右翼分子吐槽扯淡专楼
"The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.
......
This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of this world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Commencement Address ("A World Split Apart"), June 8, 1978
On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.
......
This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man—the master of this world—does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harvard Commencement Address ("A World Split Apart"), June 8, 1978
1473 个评论
很多支持堕胎权的人有这么个思路：因为没法管制年轻人的性生活，而意外怀孕作为性生活的后果，在严格的反堕胎法规管辖之下会给当事人带来极大的麻烦，所以不应该有严格的反堕胎法。
我觉得诚实的保守派只能这样回应：这个思路以接受社会风气的腐化现状为前提，而该前提是我们无需接受的。我们就是要对年轻人的性生活施加更多监管，并且通过复兴父权制的一些因素来做到这一点。推翻一个判例只是推翻上世纪后半叶以来性革命的诸多“成果”的第一步，性自由的社会风气无疑是“成果”之一。
很多庆祝Roe翻案的人可能也不会喜欢这个回答，但它恐怕是理智的真诚所允许的唯一答复。
我觉得诚实的保守派只能这样回应：这个思路以接受社会风气的腐化现状为前提，而该前提是我们无需接受的。我们就是要对年轻人的性生活施加更多监管，并且通过复兴父权制的一些因素来做到这一点。推翻一个判例只是推翻上世纪后半叶以来性革命的诸多“成果”的第一步，性自由的社会风气无疑是“成果”之一。
很多庆祝Roe翻案的人可能也不会喜欢这个回答，但它恐怕是理智的真诚所允许的唯一答复。
Major General Tim Cross的估计是俄罗斯需要一两个月攻占顿涅茨克，而乌克兰在年底之前不会有收复大片失地的能力：
Major General Tim Cross's analysis of the war in Donbas
Q: Was it ever a possibility or a likelihood that the allies of Ukraine could arm the Ukrainians so that they could match Russia's firepower?
A: Well, that's certainly the intent, I mean, my understanding from various people that I talk to is that our approach is to give them as much support as we can, in order that they can defend as best they can, but with the intention that they will then have the ability to go on to offensive operations. But that won't be till towards the end of this year, maybe even not into next year. Offensive operations are very different to defensive operations, the maxim is that if you want to go on the attack you need about a three to one superiority and you need the ability to maneuver and to conduct those offensive operations in very different ways. And that's a skill that you take time to learn. So we are training some of these guys we're trying to give them systems to enable it, and i think that is definitely the intent of what Ukraine will want to do and what most of west - I have to say most of the west, not all of it, because I think there is this pressure building internally to try to get Ukraine to go to the negotiating table, and that pressure will only increase once the autumn and winter arrive, obviously over the energy business, but also because of other reasons too. So yes, they will want to go on the offensive. Yes, they need the systems to be able to do that, and they need the sustainability the logistics to do that, and it has to be said we in the west don't have an inexhaustible supply of this stuff.
Major General Tim Cross's analysis of the war in Donbas
Q: Was it ever a possibility or a likelihood that the allies of Ukraine could arm the Ukrainians so that they could match Russia's firepower?
A: Well, that's certainly the intent, I mean, my understanding from various people that I talk to is that our approach is to give them as much support as we can, in order that they can defend as best they can, but with the intention that they will then have the ability to go on to offensive operations. But that won't be till towards the end of this year, maybe even not into next year. Offensive operations are very different to defensive operations, the maxim is that if you want to go on the attack you need about a three to one superiority and you need the ability to maneuver and to conduct those offensive operations in very different ways. And that's a skill that you take time to learn. So we are training some of these guys we're trying to give them systems to enable it, and i think that is definitely the intent of what Ukraine will want to do and what most of west - I have to say most of the west, not all of it, because I think there is this pressure building internally to try to get Ukraine to go to the negotiating table, and that pressure will only increase once the autumn and winter arrive, obviously over the energy business, but also because of other reasons too. So yes, they will want to go on the offensive. Yes, they need the systems to be able to do that, and they need the sustainability the logistics to do that, and it has to be said we in the west don't have an inexhaustible supply of this stuff.
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
Well, I guess we will find out very soon how easily Europe can withstand an energy embargo.
Also, it turns out that those like @GrayConnolly who warned from day one that
a.) Western support probably came too slow, too late and
b.) Russia is playing a long game
were correct.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544577981359742977
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
Europe's most "liberal" government goes to war against its farmers during a global food crisis, hampering Dutch agricultural production - the second largest exporter in the World after the US.
All that money Russia funneled to environmental organisations is obviously paying off.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544671279357255681
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
It's like the ruling class has gone mad or drunk on its own ideology. Future generations will curse us for what we have done!
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544690517237268482
Well, I guess we will find out very soon how easily Europe can withstand an energy embargo.
Also, it turns out that those like @GrayConnolly who warned from day one that
a.) Western support probably came too slow, too late and
b.) Russia is playing a long game
were correct.
Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova
Russia stops the transit of oil from Kazakhstan, third largest non-OPEC oil supplier to Europe after Russia & Norway, as it suspends operation of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's terminal for 30 days. In June, WWII mines were found in the water area of the Caspian oil pipeline.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544577981359742977
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
Europe's most "liberal" government goes to war against its farmers during a global food crisis, hampering Dutch agricultural production - the second largest exporter in the World after the US.
All that money Russia funneled to environmental organisations is obviously paying off.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544671279357255681
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
It's like the ruling class has gone mad or drunk on its own ideology. Future generations will curse us for what we have done!
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1544690517237268482
Bloomberg @business
JUST IN: EU lawmakers vote down an objection to labeling natural gas and nuclear energy as green, removing a major barrier to potentially billions of funding
https://twitter.com/business/status/1544631803981488128
The Left in the European Parliament @Left_EU
BETRAYAL!
Parliament's shameful greenwash vote called out by citizens in the chamber - Left MEPs applaud them.
Gas & nuclear industry investments are NOT “sustainable” no matter how many lobbyists claim they are.
Dark day for people & planet.
https://twitter.com/Left_EU/status/1544639448431878144
Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray
If you drive a massive gas guzzler the European Union says that you're all fine and dandy. Fossil fuels are green energy now.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1544701593349951488
Richard Meyer @RichardMeyerDC
Implicit in the EU decision to include gas and nuclear in its taxonomy is that "green" must ensure energy reliability and resilience. Environmental or climate goals are unachievable without energy security. The EU vote made the eminently correct choice.
https://twitter.com/RichardMeyerDC/status/1544645186974007296
战争对意识形态的规训开始了。
JUST IN: EU lawmakers vote down an objection to labeling natural gas and nuclear energy as green, removing a major barrier to potentially billions of funding
https://twitter.com/business/status/1544631803981488128
The Left in the European Parliament @Left_EU
BETRAYAL!
Parliament's shameful greenwash vote called out by citizens in the chamber - Left MEPs applaud them.
Gas & nuclear industry investments are NOT “sustainable” no matter how many lobbyists claim they are.
Dark day for people & planet.
https://twitter.com/Left_EU/status/1544639448431878144
Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray
If you drive a massive gas guzzler the European Union says that you're all fine and dandy. Fossil fuels are green energy now.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1544701593349951488
Richard Meyer @RichardMeyerDC
Implicit in the EU decision to include gas and nuclear in its taxonomy is that "green" must ensure energy reliability and resilience. Environmental or climate goals are unachievable without energy security. The EU vote made the eminently correct choice.
https://twitter.com/RichardMeyerDC/status/1544645186974007296
战争对意识形态的规训开始了。
The German economy is on the brink
The economist Herbert Stein once wrote that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. It seems like the German — and with it probably the European — economy is reaching that point. Most of Europe’s 100 largest companies were founded in the 1980s or before, which means that the old continent has entirely slept through the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s. There is no European counterpart to American corporations like Facebook, Amazon, E-Bay or China’s Alibaba or WeChat.
This became painfully clear during the Covid pandemic, when the once vaunted German bureaucracy was revealed to rely on paper, pens and fax machines in its health care system due to a complete lack of digitalisation in key areas. Not surprisingly, the German economy shows cracks elsewhere as well. Measured by market capitalisation, only one German company makes it into the top 100 worldwide, and German market capitalisation as a share of global market capitalisation has shrunk to 1.97%, an all-time low. These are devastating numbers for a country that just a few years back was seen as a model for the world with its transition to Green energy and the planned exodus from nuclear power.
In fact, to add insult to injury, one of the largest German producers of rotator blades for wind turbines has announced it will close down production in Germany and move to India. Similarly, Villeroy & Boch, a company that has produced tiles in the German city of Merzig since 1879 will retire its factory and move manufacturing to Turkey, quoting high energy and labour costs as the main reason. One could argue these are just anecdotes, but it is probably no coincidence that for the first time in 30 years Germany posted a trade deficit of over one billion euros, meaning that Germans are importing more than they are exporting.
...
One thing, however, remains true despite all these problems: they did not cause but reveal the German economy’s malaise. An ideological fixation on renewables, paired with the rejection of nuclear energy and an addiction to Russian gas, led to a focus on everything except the things that matter. From internet technology to electric vehicles, Germany is behind, and the once-revered label “Made in Germany” rings increasingly hollow. One can only hope that this clash with reality will put an end to a cognitive dissonance that could derail the entire European economy and, with it, the European project.
The economist Herbert Stein once wrote that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. It seems like the German — and with it probably the European — economy is reaching that point. Most of Europe’s 100 largest companies were founded in the 1980s or before, which means that the old continent has entirely slept through the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s. There is no European counterpart to American corporations like Facebook, Amazon, E-Bay or China’s Alibaba or WeChat.
This became painfully clear during the Covid pandemic, when the once vaunted German bureaucracy was revealed to rely on paper, pens and fax machines in its health care system due to a complete lack of digitalisation in key areas. Not surprisingly, the German economy shows cracks elsewhere as well. Measured by market capitalisation, only one German company makes it into the top 100 worldwide, and German market capitalisation as a share of global market capitalisation has shrunk to 1.97%, an all-time low. These are devastating numbers for a country that just a few years back was seen as a model for the world with its transition to Green energy and the planned exodus from nuclear power.
In fact, to add insult to injury, one of the largest German producers of rotator blades for wind turbines has announced it will close down production in Germany and move to India. Similarly, Villeroy & Boch, a company that has produced tiles in the German city of Merzig since 1879 will retire its factory and move manufacturing to Turkey, quoting high energy and labour costs as the main reason. One could argue these are just anecdotes, but it is probably no coincidence that for the first time in 30 years Germany posted a trade deficit of over one billion euros, meaning that Germans are importing more than they are exporting.
...
One thing, however, remains true despite all these problems: they did not cause but reveal the German economy’s malaise. An ideological fixation on renewables, paired with the rejection of nuclear energy and an addiction to Russian gas, led to a focus on everything except the things that matter. From internet technology to electric vehicles, Germany is behind, and the once-revered label “Made in Germany” rings increasingly hollow. One can only hope that this clash with reality will put an end to a cognitive dissonance that could derail the entire European economy and, with it, the European project.
Christopher F. Rufo @realchrisrufo
Translation: the false accusations of "racist" and "white supremacist" have lost their rhetorical power, so we are switching to "authoritarian" and "threat to democracy."
Voters will see right through it. They watched blue states shut down society, mandate medical procedures, and force kids out of school for two years, while DeSantis followed the science and the Constitution to keep his state open—and had a lower COVID death rate than New York.
Meanwhile, there is a political faction that wants to eliminate the filibuster, pack the court, abolish the Electoral College, and nationalize election laws in order to secure its own political power. Much more "authoritarian" than anything happening in Florida.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1545062404945350656
Translation: the false accusations of "racist" and "white supremacist" have lost their rhetorical power, so we are switching to "authoritarian" and "threat to democracy."
Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait
DeSantis is a deeply authoritarian figure who is consolidating the fringe right-wing groups Trump brought into the party
Voters will see right through it. They watched blue states shut down society, mandate medical procedures, and force kids out of school for two years, while DeSantis followed the science and the Constitution to keep his state open—and had a lower COVID death rate than New York.
Meanwhile, there is a political faction that wants to eliminate the filibuster, pack the court, abolish the Electoral College, and nationalize election laws in order to secure its own political power. Much more "authoritarian" than anything happening in Florida.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1545062404945350656
>> An ideological fixation on renewables, paired with the rejection of nuclear energy and an addiction to Russian gas, led to a focus on everything except the things that matter. From internet technology to electric vehicles, Germany is behind, and the once-revered label “Made in Germany” rings increasingly hollow.
Although I wanna say 'reality kicking-in', yet unfortunately things are going far beyond that.
Fixation, addiction, rejection, or new tech obsession, or pleasant wording, won't do shyte.
The root of the imminent fruit of doom goes much deeper than these pundits are willing to dig. They won't even trying to see what's coming as a whole.
For the so-called 'German Prosperity' to continue, the 'Merkel's Germany' has to put everything else other than material success aside, such as national security, ensuring its access to resources and markets, and its necessary strategy for survival, in a sentence, it has to keep free-riding the Pax Americana which is inevitably going to end because of the foundational nature of the 'American Democracy' that will make sure 'weak men' take over of everything they could not possibly understand or manage, which already predetermined the perils now we are watching. And people without their own heart will CRAVE for that to happen, being showed by the Germans themselves. Merkel merely responded to that trend out of a mental and spiritual void and reaped the boons, personally and also for the Germans who may or may not vote her.
Here I shall repeat what I said before in this thread: the very existence of the peace and prosperity of the modern Germany as a country, however precious that can be to a lot of people, are no longer necessary in the coming 'brave new world'.
Without ever preparing, not even seriously considering for its own security when facing existential crisis in the past, therefore now without a preserved 'German Identity' to ever inspire the new generations to take responsibility for its existence, for worse or better, there can be no future prospect of its continuation, the young and healthy generations are not even showing the WILL to defend it or saying that they want to 'survive as a German individual' and hence the German Nation. All we can see now is that they are taking a hurry quitting the almost non-existing German defence force.
If the last line of spirit won't hold, then nothing can hold anymore, besides abstract dreams that are distant enough so that won't raise hard questions concerning their own long-term existence.
----------------------------------
Don't worry, if one does not want to take responsibility for one's own life, then someone else will.
Complaining for an escape is surely a totally valid way of coping.
>>很多支持堕胎权的人有这么个思路：因为没法管制年轻人的性生活，而意外怀孕作为性生活的后果，在严格的反堕...
换成我来做当事者，也必定认为这是正确的选择。
但那也同时意味着一件事：承认有些人就是不能够为自己负责，不能够作为对等的人，因而不能够视之为合格的社会成员。
这条路和这一逻辑方向延长线上的终点，当然不会是那么 pleasant
充其量，只能相信「人」可以做个人。相信人加以合理的规训之后，可以正确地认知，正确地选择，正确地行动。
换言之，对某些人不能报以信心的同时，对「人」却只能够相信。就像在 Youtube 上看到那些「黑人砸店」视频后，评论中写出「Welcome to the United States of Invalids」的观众，对眼前所见不抱希望，但对自身的存在和自己认定的原则，不会怀疑。
-------------------------------
换个角度看，这也是一种 Leap of Faith，需要的不是知识，不是学历，更不是各种智商认证。能让人迈出这一步的，只能是一个人自己作为人的勇气。
现代的所谓「教育」的流水线，完全无法胜任培养这种人之信念和勇气的任务。
Ukraine and the Return of the Multipolar World
...Ukraine is both a clear indicator of the limits of America’s global sphere of influence in the post-Cold War period, and a demonstration of the extent to which Russia is able to defend what it sees as its own regional sphere. The war in Ukraine thus does not mark a continuation of the unipolar moment, but instead, a dividing line between the period when the United States saw the whole world as its sphere of influence, and a new, more multipolar world in which U.S. power is constrained and limited.
To put it another way: the war in Ukraine has demonstrated three things about the shifting balance of global power. First, while America may still claim a global sphere of influence, it is not willing in practice to risk a nuclear war with Russia to protect Ukraine. American arms, intelligence, and finance have undoubtedly served to tip the balance in the conflict, but it will not be fought by American troops. Second, spheres of influence are rarely uncontested, and Russia has thus far proven incapable of imposing its will on Ukraine, failing to achieve both its primary and secondary military goals in this war. As such, the boundaries of a potential Russian sphere of influence may in practice be far smaller than assumed prior to February 24. They may be limited to little more than Russia’s own borders.
Third, while much of the coverage of the war in Ukraine has been framed in this bipolar way—presenting the conflict as a struggle between Russia and the West—the response to the war has been far less clear-cut. Outside of Europe, most states have taken a more nuanced approach to the crisis.
...
...the world is increasingly fracturing into a more complex and multipolar environment, one in which America’s long-running foreign policy adventurism and overreach are liable to leave it overextended. For all the triumphalism of the Washington foreign policy narrative on Ukraine, it would be foolish for U.S. policymakers to assume that this war presents either a vindication of the liberal order or a repudiation of power politics and spheres of influence. Instead, it suggests that they must learn to navigate a world that is not divided into black and white, but rather, into many shades of gray.
...Ukraine is both a clear indicator of the limits of America’s global sphere of influence in the post-Cold War period, and a demonstration of the extent to which Russia is able to defend what it sees as its own regional sphere. The war in Ukraine thus does not mark a continuation of the unipolar moment, but instead, a dividing line between the period when the United States saw the whole world as its sphere of influence, and a new, more multipolar world in which U.S. power is constrained and limited.
To put it another way: the war in Ukraine has demonstrated three things about the shifting balance of global power. First, while America may still claim a global sphere of influence, it is not willing in practice to risk a nuclear war with Russia to protect Ukraine. American arms, intelligence, and finance have undoubtedly served to tip the balance in the conflict, but it will not be fought by American troops. Second, spheres of influence are rarely uncontested, and Russia has thus far proven incapable of imposing its will on Ukraine, failing to achieve both its primary and secondary military goals in this war. As such, the boundaries of a potential Russian sphere of influence may in practice be far smaller than assumed prior to February 24. They may be limited to little more than Russia’s own borders.
Third, while much of the coverage of the war in Ukraine has been framed in this bipolar way—presenting the conflict as a struggle between Russia and the West—the response to the war has been far less clear-cut. Outside of Europe, most states have taken a more nuanced approach to the crisis.
...
...the world is increasingly fracturing into a more complex and multipolar environment, one in which America’s long-running foreign policy adventurism and overreach are liable to leave it overextended. For all the triumphalism of the Washington foreign policy narrative on Ukraine, it would be foolish for U.S. policymakers to assume that this war presents either a vindication of the liberal order or a repudiation of power politics and spheres of influence. Instead, it suggests that they must learn to navigate a world that is not divided into black and white, but rather, into many shades of gray.
Abe : Pioneer of the Quad
...In 2007, while addressing the Indian Parliament, Abe said, “The different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea.” He asked all littorals around the Indo-Pacific to come forward and advocate for rule-based Indo-Pacific. Abe quoted the title of a book called ‘Confluence of the Two Seas’ written by the Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh in 1655. By this, he was trying to emphasize the importance of the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and their confluence, the Indo-Pacific. Abe also mentioned ‘the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ through which he wanted all the stakeholders in ‘broader Asia’, again a concept of Abe, to come together to form a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific for all.
This historic address of Abe paved the way for the formation of the Quad.
Then, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo and announced in a joint statement that both nations were ready to begin a dialogue with like-minded nations in the Indo-Pacific.
After that, US Vice President Dick Cheney signalled American interest in the Quad. Cheney discussed this with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Then Howard and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee travelled to Tokyo to reaffirm. Later, Abe and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s respective visit to Washington and New Delhi sealed the deal.
On the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, the first meeting of the Quad took place. This very first meeting was characterized as an informal one, as they were testing the waters.
In 2007, the first-ever military exercise of Quad took place, which was referred to as an enlarged version of Malabar. In the second Malabar of this version, Singapore also joined these four nations in the Bay of Bengal.
China was furious and had already launched a diplomatic protest against the Quad. Growing Chinese pressure lead to reticence among Australia and India. Soon after that Abe resigned due to ill health. It was the loss of the Quad, as it has lost its architect and advocate, Shinzo Abe. The newly elected Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided that the Quad did not suit its strategic interest and announced that Australia would not participate in the Quad dialogue. The Quad 1.0 crumbled.
Quad 2.0 :
The Quad needed some introspection and strengthening of bilateral and trilateral relations within itself. The ten years between 2007 and 2017 saw serious relationship building and further strategic alignment between four nations. In 2012, he was back, Abe was back in the office and he started rooting for Quad 2.0. It was all working out, India started showing its interest again, thanks to the enthusiasm of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Donald Trump’s decisiveness and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s readiness. Finally, in November 2017, representatives of Quad 2.0 met, on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Today Quad is stronger than ever before. Few call it Asian NATO, but many believe there is still time for that as Quad is in its nascent stage.
...In 2007, while addressing the Indian Parliament, Abe said, “The different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea.” He asked all littorals around the Indo-Pacific to come forward and advocate for rule-based Indo-Pacific. Abe quoted the title of a book called ‘Confluence of the Two Seas’ written by the Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh in 1655. By this, he was trying to emphasize the importance of the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and their confluence, the Indo-Pacific. Abe also mentioned ‘the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ through which he wanted all the stakeholders in ‘broader Asia’, again a concept of Abe, to come together to form a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific for all.
This historic address of Abe paved the way for the formation of the Quad.
Then, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo and announced in a joint statement that both nations were ready to begin a dialogue with like-minded nations in the Indo-Pacific.
After that, US Vice President Dick Cheney signalled American interest in the Quad. Cheney discussed this with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Then Howard and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee travelled to Tokyo to reaffirm. Later, Abe and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s respective visit to Washington and New Delhi sealed the deal.
On the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, the first meeting of the Quad took place. This very first meeting was characterized as an informal one, as they were testing the waters.
In 2007, the first-ever military exercise of Quad took place, which was referred to as an enlarged version of Malabar. In the second Malabar of this version, Singapore also joined these four nations in the Bay of Bengal.
China was furious and had already launched a diplomatic protest against the Quad. Growing Chinese pressure lead to reticence among Australia and India. Soon after that Abe resigned due to ill health. It was the loss of the Quad, as it has lost its architect and advocate, Shinzo Abe. The newly elected Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided that the Quad did not suit its strategic interest and announced that Australia would not participate in the Quad dialogue. The Quad 1.0 crumbled.
Quad 2.0 :
The Quad needed some introspection and strengthening of bilateral and trilateral relations within itself. The ten years between 2007 and 2017 saw serious relationship building and further strategic alignment between four nations. In 2012, he was back, Abe was back in the office and he started rooting for Quad 2.0. It was all working out, India started showing its interest again, thanks to the enthusiasm of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Donald Trump’s decisiveness and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s readiness. Finally, in November 2017, representatives of Quad 2.0 met, on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Manila. Today Quad is stronger than ever before. Few call it Asian NATO, but many believe there is still time for that as Quad is in its nascent stage.
最近两天，好像突然按下了「播放速度×100」的按钮。
英国和日本，一西一东，两个岛国，同样面对庞大陆地上的强邻，同样是君主立宪之国，而两国的政治中枢，一个是正在国际风云中积极行动的现任首相，一个不得已而卸任，却以自己的影响力同样投身于时代变革的前首相，他们同时从现实和历史的舞台上离开了。
BoJo 被迫辞职，倒是败得典型，就是这一帖开帖时说的「keep your feet on the ground」。要看哪颗星星都可以，但确保你脚下踩的是坚实的地面，后者的姿势往往决定了前者真正的可能性。
安倍遇刺，在人意料之外，毕竟他已是「前前首相」了，虽然时间并不长。但是安倍所为之事，即改变日本的前进方向，必定招来庞大的忌恨。飞来子弹，遇上刺客，那些事其实都在这个行动方向上。真正让人惊讶的，是来得太快。
但他们各自的遭遇，应该可以看作是源于同样的潮流，过去的世界已不再，亦不可能再维持下去。尝试同时踩在两艘逆向而行的船上，能够支撑的时间是有限的。在冲突中最先受影响的人，就是两边都盯着的人。只不过以前的意识形态之斗不怎么看得到后果，现在是「在存亡意义上的」政治权力之争了，一方的获胜，意味着另一方的不可承受。由此推论，还在「继续站中间」的马克龙，今后在最好的情况下，也难有好日子过。
不管怎么说，在前一阶段真正拥有影响力的人，纷纷离开了舞台，在全方位对立都明朗化的接下来，要出现的究竟是什么，恐怕一时间没人可以确定。
倒是有少数人，现在已经可以偷偷地向其属下夸耀：「奥库斯缺了一角，QUAD也少了一角，统战工作卓有成效。关键是俺的战略判断无比正确。最近开始放软话的澳大利亚也开始绷不住了，美国国内的形势有大利于我，英国内斗越激烈，对外伸手也就越少。欧洲现在更是乱成了一锅粥。怎么说都是，胜利！胜利！胜利！」
--------------------------------
当然，对于总加速师是否能够理解其自身命运，同时也是大中国主义之命运的逻辑，我不抱任何希望。至于普京，他播下的种是要今后的俄罗斯人去好好收获、品味的，其他人不能越俎代庖。
英国和日本，一西一东，两个岛国，同样面对庞大陆地上的强邻，同样是君主立宪之国，而两国的政治中枢，一个是正在国际风云中积极行动的现任首相，一个不得已而卸任，却以自己的影响力同样投身于时代变革的前首相，他们同时从现实和历史的舞台上离开了。
BoJo 被迫辞职，倒是败得典型，就是这一帖开帖时说的「keep your feet on the ground」。要看哪颗星星都可以，但确保你脚下踩的是坚实的地面，后者的姿势往往决定了前者真正的可能性。
安倍遇刺，在人意料之外，毕竟他已是「前前首相」了，虽然时间并不长。但是安倍所为之事，即改变日本的前进方向，必定招来庞大的忌恨。飞来子弹，遇上刺客，那些事其实都在这个行动方向上。真正让人惊讶的，是来得太快。
但他们各自的遭遇，应该可以看作是源于同样的潮流，过去的世界已不再，亦不可能再维持下去。尝试同时踩在两艘逆向而行的船上，能够支撑的时间是有限的。在冲突中最先受影响的人，就是两边都盯着的人。只不过以前的意识形态之斗不怎么看得到后果，现在是「在存亡意义上的」政治权力之争了，一方的获胜，意味着另一方的不可承受。由此推论，还在「继续站中间」的马克龙，今后在最好的情况下，也难有好日子过。
不管怎么说，在前一阶段真正拥有影响力的人，纷纷离开了舞台，在全方位对立都明朗化的接下来，要出现的究竟是什么，恐怕一时间没人可以确定。
倒是有少数人，现在已经可以偷偷地向其属下夸耀：「奥库斯缺了一角，QUAD也少了一角，统战工作卓有成效。关键是俺的战略判断无比正确。最近开始放软话的澳大利亚也开始绷不住了，美国国内的形势有大利于我，英国内斗越激烈，对外伸手也就越少。欧洲现在更是乱成了一锅粥。怎么说都是，胜利！胜利！胜利！」
--------------------------------
当然，对于总加速师是否能够理解其自身命运，同时也是大中国主义之命运的逻辑，我不抱任何希望。至于普京，他播下的种是要今后的俄罗斯人去好好收获、品味的，其他人不能越俎代庖。
How Boris Johnson Lost His Way
...It is illuminating that his last tweet before resignation, which hung on his Twitter feed like an albatross for a while, was about promising more aid to Ukraine. And that should give one an idea of what went wrong. If his idea of “populism” was spending unlimited money during an inflation and coronavirus recovery, on the irrelevant periphery of a continent his countrymen voted to not give a damn about, instead of fixing a housing scarcity in England, or gutting the administrative state and woke civil service, or fixing a broken public infrastructure, or immigration and policing reforms, then his strategic acumen was arguably as strong as his recent bemusing ponderings on history. He forgot his primary job was the good governance of the United Kingdom.
...
He could have focused on unlimited trade and courted investment from the rich commonwealth. He could have focused on gutting the administrative Blairite state and decimating the entrenched woke civil service, by eradicating the European human rights laws and the Equality Act. He could have opened up those same civil service and policing jobs for the mass of educated but closet conservatives and patriots from all across middle England, thereby improving both the local economy and his party’s future prospects. He could have permanently sorted out the problem of Scotland and Northern Ireland by relocating the Hong Kong refugees, as well as reversing “devolution” and taking back financial and budgetary power back to Westminster. He could have been tough on major crimes by reforming the broken system of British policing. He could have fundamentally reformed immigration. Instead of inviting hundreds of midwit social scientists from the European Union, bloating out the university sector, he could have made university funding conditional on free speech, as well as invited actual genuine researchers and scientists from across the globe to move to Britain and take the country towards the direction of a tech and economy powerhouse. Viktor Orban did some of the abovementioned, in Hungary. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin are showing how it’s competently done in Florida and Virginia. He ignored that all. What a waste.
...It is illuminating that his last tweet before resignation, which hung on his Twitter feed like an albatross for a while, was about promising more aid to Ukraine. And that should give one an idea of what went wrong. If his idea of “populism” was spending unlimited money during an inflation and coronavirus recovery, on the irrelevant periphery of a continent his countrymen voted to not give a damn about, instead of fixing a housing scarcity in England, or gutting the administrative state and woke civil service, or fixing a broken public infrastructure, or immigration and policing reforms, then his strategic acumen was arguably as strong as his recent bemusing ponderings on history. He forgot his primary job was the good governance of the United Kingdom.
...
He could have focused on unlimited trade and courted investment from the rich commonwealth. He could have focused on gutting the administrative Blairite state and decimating the entrenched woke civil service, by eradicating the European human rights laws and the Equality Act. He could have opened up those same civil service and policing jobs for the mass of educated but closet conservatives and patriots from all across middle England, thereby improving both the local economy and his party’s future prospects. He could have permanently sorted out the problem of Scotland and Northern Ireland by relocating the Hong Kong refugees, as well as reversing “devolution” and taking back financial and budgetary power back to Westminster. He could have been tough on major crimes by reforming the broken system of British policing. He could have fundamentally reformed immigration. Instead of inviting hundreds of midwit social scientists from the European Union, bloating out the university sector, he could have made university funding conditional on free speech, as well as invited actual genuine researchers and scientists from across the globe to move to Britain and take the country towards the direction of a tech and economy powerhouse. Viktor Orban did some of the abovementioned, in Hungary. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin are showing how it’s competently done in Florida and Virginia. He ignored that all. What a waste.
The Liberal World Order at work:
EU parliament votes to condemn overturning of Roe v. Wade
The European Parliament voted 324-155, with 38 abstentions, to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and demand that abortion rights be enshrined in the EU’s fundamental rights charter.
Why it matters: The Supreme Court's decision last month to end federal protections for abortion was widely denounced by world leaders and human rights organizations.
- In the wake of the ruling, lawmakers in Israel and France have taken steps to shore up their domestic protections for abortion.
The big picture: In the resolution, European MEPs expressed their solidarity with American women and girls and called for the U.S. Congress to pass federal protections for abortion, according to a European Parliament press release.
- The resolution called for EU countries to provide "safe, legal and free abortion services, pre-natal and maternal healthcare services, voluntary family planning, youth-friendly services, and HIV prevention, treatment and support, without discrimination."
Ed Whelan @EdWhelanEPPC
Safe bet that the U.S. State Department has encouraged this.
International elites vs. the American Constitution.
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1545200947177086976
EU parliament votes to condemn overturning of Roe v. Wade
The European Parliament voted 324-155, with 38 abstentions, to condemn the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and demand that abortion rights be enshrined in the EU’s fundamental rights charter.
Why it matters: The Supreme Court's decision last month to end federal protections for abortion was widely denounced by world leaders and human rights organizations.
- In the wake of the ruling, lawmakers in Israel and France have taken steps to shore up their domestic protections for abortion.
The big picture: In the resolution, European MEPs expressed their solidarity with American women and girls and called for the U.S. Congress to pass federal protections for abortion, according to a European Parliament press release.
- The resolution called for EU countries to provide "safe, legal and free abortion services, pre-natal and maternal healthcare services, voluntary family planning, youth-friendly services, and HIV prevention, treatment and support, without discrimination."
Ed Whelan @EdWhelanEPPC
Safe bet that the U.S. State Department has encouraged this.
International elites vs. the American Constitution.
ian bremmer @ianbremmer
eu parliament votes 324-155 to condemn us supreme court overturning roe v wade
https://twitter.com/EdWhelanEPPC/status/1545200947177086976
Ukraine’s Implausible Theories of Victory
...A possible counterargument is that the West could supply Ukraine with such superior technology that it could best the Russians, helping Kyiv defeat its enemy through either attrition or mobile warfare. But this theory is also fanciful. Russia enjoys a three-to-one advantage in population and economic output, a gap that even the highest-tech tools would be hard-pressed to close. Advanced Western weapons, such as the Javelin and NLAW antitank guided missiles, have probably helped Ukraine exact a high price from the Russians. But so far, this technology has largely been used to leverage the tactical advantages that defenders already enjoy—cover, concealment, and the ability to channel enemy forces through natural and manmade obstacles. It is much harder to exploit advanced technology to go on the offense against an adversary that possesses a significant quantitative advantage, because doing so requires overcoming both superior numbers and the tactical advantages of defense. In the case of Ukraine, it is not obvious what special technology the West possesses that would so advantage the Ukrainian military that it could crack Russian defenses.
To comprehend the difficulty Ukraine faces, consider Nazi Germany’s failure in its last major offensive of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge. In December 1944, the Germans surprised the Allies in the Ardennes Forest with a concentration of mechanized and infantry divisions against a thinly defended 50-mile stretch of front. They hoped to shatter the Allied defenses in Belgium, split the U.S. and British Armies, take the critical port of Antwerp, and stall the Allied war effort. The Wehrmacht bet that its skill at armored warfare, its laboriously assembled local numerical superiority, and its advanced armored vehicle technology would overcome the combined advantages that the U.S. and British militaries enjoyed in terms of manpower, artillery, and airpower. Although the Germans were able to achieve surprise and enjoyed a few days of success, the operation soon foundered. Western commanders quickly figured out what was going on and efficiently used their materiel superiority to beat back the advance. Today, some seem to be suggesting that the Ukrainians try a strategy similar to the Germans to overcome similar constraints. But there is no compelling reason to believe that the Ukrainians would fare any better.
...A possible counterargument is that the West could supply Ukraine with such superior technology that it could best the Russians, helping Kyiv defeat its enemy through either attrition or mobile warfare. But this theory is also fanciful. Russia enjoys a three-to-one advantage in population and economic output, a gap that even the highest-tech tools would be hard-pressed to close. Advanced Western weapons, such as the Javelin and NLAW antitank guided missiles, have probably helped Ukraine exact a high price from the Russians. But so far, this technology has largely been used to leverage the tactical advantages that defenders already enjoy—cover, concealment, and the ability to channel enemy forces through natural and manmade obstacles. It is much harder to exploit advanced technology to go on the offense against an adversary that possesses a significant quantitative advantage, because doing so requires overcoming both superior numbers and the tactical advantages of defense. In the case of Ukraine, it is not obvious what special technology the West possesses that would so advantage the Ukrainian military that it could crack Russian defenses.
To comprehend the difficulty Ukraine faces, consider Nazi Germany’s failure in its last major offensive of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge. In December 1944, the Germans surprised the Allies in the Ardennes Forest with a concentration of mechanized and infantry divisions against a thinly defended 50-mile stretch of front. They hoped to shatter the Allied defenses in Belgium, split the U.S. and British Armies, take the critical port of Antwerp, and stall the Allied war effort. The Wehrmacht bet that its skill at armored warfare, its laboriously assembled local numerical superiority, and its advanced armored vehicle technology would overcome the combined advantages that the U.S. and British militaries enjoyed in terms of manpower, artillery, and airpower. Although the Germans were able to achieve surprise and enjoyed a few days of success, the operation soon foundered. Western commanders quickly figured out what was going on and efficiently used their materiel superiority to beat back the advance. Today, some seem to be suggesting that the Ukrainians try a strategy similar to the Germans to overcome similar constraints. But there is no compelling reason to believe that the Ukrainians would fare any better.
The lamps are going out...
Germany dims the lights to cope with Russia gas supply crunch
Germany is rationing hot water, dimming its street lights and shutting down swimming pools as the impact of its energy crunch begins to spread from industry to offices, leisure centres and homes.
A huge increase in gas prices triggered by Russia’s move last month to sharply reduce supplies to Germany has plunged Europe’s biggest economy into its worst energy crisis since the oil price shock of 1973.
Gas importers and utilities are fighting for survival while consumer bills are going through the roof, with some warning of rising friction.
“The situation is more than dramatic,” said Axel Gedaschko, head of the federation of German housing enterprises. “Germany’s social peace is in great danger.”
Germany dims the lights to cope with Russia gas supply crunch
Germany is rationing hot water, dimming its street lights and shutting down swimming pools as the impact of its energy crunch begins to spread from industry to offices, leisure centres and homes.
A huge increase in gas prices triggered by Russia’s move last month to sharply reduce supplies to Germany has plunged Europe’s biggest economy into its worst energy crisis since the oil price shock of 1973.
Gas importers and utilities are fighting for survival while consumer bills are going through the roof, with some warning of rising friction.
“The situation is more than dramatic,” said Axel Gedaschko, head of the federation of German housing enterprises. “Germany’s social peace is in great danger.”
UN says Ukraine bears share of blame for nursing home attack
...In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.
...
Russia’s frequently indiscriminate shelling of apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and theaters has been the primary cause of the war’s thousands of civilian casualties. Ukraine and its allies, including the United States, have rebuked Moscow for the deaths and injuries and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
But Ukraine also must abide by the international rules of the battlefield. David Crane, a former U.S. Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff.
“The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”
...In a war awash in atrocities, the attack on the nursing home near the village of Stara Krasnyanka stood out for its cruelty. And Ukrainian authorities placed the fault squarely on Russian forces, accusing them of killing more than 50 vulnerable civilians in a brutal and unprovoked attack.
But a new United Nations report has found that Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.
...
Russia’s frequently indiscriminate shelling of apartment buildings, hospitals, schools and theaters has been the primary cause of the war’s thousands of civilian casualties. Ukraine and its allies, including the United States, have rebuked Moscow for the deaths and injuries and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.
But Ukraine also must abide by the international rules of the battlefield. David Crane, a former U.S. Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff.
“The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.”
民小们常有的两种思维倾向：
一、倾向于低估民主政体中政策绩效的重要性，高估民主作为治理方式本身所提供的政治合法性。实情是，绩效在民主政体中的重要程度时常不低于其他政体，如果无论政党怎么轮替，元老院都无法满足人民长久的诉求，人民会呼唤他们的凯撒。
二、倾向于认为民主政体只要依法照章办事，就会产生绩效上可以接受的结果。然而尽管相对于一人或者小集团主导政治，民主政体减少了决策的任性和偏私，但多人交流、争辩后占优势的识见不一定高于少数个人在广泛咨询后形成的识见。培养智虑深远且勇于担当的精英阶层在任何社会都是至关重要的任务，该任务的长期失败并非某种政体形式可以补救。对比过去十几年里安倍在日本的成就和他的西方同僚在欧美的乱政，这一点清晰可见。
一、倾向于低估民主政体中政策绩效的重要性，高估民主作为治理方式本身所提供的政治合法性。实情是，绩效在民主政体中的重要程度时常不低于其他政体，如果无论政党怎么轮替，元老院都无法满足人民长久的诉求，人民会呼唤他们的凯撒。
二、倾向于认为民主政体只要依法照章办事，就会产生绩效上可以接受的结果。然而尽管相对于一人或者小集团主导政治，民主政体减少了决策的任性和偏私，但多人交流、争辩后占优势的识见不一定高于少数个人在广泛咨询后形成的识见。培养智虑深远且勇于担当的精英阶层在任何社会都是至关重要的任务，该任务的长期失败并非某种政体形式可以补救。对比过去十几年里安倍在日本的成就和他的西方同僚在欧美的乱政，这一点清晰可见。
认为对中国/中共的态度是评价一国命运或者一个政权之品质的决定性依据，这是部分反共华人常有的自大：觉得地球围着他们关注的那块地方转。狭隘的道德主义局限了他们观察世界的视野。
Latest: Wallace not running, Baker folds
...Ben Wallace is not running for Tory leader. Despite surveys showing that he would beat every other candidate in the run-off round, the Defence Secretary has decided not to enter the contest.
Wallace’s political stock has soared in recent months with his handling of the Ukraine situation. He was prescient in his warnings about Putin’s intentions and he broke through resistance in the system to ensure that the UK sent weaponry to Kyiv before the Russians invaded. If he had entered the contest, he would have become the favourite despite the fact little was known about his views on a host of domestic issues.
Ben Wallace不选是件不大的好事。Tories现在不需要一位仅凭（与脱欧无关的）外交上的表现掌权的首相，他们从BOJO的失败中应该学到是内政处置不佳、只靠做自由国际秩序的poster boy来赢得选民是行不通的。
...Ben Wallace is not running for Tory leader. Despite surveys showing that he would beat every other candidate in the run-off round, the Defence Secretary has decided not to enter the contest.
Wallace’s political stock has soared in recent months with his handling of the Ukraine situation. He was prescient in his warnings about Putin’s intentions and he broke through resistance in the system to ensure that the UK sent weaponry to Kyiv before the Russians invaded. If he had entered the contest, he would have become the favourite despite the fact little was known about his views on a host of domestic issues.
Ben Wallace不选是件不大的好事。Tories现在不需要一位仅凭（与脱欧无关的）外交上的表现掌权的首相，他们从BOJO的失败中应该学到是内政处置不佳、只靠做自由国际秩序的poster boy来赢得选民是行不通的。
Sri Lanka crisis: Daily heartbreak of life in a country gone bankrupt
...In the cities, fuel queues curl around entire suburbs like gargantuan metal pythons, growing longer and fatter by the day, choking roads and crushing livelihoods.
Tuk-tuk drivers with their eight-litre tanks are forced to spend days lining up before they can run hires again, for 48 hours perhaps, before they are forced to rejoin the queue, bringing pillows, changes of clothes and water to see them through the ordeal.
For a while, middle- and upper-class folk had brought meal packets and soft drinks for those queuing in their neighbourhoods.
Lately, the cost of food, of cooking gas, of clothes, transport, and even what electricity the state will allow you to have, has sky-rocketed so egregiously as the rupee's value plummeted, that even largesse from the moneyed has been in short supply.
In working-class neighbourhoods, families have begun to band together around wood fire stoves, to prepare the simplest of meals - rice, and coconut sambol.
Even dhal, a staple of the diet all over South Asia, has become a luxury. Meat? At three times the price it used to be? Forget it.
Fresh fish was once abundant and affordable. Now, boats can't go out to sea, because there is no diesel. The fishermen that can go out sell their catch at vastly inflated rates to hotels and restaurants out of reach to most.
A majority of Sri Lankan children have now been forced to subsist on a diet with almost no protein. This is a crisis that has hit on every level from the macroeconomic to the molecular.
...In the cities, fuel queues curl around entire suburbs like gargantuan metal pythons, growing longer and fatter by the day, choking roads and crushing livelihoods.
Tuk-tuk drivers with their eight-litre tanks are forced to spend days lining up before they can run hires again, for 48 hours perhaps, before they are forced to rejoin the queue, bringing pillows, changes of clothes and water to see them through the ordeal.
For a while, middle- and upper-class folk had brought meal packets and soft drinks for those queuing in their neighbourhoods.
Lately, the cost of food, of cooking gas, of clothes, transport, and even what electricity the state will allow you to have, has sky-rocketed so egregiously as the rupee's value plummeted, that even largesse from the moneyed has been in short supply.
In working-class neighbourhoods, families have begun to band together around wood fire stoves, to prepare the simplest of meals - rice, and coconut sambol.
Even dhal, a staple of the diet all over South Asia, has become a luxury. Meat? At three times the price it used to be? Forget it.
Fresh fish was once abundant and affordable. Now, boats can't go out to sea, because there is no diesel. The fishermen that can go out sell their catch at vastly inflated rates to hotels and restaurants out of reach to most.
A majority of Sri Lankan children have now been forced to subsist on a diet with almost no protein. This is a crisis that has hit on every level from the macroeconomic to the molecular.
The Economist @TheEconomist
New data suggest that the damage from shutting down schools has been worse than almost anyone expected https://t.co/NFwisYrDsg
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1545639423890579456
The Economist @TheEconomist
The sharp increase in inflation over the past year has blindsided many economists. Almost no one saw it coming https://econ.st/3CBfh0I
https://twitter.com/theeconomist/status/1461651190144503808
What's the point of having those "experts" influencing public policy, then?
New data suggest that the damage from shutting down schools has been worse than almost anyone expected https://t.co/NFwisYrDsg
https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1545639423890579456
The Economist @TheEconomist
The sharp increase in inflation over the past year has blindsided many economists. Almost no one saw it coming https://econ.st/3CBfh0I
https://twitter.com/theeconomist/status/1461651190144503808
What's the point of having those "experts" influencing public policy, then?
War in Ukraine: Luhansk has fallen - what's to expect?
Austrian colonel Markus Reisner gives an update on the situation in Eastern Ukraine.
Austrian colonel Markus Reisner gives an update on the situation in Eastern Ukraine.
Euro slides to 20-year low against the dollar as recession fears build
The euro fell to its lowest level in two decades on Tuesday as fears of a recession in the euro zone ramped up, with gas prices soaring and the Ukraine war showing no signs of abating.
The euro shed around 1.5% for the session to hit $1.0265 against the dollar, while the dollar index gained 1.29% to 106.49.
Euro zone inflation hit a record 8.6% in June, prompting the European Central Bank to give markets advance notice of its intention to hike interest rates for the first time in 11 years at its July meeting.
However, growing fears of a recession may limit the central bank’s capacity to tighten monetary policy. The July Sentix Economic Index on Monday showed investor morale across the 19-country euro zone has plunged to its lowest level since May 2020, pointing toward an “inevitable” recession.
Record-high inflation in Europe has been abetted by skyrocketing gas prices over recent months.
The euro fell to its lowest level in two decades on Tuesday as fears of a recession in the euro zone ramped up, with gas prices soaring and the Ukraine war showing no signs of abating.
The euro shed around 1.5% for the session to hit $1.0265 against the dollar, while the dollar index gained 1.29% to 106.49.
Euro zone inflation hit a record 8.6% in June, prompting the European Central Bank to give markets advance notice of its intention to hike interest rates for the first time in 11 years at its July meeting.
However, growing fears of a recession may limit the central bank’s capacity to tighten monetary policy. The July Sentix Economic Index on Monday showed investor morale across the 19-country euro zone has plunged to its lowest level since May 2020, pointing toward an “inevitable” recession.
Record-high inflation in Europe has been abetted by skyrocketing gas prices over recent months.
Analysis: Euro's 20-year low leaves ECB facing costly choices
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The euro's tumble towards parity against the dollar has pushed the European Central Bank back against a wall, leaving its policymakers with only painful and economically costly choices.
Letting the currency fall would push up already record high inflation, raising the risk of price growth becoming entrenched at a rate well above the ECB's target of 2%.
But fighting back against 20-year lows for the euro would require more rapid interest rate hikes, which could add to the misery for an economy already facing a possible recession, looming gas shortages and sky-high energy costs that are depleting purchasing power.
The bank has so far played down the issue, arguing that it has no exchange rate target, even if the currency does matter. Even the accounts of its June policy meeting published on Thursday indicated no particular concern. But the market moves are now too big to play down.
"The euro's weakness reinforces the notion that the ECB is behind the curve," Dirk Schumacher, head of European macro research at Natixis CIB, said. "Given how high inflation is, a stronger euro would be quite helpful because it lowers inflation."
The euro is now down 10% against the dollar this year, even if the trade-weighted currency has only dropped 3.3% so far.
This raises the cost of imports, especially for energy and other dollar-denominated commodities, making everything more expensive. Studies frequently cited by the ECB suggest that a 1% depreciation of the exchange rate raises inflation by 0.1% over one year and by up to 0.25% over three years.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The euro's tumble towards parity against the dollar has pushed the European Central Bank back against a wall, leaving its policymakers with only painful and economically costly choices.
Letting the currency fall would push up already record high inflation, raising the risk of price growth becoming entrenched at a rate well above the ECB's target of 2%.
But fighting back against 20-year lows for the euro would require more rapid interest rate hikes, which could add to the misery for an economy already facing a possible recession, looming gas shortages and sky-high energy costs that are depleting purchasing power.
The bank has so far played down the issue, arguing that it has no exchange rate target, even if the currency does matter. Even the accounts of its June policy meeting published on Thursday indicated no particular concern. But the market moves are now too big to play down.
"The euro's weakness reinforces the notion that the ECB is behind the curve," Dirk Schumacher, head of European macro research at Natixis CIB, said. "Given how high inflation is, a stronger euro would be quite helpful because it lowers inflation."
The euro is now down 10% against the dollar this year, even if the trade-weighted currency has only dropped 3.3% so far.
This raises the cost of imports, especially for energy and other dollar-denominated commodities, making everything more expensive. Studies frequently cited by the ECB suggest that a 1% depreciation of the exchange rate raises inflation by 0.1% over one year and by up to 0.25% over three years.
Sex work is rewarding, pupils told by education providers
Providers of sex education in schools are teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal.
Outside organisations teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face, The Times has found.
One organisation encouraged pupils to demonstrate where they like to touch themselves sexually, in a practise criticised as “sex abuse” by campaigners.
Another provider, an LGBT+ youth charity called the Proud Trust, produces resources asking children aged seven to 11 whether they are “planet boy, planet girl, planet non-binary”.
Last night campaigners said that “inclusiveness is overriding child safeguarding” and that the materials were “bordering on illegal”.
This week Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, revealed that she would review sex education being taught in schools after Miriam Cates, an MP, was contacted by a parent whose nine-year-old child came home “shaking” and “white as a sheet because they’d been taught in detail about rape”.
Providers of sex education in schools are teaching children that prostitution is a “rewarding job” and failed to advise a 14-year-old girl having sex with a 16-year-old boy that it was illegal.
Outside organisations teaching children about sex also promote “kinks” such as being locked in a cage, flogged, caned, beaten and slapped in the face, The Times has found.
One organisation encouraged pupils to demonstrate where they like to touch themselves sexually, in a practise criticised as “sex abuse” by campaigners.
Another provider, an LGBT+ youth charity called the Proud Trust, produces resources asking children aged seven to 11 whether they are “planet boy, planet girl, planet non-binary”.
Last night campaigners said that “inclusiveness is overriding child safeguarding” and that the materials were “bordering on illegal”.
This week Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, revealed that she would review sex education being taught in schools after Miriam Cates, an MP, was contacted by a parent whose nine-year-old child came home “shaking” and “white as a sheet because they’d been taught in detail about rape”.
From Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations:
Some Americans have promoted multiculturalism at home; some have promoted universalism abroad; and some have done both. Multiculturalism at home threatens the United States and the West; universalism abroad threatens the West and the world. Both deny the uniqueness of Western culture. The global monoculturalists want to make the world like America. T h e domestic mulitculturalists want to make America like the world. A multicultural America is impossible because a non-Western America is not American. A multicultural world is unavoidable because global empire is impossible. The preservation of the United States and the West requires the renewal of Western identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global multiculturality.
Does the vacuousness of Western universalism and the reality of global cultural diversity lead inevitably and irrevocably to moral and cultural relativism? If universalism legitimates imperialism, does relativism legitimate repression? One again, the answer to these questions is yes and no. Cultures are relative; morality is absolute. Cultures, as Michael Walzer has argued, are "thick"; they prescribe institutions and behavior patterns to guide humans in the paths which are right in a particular society. Above, beyond, and growing out of this maximalist morality, however, is a "thin" minimalist morality that embodies "reiterated features of particular thick or maximal moralities." Minimal moral concepts of truth and justice are found in all thick moralities and cannot be divorced from them. There are also minimal moral "negative injunctions, most likely, rules against murder, deceit, torture, oppression, and tyranny." What people have in common is "more the sense of a common enemy [or evil] than the commitment to a common culture." Human society is "universal because it is human, particular because it is a society." At times we march with others; mostly we march alone. Yet a "thin" minimal morality does derive from the common human condition, and "universal dispositions" are found in all cultures. Instead of promoting the supposedly universal features of one civilization, the requisites for cultural coexistence demand a search for what is common to most civilizations. In a multicivilizational world, the constructive course is to renounce universalism, accept diversity, and seek commonalities.
Some Americans have promoted multiculturalism at home; some have promoted universalism abroad; and some have done both. Multiculturalism at home threatens the United States and the West; universalism abroad threatens the West and the world. Both deny the uniqueness of Western culture. The global monoculturalists want to make the world like America. T h e domestic mulitculturalists want to make America like the world. A multicultural America is impossible because a non-Western America is not American. A multicultural world is unavoidable because global empire is impossible. The preservation of the United States and the West requires the renewal of Western identity. The security of the world requires acceptance of global multiculturality.
Does the vacuousness of Western universalism and the reality of global cultural diversity lead inevitably and irrevocably to moral and cultural relativism? If universalism legitimates imperialism, does relativism legitimate repression? One again, the answer to these questions is yes and no. Cultures are relative; morality is absolute. Cultures, as Michael Walzer has argued, are "thick"; they prescribe institutions and behavior patterns to guide humans in the paths which are right in a particular society. Above, beyond, and growing out of this maximalist morality, however, is a "thin" minimalist morality that embodies "reiterated features of particular thick or maximal moralities." Minimal moral concepts of truth and justice are found in all thick moralities and cannot be divorced from them. There are also minimal moral "negative injunctions, most likely, rules against murder, deceit, torture, oppression, and tyranny." What people have in common is "more the sense of a common enemy [or evil] than the commitment to a common culture." Human society is "universal because it is human, particular because it is a society." At times we march with others; mostly we march alone. Yet a "thin" minimal morality does derive from the common human condition, and "universal dispositions" are found in all cultures. Instead of promoting the supposedly universal features of one civilization, the requisites for cultural coexistence demand a search for what is common to most civilizations. In a multicivilizational world, the constructive course is to renounce universalism, accept diversity, and seek commonalities.
In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong
Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.
The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.
By November 2021, with tea production falling, the government partially lifted its fertilizer ban on key export crops, including tea, rubber, and coconut. Faced with angry protests, soaring inflation, and the collapse of Sri Lanka’s currency, the government finally suspended the policy for several key crops—including tea, rubber, and coconut—last month, although it continues for some others. The government is also offering $200 million to farmers as direct compensation and an additional $149 million in price subsidies to rice farmers who incurred losses. That hardly made up for the damage and suffering the ban produced. Farmers have widely criticized the payments for being massively insufficient and excluding many farmers, most notably tea producers, who offer one of the main sources of employment in rural Sri Lanka. The drop in tea production alone is estimated to result in economic losses of $425 million.
Human costs have been even greater. Prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, the country had proudly achieved upper-middle-income status. Today, half a million people have sunk back into poverty. Soaring inflation and a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut down on food and fuel purchases as prices surge. The country’s economists have called on the government to default on its debt repayments to buy essential supplies for its people.
The farrago of magical thinking, technocratic hubris, ideological delusion, self-dealing, and sheer shortsightedness that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country’s political leadership and advocates of so-called sustainable agriculture: the former for seizing on the organic agriculture pledge as a shortsighted measure to slash fertilizer subsidies and imports and the latter for suggesting that such a transformation of the nation’s agricultural sector could ever possibly succeed.
Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.
The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.
By November 2021, with tea production falling, the government partially lifted its fertilizer ban on key export crops, including tea, rubber, and coconut. Faced with angry protests, soaring inflation, and the collapse of Sri Lanka’s currency, the government finally suspended the policy for several key crops—including tea, rubber, and coconut—last month, although it continues for some others. The government is also offering $200 million to farmers as direct compensation and an additional $149 million in price subsidies to rice farmers who incurred losses. That hardly made up for the damage and suffering the ban produced. Farmers have widely criticized the payments for being massively insufficient and excluding many farmers, most notably tea producers, who offer one of the main sources of employment in rural Sri Lanka. The drop in tea production alone is estimated to result in economic losses of $425 million.
Human costs have been even greater. Prior to the pandemic’s outbreak, the country had proudly achieved upper-middle-income status. Today, half a million people have sunk back into poverty. Soaring inflation and a rapidly depreciating currency have forced Sri Lankans to cut down on food and fuel purchases as prices surge. The country’s economists have called on the government to default on its debt repayments to buy essential supplies for its people.
The farrago of magical thinking, technocratic hubris, ideological delusion, self-dealing, and sheer shortsightedness that produced the crisis in Sri Lanka implicates both the country’s political leadership and advocates of so-called sustainable agriculture: the former for seizing on the organic agriculture pledge as a shortsighted measure to slash fertilizer subsidies and imports and the latter for suggesting that such a transformation of the nation’s agricultural sector could ever possibly succeed.
Ukraine and the Contest of Global Stamina
...Putin is gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West.
President Biden has vowed to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” but neither he nor anyone else can say how long that will be or how much more the United States and its allies can do over that distance, short of direct military intervention. At some point, officials acknowledge, U.S. and European stocks of weapons will run low; while the United States has authorized $54 billion in military and other assistance, no one expects another $54 billion check when that runs out.
...
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy deliberations, are urging the Ukrainians to consolidate their forces at the front. But Ukraine’s leaders want to go further and mass enough personnel to mount a counteroffensive to retake territory, a goal that American officials support in theory even if they are dubious about the Ukrainians’ capacity to dislodge the Russians. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told Group of 7 leaders last week that he wanted the war over by the end of the year. But there are serious doubts in Washington about whether that is possible militarily.
...
As uncertain as the next few months are, the administration argues that it has met or will meet some of the strategic objectives it set in the spring. The first was to make sure that a “vibrant, independent, democratic Ukraine” emerged that would be able to survive over the long term. Officials are convinced that the country will survive — but they also believe that unless Ukraine develops a way to export grain and other agricultural products, its economic future could be in jeopardy.
The second objective was to make sure the invasion was a “strategic failure” for Russia. U.S. officials believe the country is now so isolated, and under such heavy economic sanctions, to put that goal within reach. But the worry is that Mr. Putin will have time to regroup, launch new attacks and seek to carve off another part of Ukraine.
The third objective was to keep the war from escalating into a direct superpower conflict. On that score, U.S. officials said they were succeeding — and that all the evidence showed that Mr. Putin was being careful, at least so far, to avoid military engagement with NATO allies.
The fourth objective was the hardest: to strengthen the international order around Western values. NATO is being strengthened, officials argue, both because it has remained unified and because it is now all but certain to expand to include Finland and Sweden. But so far, Mr. Biden has not talked much about what that new American-centric order might look like.
Some officials, including Mr. Biden, cringed when Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in April that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
The president called Mr. Austin to remonstrate him for the comment, then directed his staff to leak the fact that he had done so. But officials acknowledged that was indeed the long-term strategy, even if Mr. Biden did not want to publicly provoke Mr. Putin into escalation.
...Putin is gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West.
President Biden has vowed to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” but neither he nor anyone else can say how long that will be or how much more the United States and its allies can do over that distance, short of direct military intervention. At some point, officials acknowledge, U.S. and European stocks of weapons will run low; while the United States has authorized $54 billion in military and other assistance, no one expects another $54 billion check when that runs out.
...
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy deliberations, are urging the Ukrainians to consolidate their forces at the front. But Ukraine’s leaders want to go further and mass enough personnel to mount a counteroffensive to retake territory, a goal that American officials support in theory even if they are dubious about the Ukrainians’ capacity to dislodge the Russians. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told Group of 7 leaders last week that he wanted the war over by the end of the year. But there are serious doubts in Washington about whether that is possible militarily.
...
As uncertain as the next few months are, the administration argues that it has met or will meet some of the strategic objectives it set in the spring. The first was to make sure that a “vibrant, independent, democratic Ukraine” emerged that would be able to survive over the long term. Officials are convinced that the country will survive — but they also believe that unless Ukraine develops a way to export grain and other agricultural products, its economic future could be in jeopardy.
The second objective was to make sure the invasion was a “strategic failure” for Russia. U.S. officials believe the country is now so isolated, and under such heavy economic sanctions, to put that goal within reach. But the worry is that Mr. Putin will have time to regroup, launch new attacks and seek to carve off another part of Ukraine.
The third objective was to keep the war from escalating into a direct superpower conflict. On that score, U.S. officials said they were succeeding — and that all the evidence showed that Mr. Putin was being careful, at least so far, to avoid military engagement with NATO allies.
The fourth objective was the hardest: to strengthen the international order around Western values. NATO is being strengthened, officials argue, both because it has remained unified and because it is now all but certain to expand to include Finland and Sweden. But so far, Mr. Biden has not talked much about what that new American-centric order might look like.
Some officials, including Mr. Biden, cringed when Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in April that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
The president called Mr. Austin to remonstrate him for the comment, then directed his staff to leak the fact that he had done so. But officials acknowledged that was indeed the long-term strategy, even if Mr. Biden did not want to publicly provoke Mr. Putin into escalation.
Church of England Says It Doesn’t Know What a Woman Is
...The issue of defining what a woman is emerged in written questions to the General Synod, the Church’s legislative body, in which Adam Kendry, a lay member of the Synod and a representative of the Royal Navy, asked: “What is the Church of England’s definition of a woman?”
In response, Dr. Robert Innes, the Bishop in Europe, said that “there is no official definition”.
The Bishop in Europe, who was also replying in his role as chairman of the Faith and Order Commission, said in his written response: “There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as reflected in the marriage liturgy.
“The LLF project however has begun to explore the marriage complexities associated with gender identity and points to the need for additional care and thought to be given in understanding our commonalities and differences as people made in the image of God.”…
Maya Forstater, executive director of the Sex Matters campaign group, described the Bishop’s answer as “shocking”, saying that “the concepts of male and female did not need to have a formal official definition” because “they are older than human life itself”.
She added: “When the Government redefined women through the Gender Recognition Act, the Church of England could have stuck with its long-established understanding, which makes sense whether your starting point is biology or the Bible.
“It is shocking that they so readily gave up the definition of man or woman for the state to amend, as if this fundamental truth did not matter.”
...The issue of defining what a woman is emerged in written questions to the General Synod, the Church’s legislative body, in which Adam Kendry, a lay member of the Synod and a representative of the Royal Navy, asked: “What is the Church of England’s definition of a woman?”
In response, Dr. Robert Innes, the Bishop in Europe, said that “there is no official definition”.
The Bishop in Europe, who was also replying in his role as chairman of the Faith and Order Commission, said in his written response: “There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as reflected in the marriage liturgy.
“The LLF project however has begun to explore the marriage complexities associated with gender identity and points to the need for additional care and thought to be given in understanding our commonalities and differences as people made in the image of God.”…
Maya Forstater, executive director of the Sex Matters campaign group, described the Bishop’s answer as “shocking”, saying that “the concepts of male and female did not need to have a formal official definition” because “they are older than human life itself”.
She added: “When the Government redefined women through the Gender Recognition Act, the Church of England could have stuck with its long-established understanding, which makes sense whether your starting point is biology or the Bible.
“It is shocking that they so readily gave up the definition of man or woman for the state to amend, as if this fundamental truth did not matter.”
Cheered in London, Boris Johnson's resignation is lamented in Ukraine
...Ukraine's national railway service made a statement Thursday calling the prime minister the "#1 ally of Ukraine and a true friend of the railway." It went a step further, creating a version of its logo adorned with his iconic, blond explosion of hair.
...The Cossack community in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has inducted Johnson into its order, giving him the name "Boris Chuprina," meaning "a long lock of hair." And it commissioned a painting depicting him as the folkloric hero Cossack Mamai, playing a local stringed instrument called a kobza.
...Ukraine's national railway service made a statement Thursday calling the prime minister the "#1 ally of Ukraine and a true friend of the railway." It went a step further, creating a version of its logo adorned with his iconic, blond explosion of hair.
...The Cossack community in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv has inducted Johnson into its order, giving him the name "Boris Chuprina," meaning "a long lock of hair." And it commissioned a painting depicting him as the folkloric hero Cossack Mamai, playing a local stringed instrument called a kobza.
Biden’s approval rating craters to 30% after brutal week: poll
How low can he go?
President Biden’s approval rating has crashed to just 30%, its lowest mark yet, in a new national poll.
The Civiqs Poll’s daily tracking survey of registered voters found less than a third of Americans giving the thumbs-up to Biden’s on-the-job performance — and a whopping 57% disapproving.
“Joe Biden’s presidency is sinking from a thousand holes in the boat,” said GOP consultant Ryan Girdusky.
The poll, released Friday, found Biden deep underwater with voters in every age bracket, every educational level, and both genders. Every one of those groups showed approval rates under 40%, with the youngest voters, age 18 to 34, among the most dissatisfied at a dismal 21%.
In only two states out of 50, deep-blue Hawaii and Vermont, do Biden’s supporters outnumber his detractors.
Democrats and black voters are the two groups still in the president’s corner, the survey found — and not by much.
How low can he go?
President Biden’s approval rating has crashed to just 30%, its lowest mark yet, in a new national poll.
The Civiqs Poll’s daily tracking survey of registered voters found less than a third of Americans giving the thumbs-up to Biden’s on-the-job performance — and a whopping 57% disapproving.
“Joe Biden’s presidency is sinking from a thousand holes in the boat,” said GOP consultant Ryan Girdusky.
The poll, released Friday, found Biden deep underwater with voters in every age bracket, every educational level, and both genders. Every one of those groups showed approval rates under 40%, with the youngest voters, age 18 to 34, among the most dissatisfied at a dismal 21%.
In only two states out of 50, deep-blue Hawaii and Vermont, do Biden’s supporters outnumber his detractors.
Democrats and black voters are the two groups still in the president’s corner, the survey found — and not by much.
G20: difficult times for multilateralism
10.07.2022 Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission
...I have just returned from two intense days of “diplomatic speed-dating” around the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Indonesia. One of the advantages of such meetings is that one can meet many colleagues in a short period of time. So apart from participating at the plenary sessions, I also met my counterparts from China, India, and several other Latin American, Asian and African countries.
The main takeaway is that in abstract terms everybody agrees on the need for multilateralism and defending principles such as territorial sovereignty and the non-use of force. However, this often looks different when it must become concrete, such as on the fallout from Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. The hard truth is that national interests often outweigh general commitments to bigger ideals.
...
In principle, everyone condemns the attack on a country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. But when it comes to naming the aggressor and stating who is responsible for the consequences, many are reticent for different reasons. Some are more concerned about the consequences of the war for themselves, rather than about who is responsible for these difficulties and how to end this war; others complain about “double standards” or simply want to preserve their good bilateral relationship with Russia. And many remain vague and not wanting to take sides, because this would jeopardise their geopolitical interests.
The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning. ...
自由国际秩序已经无法带动国际潮流，第二世界强大到了可以无视第一世界训令的程度。这也是亨廷顿在《文明的冲突》里预言过的：随着非西方势力的壮大，西方最终要承认自己缔造的秩序以及其中体现的价值无法普世化。
10.07.2022 Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission
...I have just returned from two intense days of “diplomatic speed-dating” around the G20 Foreign Ministers Meeting in Indonesia. One of the advantages of such meetings is that one can meet many colleagues in a short period of time. So apart from participating at the plenary sessions, I also met my counterparts from China, India, and several other Latin American, Asian and African countries.
The main takeaway is that in abstract terms everybody agrees on the need for multilateralism and defending principles such as territorial sovereignty and the non-use of force. However, this often looks different when it must become concrete, such as on the fallout from Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. The hard truth is that national interests often outweigh general commitments to bigger ideals.
...
In principle, everyone condemns the attack on a country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. But when it comes to naming the aggressor and stating who is responsible for the consequences, many are reticent for different reasons. Some are more concerned about the consequences of the war for themselves, rather than about who is responsible for these difficulties and how to end this war; others complain about “double standards” or simply want to preserve their good bilateral relationship with Russia. And many remain vague and not wanting to take sides, because this would jeopardise their geopolitical interests.
The global battle of narratives is in full swing and, for now, we are not winning. ...
自由国际秩序已经无法带动国际潮流，第二世界强大到了可以无视第一世界训令的程度。这也是亨廷顿在《文明的冲突》里预言过的：随着非西方势力的壮大，西方最终要承认自己缔造的秩序以及其中体现的价值无法普世化。
最 高 批 示
https://pincong.rocks/article/item_id-793003
https://pincong.rocks/article/item_id-793003
Pettiness是很多恶行的根源。这点是我看Ron Howard的Hillbilly Elegy想到的。
Japan's ruling party secures strong win after Abe assassination
Japan's ruling party and partners won enough votes to form a supermajority in an upper house election held just days after the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, local media said Monday.
The ex-premier's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito strengthened their hold by winning more than 75 of the 125 upper house seats up for grabs, according to national news outlets.
The parties are part of what is now a two-thirds supermajority willing to amend the country's pacifist constitution, thereby strengthening its military role on the global stage -- a longtime Abe goal.
Japan's ruling party and partners won enough votes to form a supermajority in an upper house election held just days after the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, local media said Monday.
The ex-premier's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner Komeito strengthened their hold by winning more than 75 of the 125 upper house seats up for grabs, according to national news outlets.
The parties are part of what is now a two-thirds supermajority willing to amend the country's pacifist constitution, thereby strengthening its military role on the global stage -- a longtime Abe goal.
Mary Vought @MaryVought
The head of the teachers union, who called for divisive programs like CRT to be a part of our nation's curriculum, is now upset that people are upset about it.
https://twitter.com/MaryVought/status/1546517980418383873
The head of the teachers union, who called for divisive programs like CRT to be a part of our nation's curriculum, is now upset that people are upset about it.
Randi Weingarten @rweingarten
Nearly 9 out of 10 respondents say schools have become too politicized, following a year of political attacks on teachers waged by politicians stoking culture wars and banning books for political gain.
https://t.co/IJU8p8tjVO
https://twitter.com/MaryVought/status/1546517980418383873
>>最 高 批 示https://pincong.rocks/article/item_id-79300...
是不是又该引用一下Arendt的 'banality of evil' 呢?
但抽象的东西，若用来论断现实，往往会让我想起看到共产主义开山祖师在断言「资本主义必死于我手」的 de javu 。
遗憾的是，这个世界远比那种人倾其一生所能想象的还要残酷，因为现实天天在告诉活在现实中的人，只要不信那些现实中不存在的东西，那么「唯有力量才是正义」。而只选择做「power」这个梦的无产阶级永远不会「powerful」，无论再唱多少次「咱们工人有力量」。
如果嫌「工人」这个词实在是不够进步，那么可以换成诸如「女权、LGBT、BLM、ANTIFA、绿色环保、whitewashing、合成肉、人权、etc.」。
-----------------------------
其实我现在觉得，真正以自由为价值的话，那么第一行动原则应该是「根治自己想要为他人负责的冲动型欲望」。无论什么借口，无论什么理由，无论什么 peer pressure，或是「社区的道德压力」。
看看美国的当今智力圈儿，Libertarian 固然只能是永远的少数，但其主张的价值其实是无需他们自己去找证明的，每天一睁眼就看到的现实已经充分代劳。现在libertarian 圈子内的「主流」们，如 cato institute，倒是有些过于执着了。
那大概也是「想要为他人负责」的欲望之变种，亦是一种只见眼前，不看未来的精神状态。这种冲动和欲望，来自人的思考之前的东西，是作为认知、理解、判断的世界观基石的一部分，是它们主宰一个人的思考。这个东西想要改变可不容易。
现实和历史都在证明：近乎不可能。
但不管怎么样，价值的认知和接受，不可能由他人的言词所主宰，除非要劝说的目标就像如今「中国人」一样，把「听话」当作真正的最高道德指南。
去「为他人负责」其实是既不能保住别人的自由，也无法促进自己的自由的最差选择。简单地「不去管」，虽说不一定能促进自己的自由，起码可以确保别人的自由不会毁于己手，而且能确保自己往「更好」的可能性依然存在。
起码就现在而言，无论在哪一国，为自己的「自由」做做准备多好？
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So why not?
Let them be. 要负责的对象，首先是自己。
这也算是一次 Leap of Faith，即相信世界不会就此毁灭，不止地球照样转，而且人类的文明和社会还将延续。真正跨出那一步，那种冲动就会渐渐消失了。但仅靠「想」是做不到的。
>>Mary Vought @MaryVoughtThe head of the teachers un...
To me, self-claimed rationality gone crazy is always a ritual of true magic.
Always unsettled, bewildered, and re-enchanted.
Ontario woman enduring effects of long COVID begins process for medically assisted death
Contracting COVID-19 radically changed Tracey Thompson’s life. It’s been more than two years since the initial infection, but her symptoms still dictate her days, leaving her with heavy-weighted fatigue, robbing her of energy and her ability to work.
Thompson, a Toronto resident in her 50s, says the enduring illness and lack of substantive financial support has led her to begin the process of applying for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), a procedure that first became legal in Canada in 2016.
“[MAiD] is exclusively a financial consideration,” she told CTV News Toronto.
...
A year after Thompson became ill, MAiD legislation was revised in Canada. Before, only those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable — otherwise known as Track One patients — were eligible to apply for MAiD. For instance, patients with terminal illnesses.
The legislation amended in March 2021 has seen the creation of a Track Two patient. Now, a Canadian enduring an “intolerable” and “irreversible” illness, disease or disability who may not be near the natural end of their lives can qualify for assisted death as well.
The most recent Health Canada data shows that 7,595 Canadians chose medically assisted deaths in 2020 – accounting for 2.5 per cent of the country’s deaths. This marks a more than 34 per cent increase over the previous year.
...
While Thompson is currently eligible for MAiD, there is a new cohort of Canadians who will be able to apply in a matter of months.
Beginning on March 17, 2023, applicants with a mental illness as their sole underlying medical condition will qualify for MAiD in Canada.
...
“One of the things that becomes very difficult to tease out is when suffering is related to the fact people don't have housing or food and how that is so difficult to separate from suffering related to a medical condition,” he said.
“My worry is that we are creating a situation where it is easier for people to choose death by MAiD than to choose to live well, because society is not offering them adequate access to money, housing, food security and social support,” Dosani added.
...
“The government as a body is telling people that they're willing to assist them to death because they don't have enough money to live with dignity. That is a pretty clear signal to me that, unless you are able-bodied enough or able-minded enough to work to produce profit, then you don't have any place here,” Thompson said.
“That seems really clear to me.”
Contracting COVID-19 radically changed Tracey Thompson’s life. It’s been more than two years since the initial infection, but her symptoms still dictate her days, leaving her with heavy-weighted fatigue, robbing her of energy and her ability to work.
Thompson, a Toronto resident in her 50s, says the enduring illness and lack of substantive financial support has led her to begin the process of applying for Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), a procedure that first became legal in Canada in 2016.
“[MAiD] is exclusively a financial consideration,” she told CTV News Toronto.
...
A year after Thompson became ill, MAiD legislation was revised in Canada. Before, only those whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable — otherwise known as Track One patients — were eligible to apply for MAiD. For instance, patients with terminal illnesses.
The legislation amended in March 2021 has seen the creation of a Track Two patient. Now, a Canadian enduring an “intolerable” and “irreversible” illness, disease or disability who may not be near the natural end of their lives can qualify for assisted death as well.
The most recent Health Canada data shows that 7,595 Canadians chose medically assisted deaths in 2020 – accounting for 2.5 per cent of the country’s deaths. This marks a more than 34 per cent increase over the previous year.
...
While Thompson is currently eligible for MAiD, there is a new cohort of Canadians who will be able to apply in a matter of months.
Beginning on March 17, 2023, applicants with a mental illness as their sole underlying medical condition will qualify for MAiD in Canada.
...
“One of the things that becomes very difficult to tease out is when suffering is related to the fact people don't have housing or food and how that is so difficult to separate from suffering related to a medical condition,” he said.
“My worry is that we are creating a situation where it is easier for people to choose death by MAiD than to choose to live well, because society is not offering them adequate access to money, housing, food security and social support,” Dosani added.
...
“The government as a body is telling people that they're willing to assist them to death because they don't have enough money to live with dignity. That is a pretty clear signal to me that, unless you are able-bodied enough or able-minded enough to work to produce profit, then you don't have any place here,” Thompson said.
“That seems really clear to me.”
Congress poised to shoot down Biden’s nuclear rollback
Progressives were already disappointed with President Joe Biden’s plans for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Now they’re poised to lose one of the few things about the White House’s blueprint that they liked.
In recent weeks, Democrats have joined Republicans in adding money back into the Pentagon budget to continue developing a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile that former President Donald Trump initiated in 2018. Biden proposed canceling the missile, which arms control advocates say is redundant, costly and potentially destabilizing.
Yet testimony from top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, in support of the missile prompted other Democrats to join Republicans in rebuking Biden’s plans.
Congress Rejects Biden’s Defense Budget
Congress has been working on next year’s defense budget, and for the second year in a row members of both parties have rejected President Biden’s proposal as insufficient. This is a welcome development, though Washington is only starting to address the threats the U.S. faces.
The Senate Armed Services Committee recently passed a national defense authorization for 2023 that would provide the Pentagon $817 billion, up from the roughly $773 billion the Biden Administration requested, about a $45 billion difference. The House amended its initial draft in committee to add $37 billion to President Biden’s request. These increases are aimed in part at mitigating inflation, which is crushing the Pentagon’s buying power, especially on fuel and housing.
...
...The reality is that even the $45 billion plus-up won’t change the U.S. trajectory of managed military decline. Defense spending will stay at roughly 3% of the economy, down from between 5% and 6% in the 1980s when the U.S. was showing the Soviet Union it couldn’t win the Cold War.
But at least Congress has stepped in to prevent the Biden Administration from bleeding the U.S. military amid one of the most volatile world moments in 80 years.
Progressives were already disappointed with President Joe Biden’s plans for the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Now they’re poised to lose one of the few things about the White House’s blueprint that they liked.
In recent weeks, Democrats have joined Republicans in adding money back into the Pentagon budget to continue developing a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile that former President Donald Trump initiated in 2018. Biden proposed canceling the missile, which arms control advocates say is redundant, costly and potentially destabilizing.
Yet testimony from top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, in support of the missile prompted other Democrats to join Republicans in rebuking Biden’s plans.
Congress Rejects Biden’s Defense Budget
Congress has been working on next year’s defense budget, and for the second year in a row members of both parties have rejected President Biden’s proposal as insufficient. This is a welcome development, though Washington is only starting to address the threats the U.S. faces.
The Senate Armed Services Committee recently passed a national defense authorization for 2023 that would provide the Pentagon $817 billion, up from the roughly $773 billion the Biden Administration requested, about a $45 billion difference. The House amended its initial draft in committee to add $37 billion to President Biden’s request. These increases are aimed in part at mitigating inflation, which is crushing the Pentagon’s buying power, especially on fuel and housing.
...
...The reality is that even the $45 billion plus-up won’t change the U.S. trajectory of managed military decline. Defense spending will stay at roughly 3% of the economy, down from between 5% and 6% in the 1980s when the U.S. was showing the Soviet Union it couldn’t win the Cold War.
But at least Congress has stepped in to prevent the Biden Administration from bleeding the U.S. military amid one of the most volatile world moments in 80 years.
The Anti-Woke Girondist's Lament
...Murray’s avoidance of the actual diagnosis prevents him from offering far more compelling, if personally discomfiting, reasons for the intensity and success of those in the woke movement. I suggest that the reasons are two-fold.
First, among African-Americans whose forbears fought for equal status as citizens and fellow humans for centuries in the United States, and who were often frustrated by the painstaking pace of improvement, many must have marveled at the extraordinarily rapid success of the homosexual movement in attaining its ends. While “black and brown” people are now included in the ever-expanding colors of the rainbow flag, the daily barrage of corporate, university, and government promotion of Pride must have been instructive: The route to equality and even celebration within the liberal order was an assertion of an identity whose inclusion was premised upon the overthrow of fundamental traditions.
The path to acceptance in a revolutionary order, in other words, is to be ever-more revolutionary. The radicalness of racial wokeness is merely an extension of the tactics embraced in the first instance by gay activists, who argued that heterosexual marriage was an arbitrary arrangement imposed by a bigoted, patriarchal, backward society. It was destined to win when people of all sides began calling conjugal marriage “traditional marriage.” To acknowledge anything as “traditional” in a liberal order is to consign it to the dustbin of arbitrary limitations. Ironically, while gay activists piggybacked their demands for equality on the tactics and achievements of the civil-rights movement, they actually radicalized those lessons by embedding them in claims about identity that required the revolutionary transformation of a foundation of the West: namely, conjugal marriage based in natural law. Many younger black activists paid close attention, and are now too radical for Murray the Girondist.
Second, elite institutions of the liberal West have proved particularly susceptible to the demands of wokeness. To a degree, this is doubtless due to recognition of ongoing injustices and inequality, a point Murray generally elides. But the rapid and willing embrace of demands for “diversity, inclusion, and equity” reflects a deeper dynamic at play: its substitution for the left’s historic concern with class antagonism and structural economic inequality. As the left has become the party of a wealthy, educated professional class, identity politics has served an important political purpose: protection of the class interests of America’s elites. The more elite the institution, the more eagerly it has embraced woke ideology in the name of equality. Thus, institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton can tout their egalitarian credentials, while maintaining their central role in sifting economic winners from losers—and leaving untouched the global social and economic ecology that elevates a very few at the decided expense of the many.
At the same time, so-called conservatives—those who are actually better characterized as classical liberals—are also well-served by focusing their attention, and the attention of their audiences, on the outrages of the woke. Such efforts by conservative liberals are similarly designed to distract any notice of their own advantages in the neoliberal economic order, fostering outrage against the progressive woke among the hoi polloi and thus holding at bay any authentic populist inroads on the right. It turns out Murray and Kendi are burning two sides of the same candle, propping up a revolutionary regime by ensuring that everyone remains obsessed by the latest identity outrage.
...Murray’s avoidance of the actual diagnosis prevents him from offering far more compelling, if personally discomfiting, reasons for the intensity and success of those in the woke movement. I suggest that the reasons are two-fold.
First, among African-Americans whose forbears fought for equal status as citizens and fellow humans for centuries in the United States, and who were often frustrated by the painstaking pace of improvement, many must have marveled at the extraordinarily rapid success of the homosexual movement in attaining its ends. While “black and brown” people are now included in the ever-expanding colors of the rainbow flag, the daily barrage of corporate, university, and government promotion of Pride must have been instructive: The route to equality and even celebration within the liberal order was an assertion of an identity whose inclusion was premised upon the overthrow of fundamental traditions.
The path to acceptance in a revolutionary order, in other words, is to be ever-more revolutionary. The radicalness of racial wokeness is merely an extension of the tactics embraced in the first instance by gay activists, who argued that heterosexual marriage was an arbitrary arrangement imposed by a bigoted, patriarchal, backward society. It was destined to win when people of all sides began calling conjugal marriage “traditional marriage.” To acknowledge anything as “traditional” in a liberal order is to consign it to the dustbin of arbitrary limitations. Ironically, while gay activists piggybacked their demands for equality on the tactics and achievements of the civil-rights movement, they actually radicalized those lessons by embedding them in claims about identity that required the revolutionary transformation of a foundation of the West: namely, conjugal marriage based in natural law. Many younger black activists paid close attention, and are now too radical for Murray the Girondist.
Second, elite institutions of the liberal West have proved particularly susceptible to the demands of wokeness. To a degree, this is doubtless due to recognition of ongoing injustices and inequality, a point Murray generally elides. But the rapid and willing embrace of demands for “diversity, inclusion, and equity” reflects a deeper dynamic at play: its substitution for the left’s historic concern with class antagonism and structural economic inequality. As the left has become the party of a wealthy, educated professional class, identity politics has served an important political purpose: protection of the class interests of America’s elites. The more elite the institution, the more eagerly it has embraced woke ideology in the name of equality. Thus, institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton can tout their egalitarian credentials, while maintaining their central role in sifting economic winners from losers—and leaving untouched the global social and economic ecology that elevates a very few at the decided expense of the many.
At the same time, so-called conservatives—those who are actually better characterized as classical liberals—are also well-served by focusing their attention, and the attention of their audiences, on the outrages of the woke. Such efforts by conservative liberals are similarly designed to distract any notice of their own advantages in the neoliberal economic order, fostering outrage against the progressive woke among the hoi polloi and thus holding at bay any authentic populist inroads on the right. It turns out Murray and Kendi are burning two sides of the same candle, propping up a revolutionary regime by ensuring that everyone remains obsessed by the latest identity outrage.
Concerns grow that India is ‘back door’ into Europe for Russian oil
...Now, concerns are growing that India is being used as a potential back door into Europe for Russian oil supplies,given the surge in imports.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, India’s imports of Russian oil were negligible due to high freight costs. But recently, imports of Russian oil to India have increased. Vadinar’s owner, Nayara, purchased Russian oil in March – just before international restrictions on its exports were introduced – after a gap of a year, buying about 1.8m barrels from Trafigura, Reuters reported.
The volumes that India has been buying and exporting, however, suggest that some of the refined Russian crude may ultimately be used in Europe’s filling stations. It is not clear where the Russian crude brought into Vadinar on the SCF Primorye will be used. Vadinar’s owner’s declined to comment on the shipment or whether it was shipping Russian oil to Europe.
...
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat received 27% of its oil from Russia in May, up from 5% in April. The centre said about 20% of exported cargoes from Jamnagar left for the Suez canal, indicating that they were heading to Europe or the US. Shipments were made to France, Italy and the UK. However, there is no evidence that these shipments included Russian oil.
...Now, concerns are growing that India is being used as a potential back door into Europe for Russian oil supplies,given the surge in imports.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, India’s imports of Russian oil were negligible due to high freight costs. But recently, imports of Russian oil to India have increased. Vadinar’s owner, Nayara, purchased Russian oil in March – just before international restrictions on its exports were introduced – after a gap of a year, buying about 1.8m barrels from Trafigura, Reuters reported.
The volumes that India has been buying and exporting, however, suggest that some of the refined Russian crude may ultimately be used in Europe’s filling stations. It is not clear where the Russian crude brought into Vadinar on the SCF Primorye will be used. Vadinar’s owner’s declined to comment on the shipment or whether it was shipping Russian oil to Europe.
...
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar refinery in Gujarat received 27% of its oil from Russia in May, up from 5% in April. The centre said about 20% of exported cargoes from Jamnagar left for the Suez canal, indicating that they were heading to Europe or the US. Shipments were made to France, Italy and the UK. However, there is no evidence that these shipments included Russian oil.
>>Contracting COVID-19 radically changed Tracey Thom...
Trudeau: "Bad at naming hurts our progress, it should be given a better name...oh I got it! How 'bout iMAD? Everybody surely can think of something good from it."
-------------------------
乘着理性这班车直达疯狂的主要轨道之一，就是「有权可以任性」。
如果白人真像左派说的那样满怀种族主义情绪，不知多少巴基斯坦人此刻已经暴尸英国街头了：
1,000 children groomed but unease about race meant Telford sexual exploitation ignored, inquiry finds
More than 1,000 children have been groomed in Telford, with obvious child sexual exploitation ignored by the authorities, an independent inquiry has found.
Key agencies dismissed child exploitation as "child prostitution" and blamed children, not the perpetrators.
The report has also concluded that exploitation was not investigated because of nervousness about race.
Teachers and youth workers were discouraged from reporting child exploitation and offenders were emboldened, with exploitation continuing for years.
...
The report considered evidence from survivors who believe West Mercia Police failed to take proper action in some investigations in order to avoid being labelled racist, or because the involvement of Asian men meant that to investigate would potentially attract negative headlines.
It concludes that in the 1990s and early 2000s - and even beyond - the force allowed a nervousness about race to become prevalent among officers, and that this led to a reluctance to police parts of Wellington, in particular.
1,000 children groomed but unease about race meant Telford sexual exploitation ignored, inquiry finds
More than 1,000 children have been groomed in Telford, with obvious child sexual exploitation ignored by the authorities, an independent inquiry has found.
Key agencies dismissed child exploitation as "child prostitution" and blamed children, not the perpetrators.
The report has also concluded that exploitation was not investigated because of nervousness about race.
Teachers and youth workers were discouraged from reporting child exploitation and offenders were emboldened, with exploitation continuing for years.
...
The report considered evidence from survivors who believe West Mercia Police failed to take proper action in some investigations in order to avoid being labelled racist, or because the involvement of Asian men meant that to investigate would potentially attract negative headlines.
It concludes that in the 1990s and early 2000s - and even beyond - the force allowed a nervousness about race to become prevalent among officers, and that this led to a reluctance to police parts of Wellington, in particular.
“野鸡乱叫，地震要到”:
Watch Democrats’ Abortion Witness Insist Men Can Get Pregnant
UC Berkeley Law professor Khiara Bridges unrelentingly insisted that men can become pregnant and that questioning that statement is a direct cause of trans suicide in Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on the legal implications of reversing Roe v. Wade.
In a bizarre exchange, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., used his questioning time to ask whether, when Bridges used the terminology “people with the capacity for pregnancy,” she meant “women.”
“Many women, cis women have the capacity for pregnancy, many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy,” Bridges replied.
“So this [abortion] isn’t really a women’s rights issue…?” Hawley asked. Unable to directly answer the senator’s question without either invalidating women or the trans agenda, Bridges said women and “other groups” were not “mutually exclusive” before she pivoted and accused him of introducing violence by inquiring about her logic.
“I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic,” Bridges said. “It opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.”
“Wow, you’re saying that I’m opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies?” Hawley replied.
Bridges continued to dodge Hawley’s questions by bringing up an arbitrary statistic on trans suicide rates, implying that any questions or discussion about whether men can bear children directly contribute to those suicides.
Watch Democrats’ Abortion Witness Insist Men Can Get Pregnant
UC Berkeley Law professor Khiara Bridges unrelentingly insisted that men can become pregnant and that questioning that statement is a direct cause of trans suicide in Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on the legal implications of reversing Roe v. Wade.
In a bizarre exchange, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., used his questioning time to ask whether, when Bridges used the terminology “people with the capacity for pregnancy,” she meant “women.”
“Many women, cis women have the capacity for pregnancy, many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as nonbinary people who are capable of pregnancy,” Bridges replied.
“So this [abortion] isn’t really a women’s rights issue…?” Hawley asked. Unable to directly answer the senator’s question without either invalidating women or the trans agenda, Bridges said women and “other groups” were not “mutually exclusive” before she pivoted and accused him of introducing violence by inquiring about her logic.
“I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic,” Bridges said. “It opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing them.”
“Wow, you’re saying that I’m opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who can have pregnancies?” Hawley replied.
Bridges continued to dodge Hawley’s questions by bringing up an arbitrary statistic on trans suicide rates, implying that any questions or discussion about whether men can bear children directly contribute to those suicides.
Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are less confident in major U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any. The largest declines in confidence are 11 percentage points for the Supreme Court -- as reported in late June before the court issued controversial rulings on gun laws and abortion -- and 15 points for the presidency, matching the 15-point drop in President Joe Biden's job approval rating since the last confidence survey in June 2021.
...
This year's poll marks new lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government -- the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency (23%) and Congress. Five other institutions are at their lowest points in at least three decades of measurement, including the church or organized religion (31%), newspapers (16%), the criminal justice system (14%), big business (14%) and the police.
Confidence in large technology companies is also at a low point (26%) but has only been measured the past three years.
Record-Low Confidence Across All Institutions
Gallup summarizes Americans' overall confidence in institutions by taking an average of the ratings of the 14 institutions it measures consistently each year -- all but small business and large technology companies. This year's 27% average of U.S. adults expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in those 14 institutions is three points below the prior low from 2014.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are less confident in major U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any. The largest declines in confidence are 11 percentage points for the Supreme Court -- as reported in late June before the court issued controversial rulings on gun laws and abortion -- and 15 points for the presidency, matching the 15-point drop in President Joe Biden's job approval rating since the last confidence survey in June 2021.
...
This year's poll marks new lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government -- the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency (23%) and Congress. Five other institutions are at their lowest points in at least three decades of measurement, including the church or organized religion (31%), newspapers (16%), the criminal justice system (14%), big business (14%) and the police.
Confidence in large technology companies is also at a low point (26%) but has only been measured the past three years.
Record-Low Confidence Across All Institutions
Gallup summarizes Americans' overall confidence in institutions by taking an average of the ratings of the 14 institutions it measures consistently each year -- all but small business and large technology companies. This year's 27% average of U.S. adults expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in those 14 institutions is three points below the prior low from 2014.
American Factories Are Making Stuff Again as CEOs Take Production Out of China
There has been a sense in financial circles that the fever among American executives to shorten supply lines and bring production back home would prove short-lived. As soon as the pandemic started to fade, so too would the fad, the thinking went.
And yet, two years in, not only is the trend still alive, it appears to be rapidly accelerating.
Rattled by the most recent wave of strict Covid lockdowns in China, the long-time manufacturing hub of choice for multinationals, CEOs have been highlighting plans to relocate production -- using the buzzwords onshoring, reshoring or nearshoring -- at a greater clip this year than they even did in the first six months of the pandemic, according to a review of earnings call and conference presentations transcribed by Bloomberg. (Compared to pre-pandemic periods, these references are up over 1,000%.)
More importantly, there are concrete signs that many of them are acting on these plans.
...
This is, of course, a nascent trend. And so many manufacturing jobs were lost here over so many decades -- about 8 million from peak to trough -- that almost no one would argue that the current trend marks a return to those halcyon times. The rise of automation, which has eliminated many low-skilled, low-paid jobs, means US factories today require a much smaller group of workers.
What’s more, the soaring US dollar threatens to curtail the whole thing just as it’s beginning. As the dollar surges against the yuan, yen, pound and euro, it becomes costlier to make goods in the US rather than in those countries.
...
“We wanted to be closer to our customers in the southeast,” said Chief Operations Officer Tom Pettit. Low shipping costs and quick delivery times are proving a hit with clients and paving the way for the company to keep growing, he said. Opened just a year ago, expansion work on the plant is already underway.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also got Pettit’s attention.
Not just because the war further snarled global trade and added to the surge in freight costs but because it reminded him that China could try something similar in Taiwan. And in the same way that business ended for most Western companies in Russia, so too it could end in China. Suddenly, that benign geopolitical backdrop that had helped encourage so many executives to globalize their operations over the past few decades was vanishing. And this, Pettit said, added to his sense of urgency to change things up.
“President Xi Jinping has not been shy about wanting to reunify China and Taiwan,” Pettit said. “We still think China is incredibly competitive. However, we need to have dual sources outside of China.”
There has been a sense in financial circles that the fever among American executives to shorten supply lines and bring production back home would prove short-lived. As soon as the pandemic started to fade, so too would the fad, the thinking went.
And yet, two years in, not only is the trend still alive, it appears to be rapidly accelerating.
Rattled by the most recent wave of strict Covid lockdowns in China, the long-time manufacturing hub of choice for multinationals, CEOs have been highlighting plans to relocate production -- using the buzzwords onshoring, reshoring or nearshoring -- at a greater clip this year than they even did in the first six months of the pandemic, according to a review of earnings call and conference presentations transcribed by Bloomberg. (Compared to pre-pandemic periods, these references are up over 1,000%.)
More importantly, there are concrete signs that many of them are acting on these plans.
...
This is, of course, a nascent trend. And so many manufacturing jobs were lost here over so many decades -- about 8 million from peak to trough -- that almost no one would argue that the current trend marks a return to those halcyon times. The rise of automation, which has eliminated many low-skilled, low-paid jobs, means US factories today require a much smaller group of workers.
What’s more, the soaring US dollar threatens to curtail the whole thing just as it’s beginning. As the dollar surges against the yuan, yen, pound and euro, it becomes costlier to make goods in the US rather than in those countries.
...
“We wanted to be closer to our customers in the southeast,” said Chief Operations Officer Tom Pettit. Low shipping costs and quick delivery times are proving a hit with clients and paving the way for the company to keep growing, he said. Opened just a year ago, expansion work on the plant is already underway.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also got Pettit’s attention.
Not just because the war further snarled global trade and added to the surge in freight costs but because it reminded him that China could try something similar in Taiwan. And in the same way that business ended for most Western companies in Russia, so too it could end in China. Suddenly, that benign geopolitical backdrop that had helped encourage so many executives to globalize their operations over the past few decades was vanishing. And this, Pettit said, added to his sense of urgency to change things up.
“President Xi Jinping has not been shy about wanting to reunify China and Taiwan,” Pettit said. “We still think China is incredibly competitive. However, we need to have dual sources outside of China.”
Texas lawmaker plans to introduce legislation banning minors from social media
State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) tweeted Tuesday that he plans to file a bill during the next legislative session that would aim to ban minors from using social media, raising the minimum age for using the platforms from 13 to 18. "It's long past time to recognize the incredible harm social media is doing to the mental health of young Texans," Patterson tweeted. "Next session, we put an end to it."
...
In an emailed statement, Patterson said that over the years, Texas has taken steps to improve the physical health and safety of young people, and pointed to the state passing laws to prevent minors from purchasing firearms, alcohol and tobacco, as well as requiring car seats, booster seats and seat belts.
"It’s past time we treat mental health as seriously as physical health," Patterson said in an emailed statement Thursday. "From the conversations I’ve had with school officials in recent weeks, I’ve come to better understand the mental health threat social media imposes on our youth. I look forward to having the open conversation with my constituents and my colleagues next session about raising the minimum age for social media from 13 years old to 18 years old."
Last year, the state legislature passed a law that aimed to stop social media platforms from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The law was heralded by conservatives, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Texas law in May.
State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) tweeted Tuesday that he plans to file a bill during the next legislative session that would aim to ban minors from using social media, raising the minimum age for using the platforms from 13 to 18. "It's long past time to recognize the incredible harm social media is doing to the mental health of young Texans," Patterson tweeted. "Next session, we put an end to it."
...
In an emailed statement, Patterson said that over the years, Texas has taken steps to improve the physical health and safety of young people, and pointed to the state passing laws to prevent minors from purchasing firearms, alcohol and tobacco, as well as requiring car seats, booster seats and seat belts.
"It’s past time we treat mental health as seriously as physical health," Patterson said in an emailed statement Thursday. "From the conversations I’ve had with school officials in recent weeks, I’ve come to better understand the mental health threat social media imposes on our youth. I look forward to having the open conversation with my constituents and my colleagues next session about raising the minimum age for social media from 13 years old to 18 years old."
Last year, the state legislature passed a law that aimed to stop social media platforms from censoring users based on their viewpoints. The law was heralded by conservatives, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Texas law in May.
Military briefing: is the west running out of ammunition to supply Ukraine?
...The Ukraine war has exposed the skimpiness of western defence stockpiles — especially of unglamorous but crucial supplies such as artillery shells that have been the mainstay of fighting. Lack of production capacity, labour shortages and supply chain snafus — especially computer chips — mean long lead times to replenish them.
The shortages, defence officials and analysts say, reveal the west’s complacency about potential threats since the end of the cold war, now shown up by the desire to shore up Ukraine with military support. Fetishes for high-tech weaponry and lean manufacturing have obscured the importance of maintaining stockpiles of basic kit, they add.
“Ukraine has been a lesson in how war is still often won through the classic elements of artillery, ground troops and occupation,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato director of policy planning, now an associate fellow at Chatham House, a UK think-tank. “The military balance which has swung from the old to the new needs to shift back.”
...
...a large part of that Nato spending has been on advanced systems, such as fighter jets, that have not been deployed by the west in this conflict. Much of western defence over the past 20 years has been geared towards fighting counter-insurgencies in the Middle East rather than being ready for heavyweight tank and artillery battles such as those in Ukraine.
Compounding the supply problems has been a decades-long emphasis on lean manufacturing, financial efficiency and industrial consolidation, which has worked against military planners keen to maintain costly weapons inventories.
In the UK, low stockpiles meant it recently had to buy howitzers from a third party to send to Ukraine, reportedly a private Belgian dealer. In the US, the Pentagon works with just five main defence contractors; in the 1990s, the number was 51.
“The received wisdom has long been that the west will never fight an industrial war again,” said one western defence adviser. “As a result, almost nobody has kept up capacity to ramp up national production of key equipment.”
...The Ukraine war has exposed the skimpiness of western defence stockpiles — especially of unglamorous but crucial supplies such as artillery shells that have been the mainstay of fighting. Lack of production capacity, labour shortages and supply chain snafus — especially computer chips — mean long lead times to replenish them.
The shortages, defence officials and analysts say, reveal the west’s complacency about potential threats since the end of the cold war, now shown up by the desire to shore up Ukraine with military support. Fetishes for high-tech weaponry and lean manufacturing have obscured the importance of maintaining stockpiles of basic kit, they add.
“Ukraine has been a lesson in how war is still often won through the classic elements of artillery, ground troops and occupation,” said Jamie Shea, a former Nato director of policy planning, now an associate fellow at Chatham House, a UK think-tank. “The military balance which has swung from the old to the new needs to shift back.”
...
...a large part of that Nato spending has been on advanced systems, such as fighter jets, that have not been deployed by the west in this conflict. Much of western defence over the past 20 years has been geared towards fighting counter-insurgencies in the Middle East rather than being ready for heavyweight tank and artillery battles such as those in Ukraine.
Compounding the supply problems has been a decades-long emphasis on lean manufacturing, financial efficiency and industrial consolidation, which has worked against military planners keen to maintain costly weapons inventories.
In the UK, low stockpiles meant it recently had to buy howitzers from a third party to send to Ukraine, reportedly a private Belgian dealer. In the US, the Pentagon works with just five main defence contractors; in the 1990s, the number was 51.
“The received wisdom has long been that the west will never fight an industrial war again,” said one western defence adviser. “As a result, almost nobody has kept up capacity to ramp up national production of key equipment.”
Nato and EU sound alarm over risk of Ukraine weapons smuggling
...“All these weapons land in southern Poland, get shipped to the border and then are just divided up into vehicles to cross: trucks, vans, sometimes private cars,” said one of the western officials. “And from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country.”
The potential for US weapons sent to Ukraine to fall into the wrong hands is “among a host of considerations” given the “challenging situation” on the ground in the country, said Bonnie Denise Jenkins, US under secretary for arms control and international security, on Tuesday.
...
“It’s hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling — we didn’t achieve it in former Yugoslavia and probably won’t avoid it in Ukraine,” Jana Černochová, the Czech defence minister, told reporters in Prague on Friday. She said she trusted that donor countries were taking all necessary steps to track weaponry but warned that it would not be possible to follow every item.
Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, said in April that its investigations indicated that weapons trafficking from Ukraine into the bloc to supply organised crime groups had begun and was a potential threat to EU security.
...“All these weapons land in southern Poland, get shipped to the border and then are just divided up into vehicles to cross: trucks, vans, sometimes private cars,” said one of the western officials. “And from that moment we go blank on their location and we have no idea where they go, where they are used or even if they stay in the country.”
The potential for US weapons sent to Ukraine to fall into the wrong hands is “among a host of considerations” given the “challenging situation” on the ground in the country, said Bonnie Denise Jenkins, US under secretary for arms control and international security, on Tuesday.
...
“It’s hard to avoid trafficking or smuggling — we didn’t achieve it in former Yugoslavia and probably won’t avoid it in Ukraine,” Jana Černochová, the Czech defence minister, told reporters in Prague on Friday. She said she trusted that donor countries were taking all necessary steps to track weaponry but warned that it would not be possible to follow every item.
Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, said in April that its investigations indicated that weapons trafficking from Ukraine into the bloc to supply organised crime groups had begun and was a potential threat to EU security.
John Bolton Casually Admits to CNN That He’s Planned Coups
...According to the ex-Trump official, though, it would be a mistake to describe the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as a “carefully planned coup d’état” to retain office.
“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton told anchor Jake Tapper. “It’s rambling from one half-assed idea to another. One plan that falls through and another comes up. That’s what he was doing. As I say, none of it is defensible. But you have to understand the nature of what the problem of Donald Trump is.”
Disagreeing with the former ambassador to the United Nations, Tapper noted that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” prompting the architect of the Iraq War to humblebrag about his past coup-planning efforts.
“I disagree with that,” Bolton declared. “As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état—not here, but other places—it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another.”
...
A few minutes later, Tapper circled back to Bolton’s casual admission that he’s been involved in international coups. “When we were talking about what is capable, what you need to do to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise in having planned coups,” the CNN anchor began.
“I’m not going to get into the specifics, but,” Bolton laughed, before Tapper asked: “Successful coups?”
The unapologetic war hawk went on to note that he wrote about Venezuela in his latest book, adding that it “turned out not to be successful.” During his time as Trump’s national security adviser, Bolton backed an unsuccessful attempt to oust Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in 2019, which featured a “ridiculous” failed coup that was quickly foiled.
“Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president. And they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable,” Bolton continued.
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me,” Tapper shot back.
“I’m sure there is,” Bolton chuckled before pivoting back to Tuesday’s hearing.
...According to the ex-Trump official, though, it would be a mistake to describe the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election as a “carefully planned coup d’état” to retain office.
“That’s not the way Donald Trump does things,” Bolton told anchor Jake Tapper. “It’s rambling from one half-assed idea to another. One plan that falls through and another comes up. That’s what he was doing. As I say, none of it is defensible. But you have to understand the nature of what the problem of Donald Trump is.”
Disagreeing with the former ambassador to the United Nations, Tapper noted that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” prompting the architect of the Iraq War to humblebrag about his past coup-planning efforts.
“I disagree with that,” Bolton declared. “As somebody who has helped plan coup d’état—not here, but other places—it takes a lot of work. And that’s not what he did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another.”
...
A few minutes later, Tapper circled back to Bolton’s casual admission that he’s been involved in international coups. “When we were talking about what is capable, what you need to do to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise in having planned coups,” the CNN anchor began.
“I’m not going to get into the specifics, but,” Bolton laughed, before Tapper asked: “Successful coups?”
The unapologetic war hawk went on to note that he wrote about Venezuela in his latest book, adding that it “turned out not to be successful.” During his time as Trump’s national security adviser, Bolton backed an unsuccessful attempt to oust Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in 2019, which featured a “ridiculous” failed coup that was quickly foiled.
“Not that we had all that much to do with it, but I saw what it took for an opposition to try to overturn an illegally elected president. And they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable,” Bolton continued.
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me,” Tapper shot back.
“I’m sure there is,” Bolton chuckled before pivoting back to Tuesday’s hearing.
Greg Price @greg_price11
Warren: “Crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber abortion clinics by 3-1. We need to shut them down all around the country.”
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1546957961439969280
American Momma @American_Momma
Replying to @greg_price11
Does...does she not know that these centers also provide support for women who want to keep their babies?
https://twitter.com/American_Momma/status/1546965164221550592
Scott E. B, Ph. Doge @ScottishDuke
Replying to @greg_price11
It is not enough that choice exists. The “wrong” choice must be eliminated.
https://twitter.com/ScottishDuke/status/1546966352329596929
Ryan Baker @RyanBBaker
Replying to @greg_price11
Just shows it’s not about “choice,” it’s about abortion.
https://twitter.com/RyanBBaker/status/1546958445328449536
Warren: “Crisis pregnancy centers that are there to fool people looking for pregnancy termination help outnumber abortion clinics by 3-1. We need to shut them down all around the country.”
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1546957961439969280
American Momma @American_Momma
Replying to @greg_price11
Does...does she not know that these centers also provide support for women who want to keep their babies?
https://twitter.com/American_Momma/status/1546965164221550592
Scott E. B, Ph. Doge @ScottishDuke
Replying to @greg_price11
It is not enough that choice exists. The “wrong” choice must be eliminated.
https://twitter.com/ScottishDuke/status/1546966352329596929
Ryan Baker @RyanBBaker
Replying to @greg_price11
Just shows it’s not about “choice,” it’s about abortion.
https://twitter.com/RyanBBaker/status/1546958445328449536
支持民主制的一个核心理由是：每个人应当有自主的权利，在关乎他们自身利益的事物上，他们的看法应该发生影响。然而民主制的支持者讲得不多的一点是：各人处理人类事务的资质不同，资质的差异可以如此之大，以至于让上等人来管理下等人的生活，可能比下等人管理自己更好。对在理智上和实践中都缺乏德性的下等人来说，自己做主宰必定导致巨大的伤害，被有德有才者管治则是极大的幸运。这就是为什么即使在民主制中，hierarchy和meritocracy也是必需的因素——让资质优越的人拥有更大的权力，对所有人都好。
在这个问题上，民主政体像其他政体一样，要防范两种可能的弊端：1. 教育体制——包括家庭和学校——无法塑造足够数量和高质量的精英。2. 精英阶层在外部约束不够的情况下，专注于小团体和阶层的狭隘利益，背弃他们对之负有责任的大众。另一种可能的弊端是民主政体独有的：3. 在对平等毫无节制的诉求中，企图抹平hierarchy, 废弃meritocracy. 如此妄为不会真的消灭精英集团，最终只会让无德无能且不对大众负责的人占据高位，或者说最大限度地实现前两种弊端。而这些人领导的社会将不再是民主的。
在这个问题上，民主政体像其他政体一样，要防范两种可能的弊端：1. 教育体制——包括家庭和学校——无法塑造足够数量和高质量的精英。2. 精英阶层在外部约束不够的情况下，专注于小团体和阶层的狭隘利益，背弃他们对之负有责任的大众。另一种可能的弊端是民主政体独有的：3. 在对平等毫无节制的诉求中，企图抹平hierarchy, 废弃meritocracy. 如此妄为不会真的消灭精英集团，最终只会让无德无能且不对大众负责的人占据高位，或者说最大限度地实现前两种弊端。而这些人领导的社会将不再是民主的。
看哪！我要向你们指出那末人。/“什么是爱情？什么是创造？什么是渴望？什么是星球？”——末人如是问，眨巴着眼睛。/于是大地变小了，使一切变小的末人就在上面跳跃。他的种族就如同跳蚤一般不可灭绝；末人活得最久长。/“我们发明了幸福”——末人说，眨巴着眼睛。(尼采，2010年a，第18页)
...
...在科利版第10卷的一则笔记中，尼采把“末人”称为“一种中国人”。(ibid.，S.168) 在《快乐的科学》中，尼采有两次谈到中国人，都给出了负面的评论，有一处写道：“中国是一个国家的例子，那里大规模的不满与求变能力已经灭绝好多个世纪了”；另一处写道：“我们绝对不会认为，在地球上建立一个正义和和睦的王国是值得想望的(因为无论如何，那会是一个极其深度中庸化和中国人式的国度)。”(Nietzsche，1999b，S.399，629)
末人、超人与未来人
...
...在科利版第10卷的一则笔记中，尼采把“末人”称为“一种中国人”。(ibid.，S.168) 在《快乐的科学》中，尼采有两次谈到中国人，都给出了负面的评论，有一处写道：“中国是一个国家的例子，那里大规模的不满与求变能力已经灭绝好多个世纪了”；另一处写道：“我们绝对不会认为，在地球上建立一个正义和和睦的王国是值得想望的(因为无论如何，那会是一个极其深度中庸化和中国人式的国度)。”(Nietzsche，1999b，S.399，629)
末人、超人与未来人
「爱思想」还活着啊？
魏晋清谈风怎么就死不掉呢？
----------------------------
在疯掉之前，尼采还是有不少 good aphorisms 留下来的。
他的个人资质，偏向于「诗人」和「哲人」的叠加，他的文字，更适合用读英文诗的模式去欣赏。
----------------------------
另外，中文是真的没办法「玩儿哲学」，特别是作者明确地基于逻辑的那种。
魏晋清谈风怎么就死不掉呢？
----------------------------
在疯掉之前，尼采还是有不少 good aphorisms 留下来的。
他的个人资质，偏向于「诗人」和「哲人」的叠加，他的文字，更适合用读英文诗的模式去欣赏。
----------------------------
另外，中文是真的没办法「玩儿哲学」，特别是作者明确地基于逻辑的那种。
明天与意外哪个都会来 只是前后顺序罢了
Lithuania Widens List Of Russian Goods Barred From Ground Transport To Kaliningrad
(Jul. 11) Lithuania has widened restrictions on trade through its territory from Russia to the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, including a ban on concrete, wood, alcohol, and alcohol-based industrial chemicals.
A spokesperson for Lithuanian customs told Reuters that the move was a result of the phase-ins on earlier announced European Union sanctions against Moscow taking effect.
EU says Lithuania must allow rail transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad
(Jul. 13) The European Union on Wednesday said Lithuania had an obligation to allow the passage of sanctioned goods, with the exception of weapons, between Russia and its exclave of Kaliningrad.
While transit by road was not allowed, legal guidance released by the EU executive said that “no such prohibition exists for rail transport” from Russia to its outpost of Kaliningrad and that it could not be subject to an outright ban.
(Jul. 11) Lithuania has widened restrictions on trade through its territory from Russia to the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, including a ban on concrete, wood, alcohol, and alcohol-based industrial chemicals.
A spokesperson for Lithuanian customs told Reuters that the move was a result of the phase-ins on earlier announced European Union sanctions against Moscow taking effect.
EU says Lithuania must allow rail transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad
(Jul. 13) The European Union on Wednesday said Lithuania had an obligation to allow the passage of sanctioned goods, with the exception of weapons, between Russia and its exclave of Kaliningrad.
While transit by road was not allowed, legal guidance released by the EU executive said that “no such prohibition exists for rail transport” from Russia to its outpost of Kaliningrad and that it could not be subject to an outright ban.
Bojan Pancevski @bopanc
Putin's power: Support for a Russian gas embargo is evaporating in Germany according to Forsa: in 6 weeks, it dropped from 44% to 32%. Some 63% oppose it, up from 50%. Even among the most hawkish voters - the Greens - there is a majority against it since energy prices exploded
https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1547111961955033088
Thorsten Benner @thorstenbenner
Replying to @bopanc
In light of Germany's gas dependence realistic assessment prevails. Those arguing that German public would easily support crippling self-imposed gas embargo were always deluded. We can be grateful everyone in government saw things realistically in March.
https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1547117061381423107
Putin's power: Support for a Russian gas embargo is evaporating in Germany according to Forsa: in 6 weeks, it dropped from 44% to 32%. Some 63% oppose it, up from 50%. Even among the most hawkish voters - the Greens - there is a majority against it since energy prices exploded
https://twitter.com/bopanc/status/1547111961955033088
Thorsten Benner @thorstenbenner
Replying to @bopanc
In light of Germany's gas dependence realistic assessment prevails. Those arguing that German public would easily support crippling self-imposed gas embargo were always deluded. We can be grateful everyone in government saw things realistically in March.
https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1547117061381423107
Winter is coming:
Gazprom @GazpromEN
https://twitter.com/GazpromEN/status/1547224254520999938
Stephen Stapczynski @SStapczynski
Russia hints that it won’t fully resume a key natural gas pipeline to Europe
Gazprom says it doesn’t have documents to move a sanctioned gas turbine from Canada after maintenance
Russia had said it was forced to cut Nord Stream flows in June since the part was missing
Background on this drama:
Gazprom cut flows via Nord Stream 1, the biggest Russian gas pipeline to Europe, by 60% last month
Russia said it was because the turbine was stuck in Canada due to sanctions after maintenance
Germany and other European nations didn't buy it, arguing that Russia was curbing gas deliberately and using the turbine as an excuse
Meanwhile, Nord Stream shut down on July 11 for a 10-day planned maintenance. European leaders warned that flows may not return
Then Canada said it would return the sanctioned turbine through an exemption. European gas prices fell a tad on expectations that maybe Gazprom would boost flows via Nord Stream at the end of this month's maintenance
Now Gazprom is saying they can't move the turbine out of Canada because of some missing paperwork
https://twitter.com/SStapczynski/status/1547254794032914432
Gazprom @GazpromEN
https://twitter.com/GazpromEN/status/1547224254520999938
Stephen Stapczynski @SStapczynski
Russia hints that it won’t fully resume a key natural gas pipeline to Europe
Gazprom says it doesn’t have documents to move a sanctioned gas turbine from Canada after maintenance
Russia had said it was forced to cut Nord Stream flows in June since the part was missing
Background on this drama:
Gazprom cut flows via Nord Stream 1, the biggest Russian gas pipeline to Europe, by 60% last month
Russia said it was because the turbine was stuck in Canada due to sanctions after maintenance
Germany and other European nations didn't buy it, arguing that Russia was curbing gas deliberately and using the turbine as an excuse
Meanwhile, Nord Stream shut down on July 11 for a 10-day planned maintenance. European leaders warned that flows may not return
Then Canada said it would return the sanctioned turbine through an exemption. European gas prices fell a tad on expectations that maybe Gazprom would boost flows via Nord Stream at the end of this month's maintenance
Now Gazprom is saying they can't move the turbine out of Canada because of some missing paperwork
https://twitter.com/SStapczynski/status/1547254794032914432
Edward-Isaac Dovere @IsaacDovere
German delegation reaction to President Trump at the UN saying they're on track to become totally dependent on Russian oil:
https://twitter.com/isaacdovere/status/1044603065029066753
I bet they are not laughing now.
German delegation reaction to President Trump at the UN saying they're on track to become totally dependent on Russian oil:
https://twitter.com/isaacdovere/status/1044603065029066753
I bet they are not laughing now.
Frédéric Leroy @fleroy1974
With ongoing #FarmerProtest in the #Netherlands, the political trend is intensifying. In the most recent poll, the Farmer-Citizen Movement @BoerBurgerB now only 1 seat away from the Dutch Prime Minister Rutte's (@MinPres) @VVD (-13 seats!)
https://twitter.com/fleroy1974/status/1546482455594541057
With ongoing #FarmerProtest in the #Netherlands, the political trend is intensifying. In the most recent poll, the Farmer-Citizen Movement @BoerBurgerB now only 1 seat away from the Dutch Prime Minister Rutte's (@MinPres) @VVD (-13 seats!)
https://twitter.com/fleroy1974/status/1546482455594541057
Dr S Maitra @MrMaitra
If and when your worldview stops allowing any space for third party “neutrality”, it’s time to rethink whether you’re the “good aide”.
https://twitter.com/MrMaitra/status/1547165352722927621
Dr S Maitra @MrMaitra
The Melian Dialogue was indicative of human nature but also a cautionary tale. Athens ultimately lost because of hyper-democracy and volatile public passions leading to fanatical foreign policy, when everyone joined together against her.
https://twitter.com/MrMaitra/status/1547167007476514816
If and when your worldview stops allowing any space for third party “neutrality”, it’s time to rethink whether you’re the “good aide”.
Can Austria Stay Neutral?
The world has changed. Austria’s security strategy must change with it.
https://twitter.com/MrMaitra/status/1547165352722927621
Dr S Maitra @MrMaitra
The Melian Dialogue was indicative of human nature but also a cautionary tale. Athens ultimately lost because of hyper-democracy and volatile public passions leading to fanatical foreign policy, when everyone joined together against her.
https://twitter.com/MrMaitra/status/1547167007476514816
>>Dr S Maitra @MrMaitraIf and when your worldview st...
料理「叛徒」是远比对付「敌人」来得更加紧迫的绝对必要之事。
后者是看得见的威胁，前者是背后捅来的刀子，从「生存本能做出反应的角度」而言，百倍于后者。
奥威尔就深深明白，「异议」远比「异端」危险。他在多篇文章中不止一次点到，一个只愿向真实负责的作家，在政治上最安全的不是「向自己人靠拢」，而是做个「边缘」的异端。（感兴趣的可以读奥威尔散文集，不是小说和诗作）
但就是这种每个战争世代都在重复的历史教训（人类悲剧），真正能学会的其实极少，能实践的就更不用说了。
芬兰、瑞典、瑞士都学到了一鳞半爪，要不然连偷偷羡慕挪威「闷声发大财」的余裕都没有。匈牙利好歹强调自己是受害者，是在悲苦中求生存，而注定只能做和平白痴的新西兰显然根本就还没意识到。要说这方面做得最不着痕迹，也最精妙的，就是有个庞大美国航母基地在境内的日本的「主动积极」了。
无数在逻辑上等价于「白痴」的所谓「国际政治」专家们，倒是一个个「以为有发现，遂颇感蹊跷」地分析「日本的主动」，让「历史的真正学生」不能不偷偷笑得胃痛。然而，这些东西是不能进书本的，那些自以为「真正科学的历史不能写成故事」的优秀理论家们，也就连同其弟子们一起，永远和这些「不起眼的真实」彻底无缘了。这种 human nature，也是《伯罗奔尼撒战争》的不朽程度至少在目前依然领先于新约圣经的根本性理由，当然，那也是永远学不会的家伙们继续把它当成「古代过时玩意儿」的根本性理由。
而印度也好，伊朗也罢，甚至有个北约会员身份的现代苏丹埃尔多安，乃至天天骂美国的马杜罗，其实现在都更加接近奥威尔所说的「安全位置」，远比新西兰、奥地利这一类的「中立」们要近。
------------------------------
话说回来，中共就因为亲身实践过，对这方面是深有体会。但那并没有能成功阻止总加速师这个真正的「路线异议者」全面掌权呢。
可见，历史教训之所以一直都是历史教训的根本性理由，是因它被安排的命运就是作为「历史教训」传下去。
那位发推的 Mr. Maitra 显然是以「大国代言」自居的角度在说那些话，因此和这一历史教训，还是隔了几层纱的，不容易让其实更需要这份教训的「中立们」明白道理。
Italian PM Mario Draghi offers resignation after coalition falls apart
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has tendered his resignation after populist coalition partner Five Star withdrew its support in a confidence vote.
The former head of the European Central Bank has led a unity government since February 2021.
In a statement, he said the pact of trust that had sustained the unity government had gone.
However, the president refused to accept his resignation.
...
The effect of President Mattarella's intervention is unclear, but Mr Draghi is unlikely to address parliament before next Wednesday. Italy now faces a period of political uncertainty, which could jeopardise its efforts to tackle a looming energy crisis and secure EU funding.
The extraordinary developments in Rome capped a day of drama triggered when Five Star leader Giuseppe Conte refused to back the government's €23bn (£19.5bn) package of economic aid for families and businesses, arguing Mr Draghi was not doing enough to tackle the cost of living crisis.
Even though the government comfortably won Thursday's vote in the Senate with the help of other parties, the prime minister had warned repeatedly that without Five Star's support the government could not continue.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has tendered his resignation after populist coalition partner Five Star withdrew its support in a confidence vote.
The former head of the European Central Bank has led a unity government since February 2021.
In a statement, he said the pact of trust that had sustained the unity government had gone.
However, the president refused to accept his resignation.
...
The effect of President Mattarella's intervention is unclear, but Mr Draghi is unlikely to address parliament before next Wednesday. Italy now faces a period of political uncertainty, which could jeopardise its efforts to tackle a looming energy crisis and secure EU funding.
The extraordinary developments in Rome capped a day of drama triggered when Five Star leader Giuseppe Conte refused to back the government's €23bn (£19.5bn) package of economic aid for families and businesses, arguing Mr Draghi was not doing enough to tackle the cost of living crisis.
Even though the government comfortably won Thursday's vote in the Senate with the help of other parties, the prime minister had warned repeatedly that without Five Star's support the government could not continue.
Olga Tokariuk @olgatokariuk
Italian prime minister Mario Draghi announces his resignation. He played a crucial role in ensuring Italy's delivery of weapons to Ukraine and rallied other leaders around supporting Ukraine's EU candidacy bid. Yet another bad news for Ukraine in the end of this terrible day
https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1547631666637639682
Brahma Chellaney @Chellaney
Europe is bearing the brunt from the sanctions blowback: Energy prices and cost of living are spiking; gas shortages are affecting economic output; stock markets are falling; and now Italy's government is falling over Mario Draghi's policy to follow the US lead in arming Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/Chellaney/status/1547652216743309312
David P. Goldman @davidpgoldman
Draghi out, BoJo out, Macron a lame duck, Biden a pressed duck. Looks like Putin was right: "Such a detachment from reality...will inevitably lead to a surge of populism and the growth of radical movements, to serious social...changes, to degradation...to a change of elites.”
https://twitter.com/davidpgoldman/status/1547653311691534341
Italian prime minister Mario Draghi announces his resignation. He played a crucial role in ensuring Italy's delivery of weapons to Ukraine and rallied other leaders around supporting Ukraine's EU candidacy bid. Yet another bad news for Ukraine in the end of this terrible day
https://twitter.com/olgatokariuk/status/1547631666637639682
Brahma Chellaney @Chellaney
Europe is bearing the brunt from the sanctions blowback: Energy prices and cost of living are spiking; gas shortages are affecting economic output; stock markets are falling; and now Italy's government is falling over Mario Draghi's policy to follow the US lead in arming Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/Chellaney/status/1547652216743309312
David P. Goldman @davidpgoldman
Draghi out, BoJo out, Macron a lame duck, Biden a pressed duck. Looks like Putin was right: "Such a detachment from reality...will inevitably lead to a surge of populism and the growth of radical movements, to serious social...changes, to degradation...to a change of elites.”
https://twitter.com/davidpgoldman/status/1547653311691534341
Toby Young @toadmeister
Just flicking through Penny Mordaunt's book. Glowing foreword by Bill Gates, full of praise for China, relentless promotion of the LGBTQ+ agenda, wants to ditch the MBE and OBE, thinks more 'hate speech' should be censored... Great pitch for the leadership... of the Labour Party.
Here are some quotes from the book: "It Aint Half Hot, Mum featured... casual racism, homophobia, white privilege, colonialism, transphobia..."
"Kenneth Clark (Oxford) made the 1969 TV series Civilisation. It explained how superior Oxford-educated British middle-aged white men were."
"Black Lives Matter [has] drawn attention to inequality and injustice..."
"The problem is most of our leaders are drawn from a narrow background. Their education and training was from the last century, when the world was very different. It was a long-term, male, patient, predictable, factual, planned, heterosexual, white, Christian, Western..."
"[Testosterone disrupts people's] ability to work together... [Women who had been given testosterone made] more selfish decisions that were less in the interests of the group. It made them behave like men."
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1547533888968445954
Just flicking through Penny Mordaunt's book. Glowing foreword by Bill Gates, full of praise for China, relentless promotion of the LGBTQ+ agenda, wants to ditch the MBE and OBE, thinks more 'hate speech' should be censored... Great pitch for the leadership... of the Labour Party.
Here are some quotes from the book: "It Aint Half Hot, Mum featured... casual racism, homophobia, white privilege, colonialism, transphobia..."
"Kenneth Clark (Oxford) made the 1969 TV series Civilisation. It explained how superior Oxford-educated British middle-aged white men were."
"Black Lives Matter [has] drawn attention to inequality and injustice..."
"The problem is most of our leaders are drawn from a narrow background. Their education and training was from the last century, when the world was very different. It was a long-term, male, patient, predictable, factual, planned, heterosexual, white, Christian, Western..."
"[Testosterone disrupts people's] ability to work together... [Women who had been given testosterone made] more selfish decisions that were less in the interests of the group. It made them behave like men."
https://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1547533888968445954
The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties
...We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced.
...
Figure 2. The Aggregate Economic Values of the Labour and Conservative Parties – MPs, Members and Voters.
Figure 4. The Aggregate Social Values of the Labour and Conservative Parties – MPs, Members and Voters.
...We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced.
...
Figure 2. The Aggregate Economic Values of the Labour and Conservative Parties – MPs, Members and Voters.
Figure 4. The Aggregate Social Values of the Labour and Conservative Parties – MPs, Members and Voters.
Ukraine: can Russia still win the war?
...“Russia could still wear down Ukrainian ammunition stockpiles, its reserve of skilled troops and the patience of the international community to slowly claw back a path towards meeting its aims,” wrote two researchers, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, in a report for the London-based Royal United Services Institute last week.
As well as a chronic shortage of artillery ammunition, they highlighted multiple other Ukrainian weaknesses, including a lack of skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations, a shortage of secure radio equipment and an inability to detect and take out Russian electronic warfare capabilities.
...
The “basic maths” favours Kyiv, says Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy at the American Enterprise Institute, referring to Moscow’s struggle to recruit enough experienced troops to replenish its forces and on the other side the flow of advanced weaponry from the west to Ukraine.
To the fury of nationalist military commentators in Russia, Putin has so far refused to call a general mobilisation — a call-up of all those of fighting age who have previously served in the armed forces. Such a move would probably be highly unpopular and imply that his limited “military operation” in the Donbas region had been a failure.
“[Some] 80 per cent of his army is already fighting in Ukraine, exhausted and making very little progress,” says Schake. “Unless Vladimir Putin really intends a nationwide mobilisation . . . these symbolic successes [in Luhansk] don’t add up to a strengthening strategic position and even if they were to effect a nationwide mobilisation, it would take months to muster everybody, months to train them. Ukraine has a window of opportunity in about the next six months to win this war.”
...
Lawrence Freedman, professor emeritus of war studies at King’s College London, says the war has entered a transitional phase where the Russians are looking to advance but also may have to defend positions, while Ukraine is gearing up to launch counter-offensive operations.
The key difference has been the arrival in late June of US-supplied multiple launch rocket systems, known as Himars, which have a range of between 70km and 80km and GPS-guided munitions for pinpoint accuracy. “The Ukrainians didn’t have anything to do serious counter battery work,” says Freedman. “Now they do.”
...
The US has disbursed $4bn in economic aid to Kyiv and expects to distribute a further $6.2bn by September. The EU has scraped together only €1bn of the €9bn it pledged in April amid disputes over whether it should provide grants or loans.
...“Russia could still wear down Ukrainian ammunition stockpiles, its reserve of skilled troops and the patience of the international community to slowly claw back a path towards meeting its aims,” wrote two researchers, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, in a report for the London-based Royal United Services Institute last week.
As well as a chronic shortage of artillery ammunition, they highlighted multiple other Ukrainian weaknesses, including a lack of skilled infantry and armoured vehicles to conduct offensive operations, a shortage of secure radio equipment and an inability to detect and take out Russian electronic warfare capabilities.
...
The “basic maths” favours Kyiv, says Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy at the American Enterprise Institute, referring to Moscow’s struggle to recruit enough experienced troops to replenish its forces and on the other side the flow of advanced weaponry from the west to Ukraine.
To the fury of nationalist military commentators in Russia, Putin has so far refused to call a general mobilisation — a call-up of all those of fighting age who have previously served in the armed forces. Such a move would probably be highly unpopular and imply that his limited “military operation” in the Donbas region had been a failure.
“[Some] 80 per cent of his army is already fighting in Ukraine, exhausted and making very little progress,” says Schake. “Unless Vladimir Putin really intends a nationwide mobilisation . . . these symbolic successes [in Luhansk] don’t add up to a strengthening strategic position and even if they were to effect a nationwide mobilisation, it would take months to muster everybody, months to train them. Ukraine has a window of opportunity in about the next six months to win this war.”
...
Lawrence Freedman, professor emeritus of war studies at King’s College London, says the war has entered a transitional phase where the Russians are looking to advance but also may have to defend positions, while Ukraine is gearing up to launch counter-offensive operations.
The key difference has been the arrival in late June of US-supplied multiple launch rocket systems, known as Himars, which have a range of between 70km and 80km and GPS-guided munitions for pinpoint accuracy. “The Ukrainians didn’t have anything to do serious counter battery work,” says Freedman. “Now they do.”
...
The US has disbursed $4bn in economic aid to Kyiv and expects to distribute a further $6.2bn by September. The EU has scraped together only €1bn of the €9bn it pledged in April amid disputes over whether it should provide grants or loans.
>>这篇批评基辅方面“藏兵于民”式打法的文章...
NEXTA @nexta_tv
Ukrainian soldier shares his impressions of the #Swedish "Carl Gustaf" grenade launcher. Judging by the impressions, he liked it very much.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1545882723683901440
That was in a school.
Euro Zone’s Eastern Fringe Probably Already in Recession
Estonia and Lithuania probably are already in recession, with the European Commission predicting the two Baltic economies will contract in the second and third quarters. Another four economies -- Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal -- also probably saw output shrink in the three months through June. The rest of the currency union is likely to avoid a downturn this year.
Estonia and Lithuania probably are already in recession, with the European Commission predicting the two Baltic economies will contract in the second and third quarters. Another four economies -- Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal -- also probably saw output shrink in the three months through June. The rest of the currency union is likely to avoid a downturn this year.
David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense @davereaboi
This is very weird and troubling. Seems this Ukrainian GOP Congresswoman isn’t allowed to have her own opinion on Zelensky—notice how her criticisms aren’t event mentioned, other than to say they’ve been discredited.
And now “the intelligence community is getting involved”?
https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1548046101076275205
Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus
The word for Republicans who are uncomfortable with being critical of Zelensky and don't want you to question our involvement in Ukraine is: traitor. That is the word Republican voters need to use more against their own politicians.
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548054022283702272
Richard Hanania @RichardHanania
“The intel community is getting involved” because a member of Congress criticized Ukrainian corruption. The story reveals she’s actually a supporter of Ukraine, but thinks the government is corrupt. Criticize the war effort from any direction, no dissent is allowed.
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1548060839256547328
This is very weird and troubling. Seems this Ukrainian GOP Congresswoman isn’t allowed to have her own opinion on Zelensky—notice how her criticisms aren’t event mentioned, other than to say they’ve been discredited.
And now “the intelligence community is getting involved”?
Andrew Desiderio @AndrewDesiderio
NEW: House GOP aghast at one of their own — Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz — for her attacks on Zelenskyy & his inner circle, fearing she’s fueling the MAGA wing’s Ukraine skepticism.
The U.S. intel community is now getting involved
https://t.co/VqhROxFfv9
https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1548046101076275205
Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus
The word for Republicans who are uncomfortable with being critical of Zelensky and don't want you to question our involvement in Ukraine is: traitor. That is the word Republican voters need to use more against their own politicians.
Andrew Desiderio @AndrewDesiderio
NEW: House GOP aghast at one of their own — Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz — for her attacks on Zelenskyy & his inner circle, fearing she’s fueling the MAGA wing’s Ukraine skepticism.
The U.S. intel community is now getting involved
https://t.co/VqhROxFfv9
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548054022283702272
Richard Hanania @RichardHanania
“The intel community is getting involved” because a member of Congress criticized Ukrainian corruption. The story reveals she’s actually a supporter of Ukraine, but thinks the government is corrupt. Criticize the war effort from any direction, no dissent is allowed.
Andrew Desiderio @AndrewDesiderio
NEW: House GOP aghast at one of their own — Ukraine-born Rep. Victoria Spartz — for her attacks on Zelenskyy & his inner circle, fearing she’s fueling the MAGA wing’s Ukraine skepticism.
The U.S. intel community is now getting involved
https://t.co/VqhROxFfv9
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1548060839256547328
A Ukraine-born GOP lawmaker is accusing Volodymyr Zelenskyy of “playing politics and theater.”
What happened: Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) released a statement Wednesday calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “stop playing politics and theater” and “start governing to better support his military and local government.”
Spartz, the first and only Ukraine-born member of Congress, has traveled to the war-torn nation several times since Russia invaded the country back in February, so she has a first-hand view of the war and its management.
But criticism of Zelenskyy is extremely rare in the U.S., where lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum have lauded the Ukrainian president for his wartime leadership and even compared him to Winston Churchill.
The only significant criticism lobbed at Zelenskyy from Capitol Hill has come from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who called the Ukrainian president a “thug” earlier this year.
The 43-year-old freshman lawmaker didn’t elaborate on her claims about Zelenskyy, but POLITICO has reached out to her office for clarification.
Not just Zelenskyy: In her statement, Spartz also accused President Joe Biden of “playing politics” and said he needs to present a “clear strategy and align security assistance with our strategy.” That’s a common criticism of the Biden administration from GOP lawmakers — especially the notion that the White House isn’t doling out the congressionally-appropriated military and humanitarian aid fast enough.
Lastly, Spartz called for Congress to “establish proper oversight of critical infrastructure and delivery of weapons and aid.” This is also a big issue on the Hill, especially among progressives who fear that the unprecedented flow of weapons into Ukraine could lead to disastrous consequences without adequate oversight — including the possibility that the weapons end up in the wrong hands.
What happened: Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) released a statement Wednesday calling on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “stop playing politics and theater” and “start governing to better support his military and local government.”
Spartz, the first and only Ukraine-born member of Congress, has traveled to the war-torn nation several times since Russia invaded the country back in February, so she has a first-hand view of the war and its management.
But criticism of Zelenskyy is extremely rare in the U.S., where lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum have lauded the Ukrainian president for his wartime leadership and even compared him to Winston Churchill.
The only significant criticism lobbed at Zelenskyy from Capitol Hill has come from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who called the Ukrainian president a “thug” earlier this year.
The 43-year-old freshman lawmaker didn’t elaborate on her claims about Zelenskyy, but POLITICO has reached out to her office for clarification.
Not just Zelenskyy: In her statement, Spartz also accused President Joe Biden of “playing politics” and said he needs to present a “clear strategy and align security assistance with our strategy.” That’s a common criticism of the Biden administration from GOP lawmakers — especially the notion that the White House isn’t doling out the congressionally-appropriated military and humanitarian aid fast enough.
Lastly, Spartz called for Congress to “establish proper oversight of critical infrastructure and delivery of weapons and aid.” This is also a big issue on the Hill, especially among progressives who fear that the unprecedented flow of weapons into Ukraine could lead to disastrous consequences without adequate oversight — including the possibility that the weapons end up in the wrong hands.
Ralph Schoellhammer @Raphfel
Turns out the German people have more common sense than their rulers.
A majority now supports the continued use of nuclear energy to generate electricity.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1548235383317487616
Turns out the German people have more common sense than their rulers.
A majority now supports the continued use of nuclear energy to generate electricity.
https://twitter.com/Raphfel/status/1548235383317487616
Our Next Tory Leader survey. Badenoch opens up a double-digit lead. Truss, Mordaunt and Sunak are bunched together second, third and fourth.
The last survey of our ConservativeHome panel of Party members, published last Tuesday, gave Penny Mordaunt as its first choice for Next Tory Leader. Kemi Badenoch was second.
The margin between them was narrow: Mordaunt led Badenoch by under ten votes in over eight hundred. In a run-off at that point, the former led the latter by 46 per cent to 40 per cent.
Since then, Badenoch has continued to gain positive write-ups in the publications that this site’s readers see a lot of: the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
Meanwhile, Mordaunt’s record, views and character have come under fire – not least from Lord Frost, who is currently enjoying cult status among a slice of Party activists.
The last survey of our ConservativeHome panel of Party members, published last Tuesday, gave Penny Mordaunt as its first choice for Next Tory Leader. Kemi Badenoch was second.
The margin between them was narrow: Mordaunt led Badenoch by under ten votes in over eight hundred. In a run-off at that point, the former led the latter by 46 per cent to 40 per cent.
Since then, Badenoch has continued to gain positive write-ups in the publications that this site’s readers see a lot of: the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator.
Meanwhile, Mordaunt’s record, views and character have come under fire – not least from Lord Frost, who is currently enjoying cult status among a slice of Party activists.
Chinese Firms Are Selling Russia Goods Its Military Needs to Keep Fighting in Ukraine
BEIJING—Chinese exports to Russia of microchips and other electronic components and raw materials, some with military applications, have increased since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, complicating efforts by the U.S. and Western allies to isolate the country’s economy and cripple its military.
Chip shipments from China to Russia more than doubled to about $50 million in the first five months of 2022 compared with a year earlier, Chinese customs data show, while exports of other components such as printed circuits had double-digit percentage growth. Export volumes of aluminum oxide, which is used to make the metal aluminum, an important material in weapons production and aerospace, are 400 times higher than last year.
The rise in reported export values may partly be explained by inflation. But the data shows that many Chinese tech sellers have continued to do business with Russia despite U.S. scrutiny.
...
China’s support, broadly speaking, is critical to Moscow. Oil and gas revenues make up a sizable chunk of Russia’s economy. As European nations such as Germany seek to draw down Russian energy purchases, Russian President Vladimir Putin
has stressed the importance of selling far more energy to China and others in Asia in the future.
China is also gaining leverage in its relationship with Russia. While China historically has relied on Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, for many advanced technologies, that is gradually changing as China closes the technology gap and emerges as a defense exporter in its own right.
BEIJING—Chinese exports to Russia of microchips and other electronic components and raw materials, some with military applications, have increased since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, complicating efforts by the U.S. and Western allies to isolate the country’s economy and cripple its military.
Chip shipments from China to Russia more than doubled to about $50 million in the first five months of 2022 compared with a year earlier, Chinese customs data show, while exports of other components such as printed circuits had double-digit percentage growth. Export volumes of aluminum oxide, which is used to make the metal aluminum, an important material in weapons production and aerospace, are 400 times higher than last year.
The rise in reported export values may partly be explained by inflation. But the data shows that many Chinese tech sellers have continued to do business with Russia despite U.S. scrutiny.
...
China’s support, broadly speaking, is critical to Moscow. Oil and gas revenues make up a sizable chunk of Russia’s economy. As European nations such as Germany seek to draw down Russian energy purchases, Russian President Vladimir Putin
has stressed the importance of selling far more energy to China and others in Asia in the future.
China is also gaining leverage in its relationship with Russia. While China historically has relied on Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, for many advanced technologies, that is gradually changing as China closes the technology gap and emerges as a defense exporter in its own right.
Woke dance school drops ballet from auditions as it is ‘white’ and ‘elitist’
Ballet has been dropped from auditions at a leading dance school as staff say it is rooted in “white European ideas”.
The Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD), which aims to be a “progressive institution”, has reviewed the “elitist” art form as part of a diversity drive that has seen the introduction of new policies relating to gender and race.
Ballet has been ditched as a requirement for school-entry auditions because of its “contentious nature”, with teaching staff explaining that the traditional mode of dance comes with the baggage of “white European ideas”.
The centuries-old art form was seen as being a barrier to inclusion because of the exclusionary financial burden of taking classes, and also because of its idealising of certain European body shapes, and division of roles along gender lines.
The changes come after the conservatoire undertook work to “decolonise the curriculum” and take advice from LGBT societies.
Information from the NSCD, based in Leeds, said: “We review content and have removed ballet from our audition day due to its potentially contentious nature.”
Francesca McCarthy, head of undergraduate studies at the conservatoire, explained to The Telegraph: “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet.
“It is a very specific form that is built around particular white European ideas and body shapes that are often alienating to young people who do not fit that aesthetic ideal.”
“There are issues relating to body, money, language and movement vocabulary.”
Ballet has been dropped from auditions at a leading dance school as staff say it is rooted in “white European ideas”.
The Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD), which aims to be a “progressive institution”, has reviewed the “elitist” art form as part of a diversity drive that has seen the introduction of new policies relating to gender and race.
Ballet has been ditched as a requirement for school-entry auditions because of its “contentious nature”, with teaching staff explaining that the traditional mode of dance comes with the baggage of “white European ideas”.
The centuries-old art form was seen as being a barrier to inclusion because of the exclusionary financial burden of taking classes, and also because of its idealising of certain European body shapes, and division of roles along gender lines.
The changes come after the conservatoire undertook work to “decolonise the curriculum” and take advice from LGBT societies.
Information from the NSCD, based in Leeds, said: “We review content and have removed ballet from our audition day due to its potentially contentious nature.”
Francesca McCarthy, head of undergraduate studies at the conservatoire, explained to The Telegraph: “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet.
“It is a very specific form that is built around particular white European ideas and body shapes that are often alienating to young people who do not fit that aesthetic ideal.”
“There are issues relating to body, money, language and movement vocabulary.”
Menstrual changes after Covid vaccines may be far more common than previously known
When adults gained access to Covid vaccines last year, most knew to expect headaches, fatigue and soreness as side effects.
But some researchers think it’s time to add another common one to the list: temporary menstrual changes.
An analysis published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after vaccination. Meanwhile, 44% reported no change and around 14% reported a lighter period. Among nonmenstruating people — those post-menopause or who use certain long-term contraceptives, for example — the study suggests many experienced breakthrough or unexpected bleeding after their Covid shots.
The survey included over 39,000 people 18 to 80 years old who were fully vaccinated and had not contracted Covid. The study authors cautioned, though, that the percentages do not necessarily represent the rate of menstrual changes in the general population, since people who observed a difference were more likely to participate. The survey’s aim was simply to provide evidence for future studies, not to establish cause and effect.
("People with regular menstrual cycles" = women, by the way.)
When adults gained access to Covid vaccines last year, most knew to expect headaches, fatigue and soreness as side effects.
But some researchers think it’s time to add another common one to the list: temporary menstrual changes.
An analysis published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after vaccination. Meanwhile, 44% reported no change and around 14% reported a lighter period. Among nonmenstruating people — those post-menopause or who use certain long-term contraceptives, for example — the study suggests many experienced breakthrough or unexpected bleeding after their Covid shots.
The survey included over 39,000 people 18 to 80 years old who were fully vaccinated and had not contracted Covid. The study authors cautioned, though, that the percentages do not necessarily represent the rate of menstrual changes in the general population, since people who observed a difference were more likely to participate. The survey’s aim was simply to provide evidence for future studies, not to establish cause and effect.
("People with regular menstrual cycles" = women, by the way.)
WEF Great Reset Destroyed Sri Lanka
...This economic devastation can be directly linked to the World Economic Forum, through ideology and partnership with Sri Lanka’s leaders.
In 2018, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minster of Sri Lanka, wrote an article for the World Economic Forum’s website titled “PM: This is how I will make my country rich by 2025.” The article has recently been deleted.
Conveniently, other websites at the time archived the article, such as Sunday Times. Here, Ranil Wickremesinghe wrote:
“Our economic policy, Vision 2025, is firmly embedded in several principles, including a social market economy that delivers economic dividends to all…
Sri Lanka’s education system is being transformed through progressive and important policy reform…”
The implications of a “social market economy” and “economic dividends” cannot be understated. It is written using terms that make the reader think are benign, but are actually extremely radical policies.
Regarding social market economies, the University of Oxford writes, “the notion seeks a middle path between socialism and capitalism.” The economic strategy aims to implement social equality and justice though political means. The “economic dividends” are another red flag, it warns of a government-controlled economy in which individual profits are solely determined by the country’s leaders.
Just last year, Sri Lanka banned modern fertilizer in exchange for “organic” alternatives that are significantly less effective, and have been a contributing factor leading to food shortages.
...This economic devastation can be directly linked to the World Economic Forum, through ideology and partnership with Sri Lanka’s leaders.
In 2018, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minster of Sri Lanka, wrote an article for the World Economic Forum’s website titled “PM: This is how I will make my country rich by 2025.” The article has recently been deleted.
Conveniently, other websites at the time archived the article, such as Sunday Times. Here, Ranil Wickremesinghe wrote:
“Our economic policy, Vision 2025, is firmly embedded in several principles, including a social market economy that delivers economic dividends to all…
Sri Lanka’s education system is being transformed through progressive and important policy reform…”
The implications of a “social market economy” and “economic dividends” cannot be understated. It is written using terms that make the reader think are benign, but are actually extremely radical policies.
Regarding social market economies, the University of Oxford writes, “the notion seeks a middle path between socialism and capitalism.” The economic strategy aims to implement social equality and justice though political means. The “economic dividends” are another red flag, it warns of a government-controlled economy in which individual profits are solely determined by the country’s leaders.
Just last year, Sri Lanka banned modern fertilizer in exchange for “organic” alternatives that are significantly less effective, and have been a contributing factor leading to food shortages.
Ted Cruz Says SCOTUS 'Clearly Wrong' to Legalize Gay Marriage
..."Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history," the senator argued in the clip from his podcast. "Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell—some states were moving to allow gay marriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting."
The Texas Republican contended that the "democratic process would have continued to operate" if the Supreme Court had not ruled the way it did. "In Obergefell the Court said, 'no, we know better than you,' and now every state must sanction and permit gay marriage," he said.
"That decision was clearly wrong when it was decided," Cruz said, complaining that the Court was "overreaching." The GOP senator then pointed out however, that the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe suggested that same-sex marriage will be treated differently.
"In Dobbs, what the Supreme Court said is 'Roe is different because it's the only one of the cases that involves the taking of a human life and it's qualitatively different,'" he explained. "I agree with that proposition."
Ted Cruz: The vulnerability of the Obergefell ruling
..."Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history," the senator argued in the clip from his podcast. "Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell—some states were moving to allow gay marriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting."
The Texas Republican contended that the "democratic process would have continued to operate" if the Supreme Court had not ruled the way it did. "In Obergefell the Court said, 'no, we know better than you,' and now every state must sanction and permit gay marriage," he said.
"That decision was clearly wrong when it was decided," Cruz said, complaining that the Court was "overreaching." The GOP senator then pointed out however, that the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe suggested that same-sex marriage will be treated differently.
"In Dobbs, what the Supreme Court said is 'Roe is different because it's the only one of the cases that involves the taking of a human life and it's qualitatively different,'" he explained. "I agree with that proposition."
Ted Cruz: The vulnerability of the Obergefell ruling
Allie Beth Stuckey @conservmillen
The appropriate response when a leftist accuses you of being a -phobe or -ist isn’t “No I’m not.” It’s “I don’t care.”
https://twitter.com/conservmillen/status/1537832744914456578
Spencer Lindquist @SpencerLndqst
The power of your side's insults are wearing off. Your impotent displays of moral indignation only accelerate the process. Keep it up.
https://twitter.com/SpencerLndqst/status/1547651736847806466
The appropriate response when a leftist accuses you of being a -phobe or -ist isn’t “No I’m not.” It’s “I don’t care.”
https://twitter.com/conservmillen/status/1537832744914456578
Spencer Lindquist @SpencerLndqst
The power of your side's insults are wearing off. Your impotent displays of moral indignation only accelerate the process. Keep it up.
Justin Horowitz @justinhorowitz_
In the same way that Christianity was used to justify slavery, Stuckey uses her faith to justify her bigotry and discrimination against the LGBTQ community
She bluntly says she doesn’t care about being labeled a blatant homophobe
https://twitter.com/SpencerLndqst/status/1547651736847806466
Daniel DePetris @DanDePetris
I realize this is unpopular to say, but U.S. sanctions are definitely having an impact on global energy prices. You can’t sanction three huge crude producers (Russia, Iran, and Venezuela) and think it’s not going to have an adverse effect at the pump. It’s silly to say otherwise.
Iran and Venezuela, for example, have the capacity to bring a combined 4.5-5.0 million barrels per day to the market (maybe even more). Neither country can do it today because customers are terrified of getting cut off from the U.S. financial system.
Is Russia’s war in Ukraine spiking energy around the world? Of course. But let’s not sit here and pretend U.S. sanctions don’t have anything to do with the high prices we’re currently seeing (higher still when the EU’s insurance ban on Russian oil kicks in at end of the year).
https://twitter.com/DanDePetris/status/1548487782506512384
I realize this is unpopular to say, but U.S. sanctions are definitely having an impact on global energy prices. You can’t sanction three huge crude producers (Russia, Iran, and Venezuela) and think it’s not going to have an adverse effect at the pump. It’s silly to say otherwise.
Iran and Venezuela, for example, have the capacity to bring a combined 4.5-5.0 million barrels per day to the market (maybe even more). Neither country can do it today because customers are terrified of getting cut off from the U.S. financial system.
Is Russia’s war in Ukraine spiking energy around the world? Of course. But let’s not sit here and pretend U.S. sanctions don’t have anything to do with the high prices we’re currently seeing (higher still when the EU’s insurance ban on Russian oil kicks in at end of the year).
https://twitter.com/DanDePetris/status/1548487782506512384
well 大洋国Bb还是一如既往的颐指气使
Hungarians protest for second day against tax overhaul
Protesters in Hungary's capital blocked main traffic arteries for the second day in a row Wednesday in opposition to a tax overhaul pushed through this week by the country's right-wing governing party.
Several thousand demonstrators, many of them independent entrepreneurs affected by the new changes, gathered in a main square beside Hungary's parliament to protest a law passed Tuesday that many fear will result in significant tax hikes.
...
Hungary's government says many companies have abused the system by having workers on contracts rather than employing them, thus depriving the country's budget of between 250 and 300 billion Hungarian forints (€608 million to €730 million) in tax revenues annually.
...
Re-elected in April, Orban is facing his toughest challenge since taking power in a 2010 landslide, with inflation at a two-decade high, the forint at record lows and European Union funds in limbo amid a dispute over democratic standards.
A tightening of gas supplies to Europe and soaring fuel costs since Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February have added to pressure on Orban, whose right-wing Fidesz is still by far the most popular party in Hungary.
On Wednesday his government ordered an export ban on fuels like gas and scrapped a years-long cap on utility prices for higher-usage households, rolling back one of the 59-year-old prime minister's signature economic policies.
The measure will sharply increase electricity and gas prices for households using more energy than average consumption levels.
Protesters in Hungary's capital blocked main traffic arteries for the second day in a row Wednesday in opposition to a tax overhaul pushed through this week by the country's right-wing governing party.
Several thousand demonstrators, many of them independent entrepreneurs affected by the new changes, gathered in a main square beside Hungary's parliament to protest a law passed Tuesday that many fear will result in significant tax hikes.
...
Hungary's government says many companies have abused the system by having workers on contracts rather than employing them, thus depriving the country's budget of between 250 and 300 billion Hungarian forints (€608 million to €730 million) in tax revenues annually.
...
Re-elected in April, Orban is facing his toughest challenge since taking power in a 2010 landslide, with inflation at a two-decade high, the forint at record lows and European Union funds in limbo amid a dispute over democratic standards.
A tightening of gas supplies to Europe and soaring fuel costs since Russia's invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February have added to pressure on Orban, whose right-wing Fidesz is still by far the most popular party in Hungary.
On Wednesday his government ordered an export ban on fuels like gas and scrapped a years-long cap on utility prices for higher-usage households, rolling back one of the 59-year-old prime minister's signature economic policies.
The measure will sharply increase electricity and gas prices for households using more energy than average consumption levels.
Kemi Badenoch: Labour’s still living in the past on race
...As equalities minister, a post she held alongside her main portfolio, she impressed colleagues with her response to the Black Lives Matter movement. She rejects the idea that all white people are, on some level, inherently racist.
While accepting that racism still exists in Britain, she is also alarmed at what she sees as the spread of damaging narratives, such as the teaching of white privilege in schools, which she feels merely divides communities and reinforces the notion that ethnic minorities lack the agency to effect change.
...
“What is amazing is how when you talk to some people in Labour they are still pretending it’s 1955 or 1948 and exactly the same as when the Windrush generation arrived.
“It is as though they have to pretend nothing has changed in order to justify their own argument. It is destructive for young people, because what they hear is the message that it doesn’t matter what you do, people are going to try and stop you. It means that they don’t bother, they are defeated before they start.
“The argument I make to people is that we have all been the victims of crime, but we don’t all think that our country is institutionally criminal. That is not to say there is not racism in this country, but to pretend that is all that is going on and to . . . overemphasise it will make the country more divided.
“I don’t think that people who make this argument understand that they are playing with fire. They are poisoning the well of society.”
...
Elsewhere, Badenoch has played a leading role in countering what she sees as attempts by pressure groups to push through gender-neutral language and diminish the importance of science and biological sex in decision-making.
She has gone all out to make sure Conservative MPs know exactly where she stands. The unisex lavatory signs at her campaign launch venue were covered over with “men” and “ladies” stickers.
...
Some Conservatives labelled an “anti-woke culture warrior” might wear it as a badge of honour but Badenoch despises the term and prefers to carefully weigh up the evidence.
Her Nigerian upbringing had a huge impact on her personal and political beliefs, she says. Raised by her father, a doctor, and mother, an esteemed academic at the University of Lagos, as a “baptised Methodist”, she now regards herself as “agnostic” while remaining a “cultural Christian”.
...As equalities minister, a post she held alongside her main portfolio, she impressed colleagues with her response to the Black Lives Matter movement. She rejects the idea that all white people are, on some level, inherently racist.
While accepting that racism still exists in Britain, she is also alarmed at what she sees as the spread of damaging narratives, such as the teaching of white privilege in schools, which she feels merely divides communities and reinforces the notion that ethnic minorities lack the agency to effect change.
...
“What is amazing is how when you talk to some people in Labour they are still pretending it’s 1955 or 1948 and exactly the same as when the Windrush generation arrived.
“It is as though they have to pretend nothing has changed in order to justify their own argument. It is destructive for young people, because what they hear is the message that it doesn’t matter what you do, people are going to try and stop you. It means that they don’t bother, they are defeated before they start.
“The argument I make to people is that we have all been the victims of crime, but we don’t all think that our country is institutionally criminal. That is not to say there is not racism in this country, but to pretend that is all that is going on and to . . . overemphasise it will make the country more divided.
“I don’t think that people who make this argument understand that they are playing with fire. They are poisoning the well of society.”
...
Elsewhere, Badenoch has played a leading role in countering what she sees as attempts by pressure groups to push through gender-neutral language and diminish the importance of science and biological sex in decision-making.
She has gone all out to make sure Conservative MPs know exactly where she stands. The unisex lavatory signs at her campaign launch venue were covered over with “men” and “ladies” stickers.
...
Some Conservatives labelled an “anti-woke culture warrior” might wear it as a badge of honour but Badenoch despises the term and prefers to carefully weigh up the evidence.
Her Nigerian upbringing had a huge impact on her personal and political beliefs, she says. Raised by her father, a doctor, and mother, an esteemed academic at the University of Lagos, as a “baptised Methodist”, she now regards herself as “agnostic” while remaining a “cultural Christian”.
Anneka Treon @AnnekaTreon
Do people understand how bag things are getting in Germany? Thread:
Vonovia the largest real estate company will drop the temperature of gas heated buildings to 17 degrees Celsius at night. Some housing cooperatives and giving quotas for when residents can use hot water
There is talk of an energy state subsidy of €9 billion, similar to the money provided to the airline Lufthansa at the height of the coronavirus crisis.
"Our country may be heading for the worst economic crisis since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany," said Friedrich Merz, leader of the biggest opposition party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
For the first time in decades, the balance of trade is tipping so that the country is importing more goods than it is exporting. German companies are being threatened with a loss of international competitiveness
Industrial production of steel, chemicals, and glass could fall by 50%
And the DAX is only down as much as the Eurostoxx YTD. Feels like markets are really not pricing this in
The risk of a recession in Germany has more than doubled after the war on Ukraine
https://twitter.com/AnnekaTreon/status/1548189275639844864
Do people understand how bag things are getting in Germany? Thread:
Vonovia the largest real estate company will drop the temperature of gas heated buildings to 17 degrees Celsius at night. Some housing cooperatives and giving quotas for when residents can use hot water
There is talk of an energy state subsidy of €9 billion, similar to the money provided to the airline Lufthansa at the height of the coronavirus crisis.
"Our country may be heading for the worst economic crisis since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany," said Friedrich Merz, leader of the biggest opposition party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
For the first time in decades, the balance of trade is tipping so that the country is importing more goods than it is exporting. German companies are being threatened with a loss of international competitiveness
Industrial production of steel, chemicals, and glass could fall by 50%
And the DAX is only down as much as the Eurostoxx YTD. Feels like markets are really not pricing this in
The risk of a recession in Germany has more than doubled after the war on Ukraine
https://twitter.com/AnnekaTreon/status/1548189275639844864
Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com @JordanSchachtel
What their masters want: ESG and CBDC approved slavery
Current reality: Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe & they are months away from sovereign default on billions of $$$ in liabilities.
Both options don't seem great! Consider a peace deal?
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1548696448061120523
Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com @JordanSchachtel
Interesting to see Ukraine go full WEF narrative mode.
It's a pitch to the VCs, aka, western governments, that they will be the testing ground for their "you will own nothing and be happy" statist utopia.
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1548697172597784579
What their masters want: ESG and CBDC approved slavery
Current reality: Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe & they are months away from sovereign default on billions of $$$ in liabilities.
Both options don't seem great! Consider a peace deal?
Mykhailo Fedorov @FedorovMykhailo
Ukraine government official
Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building.
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1548696448061120523
Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.substack.com @JordanSchachtel
Interesting to see Ukraine go full WEF narrative mode.
It's a pitch to the VCs, aka, western governments, that they will be the testing ground for their "you will own nothing and be happy" statist utopia.
https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1548697172597784579
Colin Wright @SwipeWright
The woke always pretend not to care about the things they obsess over. It's a way they try to paint you as the fanatic.
For the record, you should never participate in pronouns exchange rituals. I explain why here:
When Asked ‘What Are Your Pronouns,’ Don’t Answer
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1548307123242557441
Colin Wright @SwipeWright
Voting based on opposition to "Wokeness" is not voting based on a "single issue." It's essentially voting against the implementation of a theocracy that is attempting to dramatically transform all aspects of society—law, education, science, morality, etc.—to align with its dogma.
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1548724161245323265
The woke always pretend not to care about the things they obsess over. It's a way they try to paint you as the fanatic.
For the record, you should never participate in pronouns exchange rituals. I explain why here:
When Asked ‘What Are Your Pronouns,’ Don’t Answer
Elizabeth Spiers @espiers
White male conservatives care more about pronouns than any leftist or trans person I know. It’s truly unhinged.
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1548307123242557441
Colin Wright @SwipeWright
Voting based on opposition to "Wokeness" is not voting based on a "single issue." It's essentially voting against the implementation of a theocracy that is attempting to dramatically transform all aspects of society—law, education, science, morality, etc.—to align with its dogma.
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1548724161245323265
Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus
Democrat insanity pushes some nonwhite people to the GOP, specifically some Latinos. The GOP, being the Stupid Party, sees it as an opportunity to justify doing what it already wanted to do: shill fot increased immigration to please cheap labor donors
First look: RNC prepares immigrants for naturalization test
The GOP wants to build the border wall and restrict the legal immigration system about as much as the Democratic Party, which is to say it doesn't.
The moment Democrats began grooming little kids and some Latinos fled as a result, the GOP saw an opportunity to rehabilitate its immigration agenda that became unpopular in the Trump years. It's the same mass legal immigration plank with an "America First" sticker slapped on it.
The "multiracial coalition of working-class voters" meme is, in practice, a cover for the same trash establishment GOP agenda, now papered over with diversity and inclusion rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548643648459489280
Democrat insanity pushes some nonwhite people to the GOP, specifically some Latinos. The GOP, being the Stupid Party, sees it as an opportunity to justify doing what it already wanted to do: shill fot increased immigration to please cheap labor donors
First look: RNC prepares immigrants for naturalization test
The GOP wants to build the border wall and restrict the legal immigration system about as much as the Democratic Party, which is to say it doesn't.
The moment Democrats began grooming little kids and some Latinos fled as a result, the GOP saw an opportunity to rehabilitate its immigration agenda that became unpopular in the Trump years. It's the same mass legal immigration plank with an "America First" sticker slapped on it.
The "multiracial coalition of working-class voters" meme is, in practice, a cover for the same trash establishment GOP agenda, now papered over with diversity and inclusion rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548643648459489280
Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus
I live in a conservative midwestern town where people waved Trump flags, American flags and Confederate flags on sidewalks ahead of the 2020 election daily and even here we're dealing with leftist control of the local library. There's no running from this.
200 pack Ashland Public Library seeking removal of health books they see as pornographic
I'm going to attend the next meeting and probably report on it. The library isn't backing down, so it sounds like they need more pressure applied.
The leftist presence is amplified by the local university, which really is like a conduit for these people to move into places where they otherwise wouldn't exist or have support.
It's not "cool" to care about these low level civic offices but it actually matters a lot, libs and leftists are all over them because we simply stopped caring about them and gave them up. We are waging total war and that includes your local library board.
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548719633452105730
I live in a conservative midwestern town where people waved Trump flags, American flags and Confederate flags on sidewalks ahead of the 2020 election daily and even here we're dealing with leftist control of the local library. There's no running from this.
200 pack Ashland Public Library seeking removal of health books they see as pornographic
I'm going to attend the next meeting and probably report on it. The library isn't backing down, so it sounds like they need more pressure applied.
The leftist presence is amplified by the local university, which really is like a conduit for these people to move into places where they otherwise wouldn't exist or have support.
It's not "cool" to care about these low level civic offices but it actually matters a lot, libs and leftists are all over them because we simply stopped caring about them and gave them up. We are waging total war and that includes your local library board.
https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1548719633452105730
有人觉得庞贝的毁灭 毁掉了不少当时开放的文化和社会很可惜 但有的人看来却只觉得好似
Voters of color are backing the GOP at historic levels
...The Times poll showed that Democrats were ahead by around 25 points among voters of color on the generic congressional ballot, which usually asks respondents some form of the following question: "If the elections for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican party?" Democrats trailed among White voters on this same question by 10 points.
A 35-point racial gap is minuscule by historical standards.
I decided to investigate further by averaging polling data from CNN/SSRS, Fox, Marist College, Monmouth University and The New York Times.
The average showed Democrats up by 30 points among voters of color and losing White voters by 14 points -- a somewhat larger 44-point racial gap but still historically small.
In fact, it's the smallest divide this century.
...
Part of why that is occurring is the changing demographic makeup of voters of color. They're a lot more Hispanic than they used to be. At the same time, they're a lot less Black. Hispanic voters don't support Democrats as much as Black voters.
But that's not all that's going on. Democratic support from Asian American, Black and Hispanic voters is much lower than it has usually been. (See my previous analyses on these different parts of the electorate.)
...
When we examine more recent 2022 polling, we see that men are backing generic Republican House candidates by an average of 9 points. Women are supporting generic Democratic House candidates by an average of 7 points. That makes for a 16-point gender gap.
In 2018 and 2020, the divide between men and women was about 21 points, according to Catalist and exit poll data.
The shift here, while relatively small, is notable for two connected reasons.
The first is that it does not seem like the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has divided men and women more than they previously had been in terms of voting patterns.
The second is that women, even after the high court's decision, seem to be supporting Republican candidates more than they have in recent years. You'd have to go back to the 2014 cycle -- a good one for the GOP -- to see women backing Republican candidates at higher levels than they are now.
The bottom line here is that although we're becoming more divided in some ways, we're less divided along two notable demographic lines.
...The Times poll showed that Democrats were ahead by around 25 points among voters of color on the generic congressional ballot, which usually asks respondents some form of the following question: "If the elections for Congress were held today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican party?" Democrats trailed among White voters on this same question by 10 points.
A 35-point racial gap is minuscule by historical standards.
I decided to investigate further by averaging polling data from CNN/SSRS, Fox, Marist College, Monmouth University and The New York Times.
The average showed Democrats up by 30 points among voters of color and losing White voters by 14 points -- a somewhat larger 44-point racial gap but still historically small.
In fact, it's the smallest divide this century.
...
Part of why that is occurring is the changing demographic makeup of voters of color. They're a lot more Hispanic than they used to be. At the same time, they're a lot less Black. Hispanic voters don't support Democrats as much as Black voters.
But that's not all that's going on. Democratic support from Asian American, Black and Hispanic voters is much lower than it has usually been. (See my previous analyses on these different parts of the electorate.)
...
When we examine more recent 2022 polling, we see that men are backing generic Republican House candidates by an average of 9 points. Women are supporting generic Democratic House candidates by an average of 7 points. That makes for a 16-point gender gap.
In 2018 and 2020, the divide between men and women was about 21 points, according to Catalist and exit poll data.
The shift here, while relatively small, is notable for two connected reasons.
The first is that it does not seem like the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has divided men and women more than they previously had been in terms of voting patterns.
The second is that women, even after the high court's decision, seem to be supporting Republican candidates more than they have in recent years. You'd have to go back to the 2014 cycle -- a good one for the GOP -- to see women backing Republican candidates at higher levels than they are now.
The bottom line here is that although we're becoming more divided in some ways, we're less divided along two notable demographic lines.
Auron MacIntyre @AuronMacintyre
It's a truly amazing thing that entire civilizations were taught that saying "no we live here and want to take care of our families and community first" was the most evil thing imaginable
The global nature of it is the really stunning part
Everything the liberal world order touches has fallen to this, the real pandemic that can topple civilizations, the subversion of the most basic elements that defend their culture
https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1549016168706490372
It's a truly amazing thing that entire civilizations were taught that saying "no we live here and want to take care of our families and community first" was the most evil thing imaginable
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ
Badenoch: "People – rightly – recognise that building more homes while doing nothing to bring immigration down is like running up the down escalator". Calls for "sustainable" levels of immigration
https://t.co/eSRZWr8NN2
The global nature of it is the really stunning part
Everything the liberal world order touches has fallen to this, the real pandemic that can topple civilizations, the subversion of the most basic elements that defend their culture
https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1549016168706490372
Mark J. Perry @Mark_J_Perry
Under Biden, there's been 3.25M unlawful migrant crossings at the US southern border. As a state, that would rank as the 31st largest state by population, ahead of Iowa & behind Utah. At the current pace, we can expect +9M illegal migrants during Biden's term. @marcthiessen
https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1549037497606295552
Ryan James Girdusky @RyanGirdusky
This is all part of the program. This has caused a huge problem of drugs, criminals, terrorists and welfare dependents being caught at the border and many entering the interior of the country. Local social services are strained and the cost of housing spikes. Total disaster.
https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1549055657160097793
Under Biden, there's been 3.25M unlawful migrant crossings at the US southern border. As a state, that would rank as the 31st largest state by population, ahead of Iowa & behind Utah. At the current pace, we can expect +9M illegal migrants during Biden's term. @marcthiessen
https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1549037497606295552
Ryan James Girdusky @RyanGirdusky
This is all part of the program. This has caused a huge problem of drugs, criminals, terrorists and welfare dependents being caught at the border and many entering the interior of the country. Local social services are strained and the cost of housing spikes. Total disaster.
Mark J. Perry @Mark_J_Perry
Under Biden, there's been 3.25M unlawful migrant crossings at the US southern border. As a state, that would rank as the 31st largest state by population, ahead of Iowa & behind Utah. At the current pace, we can expect +9M illegal migrants during Biden's term. @marcthiessen
https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1549055657160097793