated, bereft of trading partners and without a manufacturing sector.
  • Many farmers know the saline water is good for producing shrimp, Mr. Gorman said, but while they get subsidies for rice, they are not encouraged to switch to shrimp.
  • A 2010 study commissioned by the Mekong River Commission warned against the building of 11 dams in Laos and Cambodia because they would trap valuable sediment and stop it from reaching the delta. The report was ignored, two of the dams are under construction, and the rest are scheduled to go ahead.
  • In a rare concession to Vietnam, the Chinese released water from dams in Yunnan Province in March, but the flow was too small to make a difference to the failing rice crops, the Vietnamese authorities said.
  • Some farmers have fled to Ho Chi Minh City to find work, leaving villages with only half their population.
  • The signs of well-being will not last, said Mr. Thien, who was one of the authors of the 2010 report on the dams. With so many dams coming on line upstream, the lack of sediment will eventually kill the delta, leaving it a wasteland in the next 100 years or so.
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No matter how many Republicans denounce Trump, the racism charge sticks - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...trump-the-racism-charge-sticks gop racism conservatism 2016 crisis lincoln politics
shared by Javier E on 09 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Since the 1960s, Republicans have had to battle against liberal elites’ accusations that the GOP is exclusionary, anti-immigrant, uninterested in the fate of minorities and downright racist because the party rejected top-down welfare state programs, opposed race-based quotas and did not have a lot of national nonwhite leaders. That changed somewhat under President George W. Bush, who championed education and immigration reform. He got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and 43 percent of the Asian vote in 2004.
  • In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012. . . .
  • Although a bevy of nonwhite and/or female Republican leaders have stepped up in recent years (e.g., Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio), Republicans undid whatever progress they might have made with nonwhite voters when the House killed immigration reform and the party then nominated Donald Trump, who figuratively built his campaign on his wall, rounding up and expelling 11 million or 12 million people and banning Muslim immigration. His recent remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel are simply icing on the cake for Democrats, who have long claimed Republicans simply don’t like minorities.
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  • Republicans may protest and condemn Trump’s comments all they like, but for every denunciation, a Republican surrogate offers up some contorted defense. And Republicans keep Trump as their nominee. Trump’s racist and misogynistic rhetoric makes him toxic to women and minorities, and it risks tarring the party for years.
  • Even more stunning: “What a large majority of Republicans do agree on, however, is that Donald Trump’s comments weren’t racist. Only 22% of Republicans say that the comments were racist. In comparison 81% of Democrats and 44% of independents say that the comments were racist. ” (Emphasis added.) Viewed from the vantage point of skeptical minorities, the conclusion here is likely to be that Trump is a racist and a majority of Republicans (who won’t acknowledge the “textbook case of racism”) are nearly as bad.
  • In short, a bad rap (Republicans’ opposition to the liberal agenda makes them racists) has been turned into an accurate, deadly analysis. (Too many Republicans harbor bigoted views of minorities and/or do not recognize racism when it’s in front of them.) Not all Republicans can be labeled as such, but far too many
  • The solution only comes with repudiation of Trump, success of diverse candidates and an empathetic agenda that demonstrates Republicans care about all Americans, not just rich, white males.
  • It is that problem that now hangs over the GOP. It’s why the GOP is likely to lose the presidential race and perhaps one or more houses of Congress. It is why many will conclude it is better to scrap the party and start anew. Ironically, they may have to kill off the party of Lincoln to save the spirit of Lincoln.
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U.S., China Coordinated Policy Reversal - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...of-one-china-policy-1486737397 china foreign policy trump
shared by Javier E on 11 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump’s decision to back down on his threat to overturn a cornerstone of U.S.-China relations was made before his call this week to counterpart Xi Jinping, part of a move toward continuity in Washington’s approach to Asia.
  • “I would like you to uphold the ‘One China’ policy,” Mr. Xi said to Mr. Trump in a scripted exchange. “At your request, I will do that,” replied Mr. Trump, the official said.
  • White House officials declined to specify what if anything Mr. Trump got out of relenting on the One China policy. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang didn’t directly address a question about whether China had had to make any concessions in return.
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  • For Mr. Xi, the moment reflected how China’s wait-and-see approach to the new U.S. president paid off. Beijing had made clear to the Trump administration that U.S. adherence to the “One China” policy was an inviolable precondition for relations.
  • After his Oval Office meeting with Mr. Abe, Mr. Trump at a news conference reassured Japan and other Asia-Pacific nations that he wouldn’t unravel decades of American foreign policy by scaling back the U.S. military presence in region. Allies feared he would do so after he questioned the buildup and suggested during his campaign that countries like Japan and South Korea may need to acquire nuclear weapons.
  • Mr. Trump’s agreement to uphold the One China policy marks one in a series of stances toward Asia that he’s tempered since taking office. He had brushed off his call to Ms. Tsai as of little consequence, and vowed to use the One China policy as leverage in negotiations with China on contentious security and economic issues.
  • Similarly, prior to his confirmation as Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson walked back previous statements that the U.S. might block China’s access to islands it has built in the South China Sea, saying that the U.S. should be “capable” of limiting such access, should a contingency occur.
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Trump's Harsh Talk With Malcolm Turnbull of Australia Strains Another Alliance - The Ne... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...malcolm-turnbull-refugees.html australia trump alliance politics
shared by Javier E on 03 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Australian attitudes toward relations with the United States, which have historically been favorable, are now under pressure from China and its trading weight, according to polls. That is largely because the enormous Chinese demand for Australia’s resources — particularly iron ore, natural gas and coal — has bolstered Australia’s economy for more than a decade.
  • After Mr. Trump, in office just a few days, scrapped the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a regional trade pact that the Obama administration had hoped would be an economic counterweight to China — Mr. Turnbull announced that he would seek to reconstitute the deal without the United States, but possibly including China, another indication of Beijing’s clout.
  • A 2016 survey conducted by the public policy group Lowy Institute asked respondents to identify the country that was more important to Australia; 43 percent chose the United States, and 43 percent China. In 2014, 48 percent had answered the United States, and only 37 percent had chosen China, said Sam Roggeveen, a senior fellow at the institute.
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  • According to the 2016 survey, 45 percent said that Australia should distance itself from the United States if Mr. Trump became president, Mr. Roggeveen said.
  • “Australia shares raw and finished intelligence in the closest possible collaboration you can imagine,” Mr. Jennings said. “It is extremely high tech. It is something no countries can equal
  • The United States operates signals intelligence and radar facilities in remote corners of Australia that are becoming more important as North Korea’s nuclear threat expand
  • “We can assume that number will now rise,” said Mr. Medcalf, of Australian National University. “This incident will only intensify the damage done by Trump’s abandonment of the T.P.P., which would have been a pillar of strategic partnership as well as of trade.”
  • China’s role in Asia and North Korea’s nuclear efforts are far more important to the United States-Australia alliance than any one telephone call, said Peter Hayes, an Australian who is the director of the Nautilus Institute, a California-based research institute on security issues. But Mr. Trump’s “ability to create chaos” has placed those important strategic questions under a “dark cloud,” he said.
  • “The United States has invested five decades in creating that system of alliances, and it is evident Trump is pretty ignorant of it and doesn’t care about it, to the extent he knows about it,” Mr. Hayes said.
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