Thursday, October 01, 2020

Coronavirus News (248)

 A Theory About Conspiracy Theories In a new study, psychologists tried to get a handle on the personality types that might be prone to outlandish beliefs. .......... More than 1 in 3 Americans believe that the Chinese government engineered the coronavirus as a weapon, and another third are convinced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has exaggerated the threat of Covid-19 to undermine President Trump. ......... At its extremes, these theories include cannibals and satanic pedophiles, (courtesy of the so-called QAnon theory, circulating online); lizard-people, disguised as corporate leaders and celebrities (rooted in alien abduction stories and science fiction); and, in this year of the plague, evil scientists and governments, all conspiring to use Covid-19 for their own dark purposes. .............  People often adopt conspiracy beliefs as a balm for deep grievance. The theories afford some psychological ballast, a sense of control, an internal narrative to make sense of a world that seems senseless. ........ and a third addressed extremes, like narcissistic tendencies. (“I often have to deal with people who are less important than me.”) ............ The personality features that were solidly linked to conspiracy beliefs included some usual suspects: entitlement, self-centered impulsivity, cold-heartedness (the confident injustice collector), elevated levels of depressive moods and anxiousness (the moody figure, confined by age or circumstance). Another one emerged from the questionnaire that aimed to assess personality disorders — a pattern of thinking called “psychoticism.” ............ Psychoticism is a core feature of so-called schizo-typal personality disorder, characterized in part by “odd beliefs and magical thinking” and “paranoid ideation.” In the language of psychiatry, it is a milder form of full-blown psychosis, the recurrent delusional state that characterizes schizophrenia. It’s a pattern of magical thinking that goes well beyond garden variety superstition and usually comes across socially as disjointed, uncanny or “off.” .............. at a time like this, when people are worried about the virus, headlines like ‘Vitamin C Cures Covid’ or ‘It’s All a Hoax’ tend to travel widely. Eventually, these things reach the Crazy Uncle, who then shares it” with his like-minded network. ........... As for the bloodsucking, cartoon versions, those are likely to be keepers too, the new research suggests. They have a core constituency, and in the digital era its members are going to quickly find one another.

The Right’s Relentless Supreme Court Justice Picking Machine Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is the fruit of decades of activity by a tightly organized network. .......... Armed with an originalist doctrine that enables subjective interpretation of the Constitution, and supported by a growing willingness to overturn precedent by jettisoning the principle of stare decisis (“to stand by things decided”), the Supreme Court will be able to knock down what remains of the liberal legal edifice constructed by the Warren Court from 1953 to 1969. .............. Judges purporting to engage in originalist analysis often project onto the Framers their own personal and political preferences. The result is an unprincipled and often patently disingenuous jurisprudence. There is no evidence, for example, for the claims advanced by originalists that the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause prohibited affirmative action or that the original meaning of the First Amendment guaranteed corporations a constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money to dominate the election of public officials. Both of these claims, however, are central to today’s conservative constitutional agenda. .............  The elite constituency of conservative ideologues and rich donors that draws up the approved list of candidates to fill judicial vacancies does so behind closed doors with little transparency. ........ on Sept. 26, the network announced that it would spend “at least $10 million” in support of Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination. ....... the court is the least democratic of all institutions ..... with Barrett on the court it will be easier to find five potential votes to reverse Roe v Wade ....... To overturn Roe v. Wade, the majority would have to explain why overruling the decision is consistent with stare decisis. Justice Thomas and Judge Barrett have written about how stare decisis itself can violate the Constitution ........... No other nominee to the court, Marcus continued, has openly endorsed views as extreme as Barrett’s on the doctrine of stare decisis, the principle that the court should not lightly overrule its precedents. In a series of law review articles, Barrett makes clear that in matters of constitutional interpretation, she would not hesitate to jettison decisions with which she disagrees. .......... Taking Amy Coney Barrett at her word makes clear that she would feel quite free to reconsider Roe v. Wade. This is a very big deal. I doubt anyone on Trump’s short list would hesitate to overrule, but not everyone on the list is as transparent about it. ........... conflict can also have an integrative function and “prevent the ossification of the social system by exerting pressure for innovation and creativity.”  

Hong Kong Is China, Like It Or Not  Something had to be done, and the Chinese authorities did it. The scale and frequency of antigovernment protests has now subsided — thanks to a national security law for Hong Kong promulgated in Beijing on June 30. ...... Several prominent democracy advocates have since announced their retirement from politics, disbanded their parties or fled the city. ....... Last year’s prolonged unrest dented Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the best places in the world in which to do business. ....... For now, despite all the jitters, about 28 people have been arrested under the law. And only one person has been charged — for secession and terrorism: a 23-year-old man accused of driving a motorbike into police officers and displaying a banner that read “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times.” His case is being dealt with in accordance with due process and our criminal laws. ........ One person’s “severe” is someone else’s intended effect. ........ I see little chance of any compromise being reached between the authorities in Beijing and the democratic camp in Hong Kong, be it about the right to elect directly the chief executive or any other major matter. From Beijing’s point of view, democratic development in Hong Kong has brought about nothing but chaos, polarization and anti-China sentiment. .......... Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong is a special administrative region that enjoys a “high degree of autonomy” — which, by definition, means not complete autonomy, a point I labor to explain to foreign officials and politicians. Any attempt to alter Hong Kong’s formal political status and turn the city into a de facto independent political entity, or to otherwise free it of Beijing’s control, is a fundamental challenge to China’s sovereignty. .......... A realistic goal for Hong Kong ought to be remaining the freest and most international city in China and retaining its unique international status, thanks to the city’s many bilateral agreements with foreign countries and its membership in numerous international organizations. .......... Foreign governments should not benchmark what happens in Hong Kong against standards that prevail in Western countries; those are governed by a political system entirely different from China’s. Instead, they should benchmark Hong Kong against the rest of China, and measure how the city can maintain its unique characteristics — openness, a commitment to personal rights and freedoms, respect for the rule of law and the ability to reinvent itself economically. Beijing’s national security law is saving “one country, two systems” by ensuring that Hong Kong does not become a danger to China. 







5/8/23 Update: Goshen (NY) puts Third World corruption to shame, thanks to greedy, corrupt, unethical lawyers like Andra Dumais. ..... I toppled a Third World dictator and German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. I am not going to get intimidated by some small-town racist. Andrea Dumais is a small-town racist. ....... You are treating me worse than the people 2,000 years ago..... The Soviet bureaucracy of a judicial process.
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The Social Dilemma

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The Social Dilemma’ Review: Unplug and Run This documentary from Jeff Orlowski explores how addiction and privacy breaches are features, not bugs, of social media platforms. ......... That social media can be addictive and creepy isn’t a revelation to anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. But in Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” conscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug. .......... the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists. ........ men and (a few) women who helped build social media and now fear the effects of their creations on users’ mental health and the foundations of democracy. They deliver their cautionary testimonies with the force of a start-up pitch, employing crisp aphorisms and pithy analogies. ......... Russia didn’t hack Facebook; it simply used the platform. ........ fictional scenes of a suburban family suffering the consequences of social-media addiction. There are silent dinners, a pubescent daughter (Sophia Hammons) with self-image issues and a teenage son (Skyler Gisondo) who’s radicalized by YouTube recommendations promoting a vague ideology. ............ the movie’s interlocutors pin an increase in mental illness on social media usage yet don’t acknowledge factors like a rise in economic insecurity. .......... many suggest that with the right changes, we can salvage the good of social media without the bad ......... two distinct targets of critique: the technology that causes destructive behaviors and the culture of unchecked capitalism that produces it. ......... the incursion of data mining and manipulative technology ....... The movie is streaming on Netflix, where it’ll become another node in the service’s data-based algorithm.



I think there is a solution. And the solution is to treat all data gathered around an individual to be the property of that individual. Companies may monetize that data, but the individual keeps the big chunk of the earning. The establishment of proper property rights might also be the antidote to the culture mindless data collecting. The data can fund the UBI, or Universal Basic Income, I think. 

One step could be the formation of a T100, the top 100 tech companies in the world by market cap. That T100 would voluntarily establish the data rights. It might be a 70-30 split in favor of the individual. 

 ‘The Social Dilemma’ Will Freak You Out—But There’s More to the Story    Dramatic political polarization. Rising anxiety and depression. An uptick in teen suicide rates. Misinformation that spreads like wildfire. The common denominator of all these phenomena is that they’re fueled in part by our seemingly innocuous participation in digital social networking. But how can simple acts like sharing photos and articles, reading the news, and connecting with friends have such destructive consequences? ............... the way social media gets people “hooked” by exploiting the brain’s dopamine response and using machine learning algorithms to serve up the customized content most likely to keep each person scrolling/watching/clicking. ........  “Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded,” says Jeff Siebert, a former exec at Twitter. The intelligence gleaned from those actions is then used in conjunction with our own psychological weaknesses to get us to watch more videos, share more content, see more ads, and continue driving Big Tech’s money-making engine. .............  For the first few years of social media’s existence, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Now it’s on a nosedive to the other end of the spectrum—we’re condemning it and focusing on its ills and unintended consequences. The next phase is to find some kind of balance, most likely through adjustments in design and, possibly, regulation. .......... The issue with social media is that it’s going to be a lot trickier to fix than, say, adding seatbelts and air bags to cars. The sheer size and reach of these tools, and the way in which they overlap with issues of freedom of speech and privacy—not to mention how they’ve changed the way humans interact—means it will likely take a lot of trial and error to come out with tools that feel good for us to use without being addicting, give us only true, unbiased information in a way that’s engaging without preying on our emotions, and allow us to share content and experiences while preventing misinformation and hate speech. ................ “While we’ve all been looking out for the moment when AI would overwhelm human strengths—when would we get the Singularity, when would AI take our jobs, when would it be smarter than humans—we missed this much much earlier point when technology didn’t overwhelm human strengths, but it undermined human weaknesses.”

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Coronavirus News (247)

With Cross Talk, Lies and Mockery, Trump Tramples Decorum in Debate With Biden Interrupting Joe Biden nearly every time he spoke, President Trump made little attempt to reassure swing voters about his leadership. Mr. Biden hit back: “This is so unpresidential.”

MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman The portrait of MBS that emerges from the book resembles no one so much as the brash young man who took power in Libya in 1969: Muammar al-Qaddafi, who initially presented himself as an ambitious modernizer but who went on to spend the next 40 years destroying his own country and spreading mayhem throughout the world.

A Foreign Policy for the Day After Trump Reimagining—not Restoring—the Liberal International Order  ......... the new administration may be tempted to restore, rather than reimagine, U.S. foreign policy in the hope of reversing four years of damage to the liberal international order. But a Biden White House will also field calls from both sides of the political aisle for a military and an economic retreat on the grounds that U.S. security is best served by making the country more self-sufficient and reducing its global ambitions. ......... The country has a narrowing window in which to reconfigure its foreign policy to ensure that it remains mighty even though it is no longer the uncontested superpower. ........ The current period of disruption and turmoil presents the greatest world-ordering opportunity since the end of the Cold War—and perhaps since World War II. The United States must lead in turning the present destruction into a moment of creation. ...........  an epochal global pandemic has revealed that international institutions are threadbare and multilateral cooperation is elusive ............ An open world is one in which states are free to make independent political decisions; international waters, airspace, and space remain accessible to military and commercial traffic; and countries cooperate informally and through modernized international institutions. The United States should accept the reality that its rivals, such as China, are stronger than they once were and will have greater influence, but Washington must resist any attempts to establish spheres of dominance—whether territorial or technological—that are impermeable to outside commercial, military, or diplomatic access. That means opposing the efforts of hostile nations to dominate their regions, subvert the political processes of independent states, and close off vital waterways, airspaces, or information spaces. ............  Achieving an open world does not, however, require the United States to dominate all prospective military or political challengers, as it did in the post–Cold War era. ........... The United States should collaborate with its allies and partners to modernize international institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and prevent closed societies like China’s from exploiting the openness of others, particularly when it comes to intellectual property and digital trade. The United States should also develop new institutions or regimes in undergoverned areas, such as cyberspace, in which Washington has a clear interest in setting open norms and rules. Authoritarian great powers will certainly compete to try to shape the future global order. But the United States and its partners must keep authoritarians from dominating beyond their borders, thereby ensuring that the world remains accessible and interdependent. ................  Such competition is already evident in areas subject to rapid technological change and few clear rules, such as Internet governance and artificial intelligence. China and Russia prefer a governance model that establishes state control over information. ............. Together with partner states, technology firms, and civil society groups, Washington should work to set down rules for data storage, privacy, cybercrime, and hacking. ...........  Autocracies may respond by developing “splinternets,” in which nations or blocs of nations cordon off flows of information. .........  An international order is similarly vital in confronting such existential threats as climate change and global pandemics. The United States should rejoin the Paris climate accord and lobby other major emitters to unite in embracing new and ambitious domestic climate goals. These additional commitments should be transparent and enforceable, allowing Washington to monitor the implementation of environmental measures and confront cheaters with economic sanctions. The United States must also return to the World Health Organization, working to reform and strengthen it. Washington should belatedly demonstrate leadership in the global response to COVID-19 by sharing vaccines and critical supplies with partners, and it should work with the G-7 to manage follow-on economic shocks and with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to provide economic relief to the developing world. ...............  foreign policy cannot be made by the Defense Department alone. The United States must revitalize the State Department and rebalance national security spending toward diplomacy and development. To make an open world, the United States needs a well-funded and expert diplomatic corps to manage ties with small and middling powers while engaging with great-power rivals. .................  Washington should envision success as the defense of U.S. interests without having to resort to war. ........... If the United States fails to assume this mantle of leadership, succumbing either to nostalgia for the post–Cold War order or to introverted nationalism, it will find itself utterly ill equipped for the world a decade from now.

How ‘Rage’ Challenged Bob Woodward He has covered nine presidents over 50 years, making him perhaps the country’s most enduring chronicler of the Oval Office. His latest is yet another best seller, drawing praise and criticism along the way.  .......  In his 50 years as a journalist, he has written 20 books and covered nine presidents. .......  At either end of his long bibliography are two of the most divisive American presidents in generations: Richard Nixon and Mr. Trump. ....... “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.” ........ Mr. Woodward stood out at the newspaper for his tidy appearance. Newsrooms can be sloppy places, but Mr. Woodward was always neatly dressed. He was extremely polite, almost obsequious, Mr. Downie said, and he kept a toothbrush and toothpaste in his desk. .......... he always tries to schedule at least four hours for interviews, which often take place over a meal or coffee at his house, where he has lived since 1976. But if a source is dodging his calls, he’ll still show up on their doorstep — he likes to joke that 8:17 p.m. is the best time to drop by. ........... He estimates he has 200 cardboard boxes, kept in temperature controlled storage, that are filled with records going back to when he worked for the Montgomery County Sentinel. 

For a President Who ‘Needs to Touch the Flame,’ Bob Woodward Was Irresistible President Trump gave 18 interviews to the famed Watergate journalist, gambling that he could control the narrative. Instead, he undermined himself shortly before an election. .......... Why give so much access to a journalist who made his reputation taking down a president during Watergate? And the answer is: because he is Donald Trump. He has infinite faith in his ability to spin his own story. He is forever seeking approval and validation from celebrity and establishment figures like Mr. Woodward. And as much as he likes to excoriate the “fake news,” he is drawn irresistibly to the spotlight. ...............  “He’s profoundly addicted to public attention and the media is his vehicle for making sure he gets it. His view is he can live with negative coverage and positive coverage. He can’t live with no coverage. So he constantly puts himself in the cross hairs.” ........ “He always needs to touch the flame.” ........ Mr. Woodward has enjoyed access to the Oval Office that few journalists of his generation have. ........ “Instead of just sitting down for an interview, Trump treated a reporter famous for bringing down a president like his personal sounding board. It is truly one of the most stupidly self-destructive communications decisions made by a politician in memory.” .......... Indeed, Mr. Trump called Mr. Woodward at night when aides presumably were not around. He gave Mr. Woodward a phone number so that the author could call in and leave a message to have him call back without going through the elaborate bureaucracy that a presidential interview involves in a normal White House. ............ At one point, according to the book, when Melania Trump walked in, the president boasted, “Honey, I’m talking to Bob Woodward.” ........... “It actually reflects how deeply insecure he is about his own self-worth.” ............ “Bob Woodward is somebody that I respect, just from hearing the name for many, many years, not knowing too much about his work, not caring about his work,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a news briefing. “But I thought it would be interesting to talk to him for a period of calls.” “I did it out of curiosity,” he added, “because I do have respect and I want to see, I wonder whether or not somebody like that can write good. I don’t think he can, but let’s see what happens.” 

5 Takeaways From ‘Rage,’ Bob Woodward’s New Book About Trump Mr. Woodward reveals that President Trump sought to play down the severity of the coronavirus and repeatedly denigrated the U.S. military. ............... President Trump described his chemistry with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to the journalist Bob Woodward, saying: “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s going to happen.” ............  Mr. Woodward wrote that he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, “We’re defending you, we’re allowing you to exist.” ....... Mr. Woodward pointed out that both he and Mr. Trump were “white, privileged” and asked if Mr. Trump was working to “understand the anger and the pain, particularly, Black people feel in this country.” Mr. Trump replied, “No,” and added: “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.”  

How to Keep the Coronavirus at Bay Indoors  Tips for dodging the virus as Americans retreat from colder weather: Open the windows, buy an air filter — and forget the UV lights.  .............  as winter approaches and temperatures drop, people will spend more time indoors, where the coronavirus is more easily transmitted ...... Southern states, for example, saw a spike in infections when the temperatures soared this summer, prompting people to remain inside with the air-conditioners humming.  ..... In poorly ventilated indoor settings, like most restaurants and bars, the virus can remain suspended in the air for long periods and travel distances beyond six feet ....... “Soap and water work beautifully.” .......  the optimal strategy is simply to wear a mask indoors ....... If possible, open your windows ..... “Everybody is inundated right now with the shiny new solutions that are being sold to them,” Dr. Allen said. “And the reality is, it’s a time for the basics.”

Time to shift focus to the maritime sphere Beijing is neither keen on ending the ongoing border stalemate nor reinstating the status quo with India as of March 2020. The peaceful India-China Line of Actual Control in the Northeast is now a thing of the past with China pushing back New Delhi’s claims on Aksai Chin and New Delhi defending against Beijing’s expansive territorial claims and their slow but aggressive implementation. China has crossed the red line with India and India’s LAC with China is not going to be the same ever again: It is the beginning of a long, bitter winter in the Himalayan borders between the two Asian giants. ............. the intensity of the China-Pakistan containment strategy against India today is unprecedented ......... To begin with, New Delhi must seek ways to break up the ‘nutcracker situation’ that the Pakistani and Chinese strategies have forced India into. ......... unlike in the continental sphere where India seems to be hemmed in by China-Pakistan collusion, the maritime sphere is wide open to India to undertake coalition building, rule setting, and other forms of strategic exploration. ............ the country is located right at the centre of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical imagination, in the midst of the oceanic space spanning “from the shores of Africa to that of the Americas” ......... The Euro-American interest in India’s land borders with Pakistan and China is negligible ..........  Germany recently released its Indo-Pacific guidelines following the example of France which brought out its Indo-Pacific strategy last year. ..... the maritime space is a lot more important to China than engaging in opportunistic land grab attempts in the Himalayas, thanks to the massive Chinese trade that happens via the Oceanic routes and the complex geopolitics around the maritime chokepoints which can potentially disrupt that trade. ........ New Delhi must use its Indo-Pacific engagements to dissuade Beijing from salami-slicing Indian territory in the high Himalayas. ............ The Asian geopolitical chessboard awaits bold moves by New Delhi.

Imperatives after India’s September virus peak  After having peaked in the middle of this month, COVID-19 infections could continue till March before turning endemic ......... For every laboratory-diagnosed infection, there were 80 to 100 undocumented infections in the country. ..........  India’s total burden of infection was between 480 million and 600 million. .......  In India’s population of 1,380 million, the proportion infected — in other words the herd immunity — was in the range of 35% and 43%. Since about 30% herd immunity is sufficient to reach the peak of the epidemic curve, we can be confident that India indeed has reached the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic. ............ By simple arithmetic we can foresee some 20-25 million infections annually. .......  Our epidemic began in mid-March and peaked after six months, in mid-September. So it is reasonable to assume that the epidemic will continue for a further six months, until mid-March 2021, before it turns endemic. ...... the risk of severe disease and death will remain among senior citizens and those with chronic diseases. Vaccination is the ready answer to prevent death in these vulnerable subjects. ............ These steps, large-scale total antibody testing and vaccine delivery for those who are antibody negative will entail expenses that must be accommodated in the budgetary allocation for health. They can be more than recovered by the liberation of the economy from COVID-19 constraints. 

On the Quad, define the idea, chart a path The Chinese, however, labelled it as an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It became evident years later that the real reason for China’s hyperreaction was out of concern that such a grouping would “out” China’s plans for naval expansion by focusing on the Indo-Pacific maritime space. China was hoping that its naval build-up might slip under the radar because the Americans were distracted by continental challenges including Russia, Afghanistan and Iran, and would not look sea-ward. .......... The Chinese are skilled at obfuscation. ..........  “A ‘broader Asia’ that broke away geographical boundaries is now beginning to take on a distinct form.”


A new dimension: On India-U.S.-Australia-Japan Quadrilateral  While India continues to engage China diplomatically, and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh have spoken of the importance of a resolution through talks, there is no doubt that an outcome of the tensions will be a strengthening of India’s ties with global powers such as the U.S., as well as formations like the Quad. ............ India is the only Quad member not already tied in a treaty alliance with the others 


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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Coronavirus News (246)

Urban design explained: the signs, the symbols, the mysterious objects, and why LED panels have replaced the glow of neon Cities surround us with arcane signs, symbols and objects of unsuspected meaning, says American radio producer Roman Mars in his new book The 99% Invisible City Mars provides an offbeat guide ‘to decoding the built world’ 

Indo-Pacific strategy gains support as China’s assertiveness fuels fears More nations will be prompted to join US initiative because of Beijing’s behaviour in the region, according to analyst He cites threats to freedom of navigation and overflight, coercive actions against Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, and ‘Wolf Warrior diplomacy’ .......... Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy is seen by Beijing as an effort to rally powers like India and Japan against China’s rise in the region ........ the US-led quadrilateral grouping with Japan, Australia and India, known as the Quad, has repeatedly called for rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing has called the alliance “an anti-China front line”.   


US seeks formal alliance similar to Nato with India, Japan and Australia, State Department official says Washington’s goal is to get countries in the Indo-Pacific region to work together as a bulwark against ‘a potential challenge from China’, says the US official He says the four nations are expected to meet in Delhi sometime this autumn ........... even Nato started with relatively modest expectations and a number of countries [initially] chose neutrality over Nato membership ......... the group of four nations were expected to meet in Delhi sometime this autumn and cited Australia’s possible participation in India’s Malabar naval exercise as an example of progress towards a more formal defence bloc. .......... The naval exercises, taking place mostly in the Bay of Bengal, have been run annually by the US and India since 1992, and have included Japan since 2015. ........... Washington would like to see South Korea, Vietnam and New Zealand to eventually join an expanded version of the quad 

Why is Germany wading into the Indo-Pacific’s strategic waters? Berlin’s relationship with Beijing is founded on economics and trade but now the European giant is taking a bigger interest in the region on the other side of the world Among the main concerns is the South China Sea, an area at risk of becoming a flashpoint ....... Germany’s new Indo-Pacific policy suggests that it is reassessing its relationship with China ....... Germany’s relationship with China has long centred on economics and trade but now that is expected to encompass geopolitical interests and human rights.  

Amy Coney Barrett and the New, Old Anti-Catholicism Critics of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee argue that pious Catholics are a problem for liberalism. They have a point. ........ liberal theorists have long recognized that it’s risky to tolerate notions and movements that could undermine liberal democracy itself. In the case of religious tolerance, liberals have historically grappled with the matter of Roman Catholicism. ............  Roman Catholicism does not readily distinguish between public and private moral obligations. ............ the options of Catholic judges hearing capital punishment cases, which the state permits but the church forbids. Judge Barrett and her co-author maintain that Catholic judges must or should recuse themselves from such cases, concluding that “judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church’s standard.” ........... Catholic hospitals have found themselves embroiled in court battles for refusing to perform or even discuss abortions, regardless of state or federal law. ......... religions whose ethics conflict with the broader culture will shift toward forming small, dense enclaves, where they are unlikely to encounter legal challenges to their preferred practices. 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Meet Donald Trump Over the past five days, we learned a lot about the president and his powers. ........ Trump’s businesses have usually lost money hand over fist ....... “the dogma lives loudly within you.” ...... the Kavanaugh hearings only helped Republicans expand their Senate majority in 2018 ........ Barrett is certainly a way, way more sympathetic character than Kavanaugh was. At this point it’s hard to imagine her being blocked. ....... with this new, 6-3 conservative majority they can wave goodbye not only to abortion rights, but also a ton of other things including protection against gender discrimination and any aggressive federal attempt to beat back climate change. .......... Biden has to win so he might have a chance to appoint Clarence Thomas’s eventual successor and bring the Court back to a 5-4 balance. ......... Trump has spent so much time painting his opponent as a senile idiot ........  All Biden has to say is, I’m Joe, two plus two is four and 10 times 10 is one hundred, I love my wife, I’m not going to declare war on anyone’s suburb, my economic plan is to cut taxes on the middle class, build a faster Acela and declare the Trump hotel in Washington a toxic-waste dump, I won’t blow up the world and I’m definitely not Donald Trump. Argument over. ........ I’d rather have a president who might sometimes get a bit confused than one who deliberately sows confusion. I’d rather lose more of my paycheck in taxes under Biden than lose more of my democracy in demagogic deceit under Trump. ..........  I’ll take Biden’s Medicare expansion over Trump’s repeal of protection for people with pre-existing conditions.   



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Monday, September 28, 2020

Coronavirus News (245)

The Secret To Cultivating A Productive Team From Home  a daily or weekly “PIES” check-in with your teammates. ........... During the check-in, each person rates their PIES (i.e., physical, emotional, intellectual, and sleep quality) on a scale of 1-5. Along with their number, the person provides a quick reason why their score is what it is (e.g. my child was crying all night and I didn’t get any sleep). ........ In order to instill an inclusive and empathetic culture, it’s critical that teams establish regular points of communication. With new projects or teams, there should be regular kickoff/introduction meetings. .........  Distance makes it easier to leave room for miscommunications, misalignments, and silently growing bitterness. .......... eating together virtually. 

World-Class Finance Skills That Can’t Be Automated Integrity is at the core of every world-class finance organization. ......... Empathy allows us to better understand our customers, employees, partners, and the greater good. 

COVID-19 can affect the heart

The China-Laos railway: a way out of poverty or a white elephant in waiting?  A complete default could see China taking ownership of the entire asset, as happened with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, also funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. ......... China’s train manufacturers and railway contractors have been exporting their expertise since completing the country’s first overseas high-speed railway, in Turkey, in 2014. Encouraged by cheap labour and the promise of speedy construction and a reliable product, countries across Africa and Asia have been rolling out rivers of China-backed rail. .........  China is now Laos’ biggest investor ......... an official from Laos’ Finance Ministry predicted the loan would land the country with a bill of US$3 billion in interest payments alone, based on rates of 2 per cent per annum over 30 years. ...... a project moulded more in China’s short-term interests than in Laos’s long-term interest ....... The ADB says Asia will require US$1.7 trillion of infra­structure investment a year until 2030. ........... For good or bad, that train has already left the station.

Why the US dollar is only going to fall faster and harder Given the unprecedented erosion of domestic savings, an explosive current account deficit, and the Fed determined to keep rates flat, expect the dollar to plunge by as much as 35 per cent next year ......... Is the world seeing the end of the aura of American exceptionalism that has given the dollar Teflon-like resilience for most of the post-World War II era? ........ The US dollar slide has entered the early stages of what looks to be a sharp descent, having already fallen by 4.3 per cent in the four months ending in August in terms of its real effective exchange rate ......... the dollar remains the most overvalued major currency in the world. .........  the end of the aura of American exceptionalism ........ The confluence of an unprecedented erosion of domestic savings and the current-account deficit is nothing short of staggering. ......... For the first time since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, the net national savings rate has entered negative territory, at minus 1 per cent in the second quarter. And it did so at speed .......... The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act featured US$1,200 relief cheques to most Americans and a sharp expansion of unemployment insurance benefits. This boosted the personal savings rate to an unheard-of 33.7 per cent in April but this quickly receded to 17.8 per cent in July ........... Like the savings collapse, the current-account dynamic is unfolding in ferocious fashion. .........  Driven by the explosive surge in the federal budget deficit this year and in the next, the collapse of domestic savings and the current-account implosion should unfold at near-lightning speed. ......... Don’t expect the Fed, focused more on supporting equity and bond markets than on leaning against inflation, to save the day. The dollar’s decline has only just begun.


Why the US dollar slide may be a sign of real danger this time The rare event of a general depreciation of the world’s leading currency suggests a fundamental lack of faith that could sink financial markets and undermine the global economy Recent events suggest the dollar could erode from within as the US retreats from international obligations and its domestic economy weakens ........... Dollar depreciation could, as some suggest, simply reflect the fact that financial managers everywhere are “rotating” out of the US currency in search of yield as real or inflation-adjusted returns on dollar securities hit zero or even negative levels. ...............  confidence in currencies and faith in them as measures of value and as mediums of exchange cannot survive the idea that their supply is virtually endless. .......... Central banks have enabled governments to finance fiscal stimulus to the tune of US$11 trillion during the pandemic, pushing total government debt to US$70 trillion .......... many things could fall with the dollar, from global reserves and trade, to banking and financial transactions and commodities. ....... The US could be the biggest loser. The exorbitant privilege it enjoys because the dollar is the global currency means the US does not face balance-of-payments crises while it imports in its own currency. But the dollar world could go the same way as the sterling area, into obscurity. 


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Sunday, September 27, 2020

Coronavirus News (244)

मधेशको समस्या समाधान गर्ने जसपासँग स्पष्ट दृष्टिकोण छैन : सरिता गिरी


‘अब पनि प्रभावकारी ढङ्गले जान सकेनौँ भने देशमा अप्ठ्यारो स्थिति आउँछ’ कम्युनिस्ट पार्टीको नेतृत्वमा सरकार बनेपछि ‘केही पनि भएन वा सम्पूर्ण भयो’ भनेर प्रचार गर्नु सही छैन : प्रचण्ड, नेपाल कम्युनिष्ट पार्टी (नेकपा) का कार्यकारी अध्यक्ष
राजनीतिक षड्यन्त्र र भारतको दबाबको शिकार बनेका रामराजा प्रथम गणतन्त्रवादी नेतालाई राष्ट्रपति हुनबाट रोक्न यसरी भएको थियो चलखेल
केपी ओली गणतन्त्र विरोधी हुन्, प्रचण्ड पनि संविधानसभाको पक्षमा थिएनन् सङ्घीय संरचना, शासकीय स्वरूप, नागरिकता लगायतका कुरा अपूर्ण छन् : डा भट्टराई  
‘ओली राजमा जनताबाट निर्वाचित जेलमा, पराजित संसदमा हुँदो रहेछ’ नक्साबाट नेपाली भूमि उडाउनेहरू नै आज फेरि फिर्ता ल्याउँछु भनिरहेका छन् : राजेन्द्र महतोसँगको अन्तरवार्ता
कहाँ चुक्यो नेपालको संविधान ? संविधान जलाउने र दीपावली मनाउनेबीचको द्वन्द्व यो संविधान रहुन्जेल ज्यामितीय हिसाब बढेर जाने देखिन्छ

Cost Of Racism: U.S. Economy Lost $16 Trillion Because Of Discrimination, Bank Says  Since 2000, U.S. gross domestic product lost that much as a result of discriminatory practices in a range of areas, including in education and access to business loans ........ Citigroup estimates the economy would see a $5 trillion boost over the next five years if the U.S. were to tackle key areas of discrimination against African Americans. ............. $13 trillion lost in potential business revenue because of discriminatory lending to African American entrepreneurs, with an estimated 6.1 million jobs not generated as a result $2.7 trillion in income lost because of disparities in wages suffered by African Americans $218 billion lost over the past two decades because of discrimination in providing housing credit And $90 billion to $113 billion in lifetime income lost from discrimination in accessing higher education 


Economists are growing more worried about the recovery. Blame Congress slashed its fourth-quarter US gross domestic product growth forecast in half to just 3% on an annualized basis because of the deadlock in Washington. That would mark an extreme deceleration from the rapid growth economists are predicting for the third quarter, when Goldman expects US GDP to grow at an annualized pace of 35%. ........... another 870,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week, a level that's four times higher than before the pandemic. ......... Failure to get a stimulus deal will cause a "meaningful hit" to disposable income in the fourth quarter, causing it to drop to pre-pandemic levels ......... "On the aggregate level for the whole economy, we could be seeing a clear slowing down of what was supposed to be a fast rebound" .......... widespread distribution of a vaccine to the full population" will happen by the second quarter of 2021, instead of the first quarter.   

Tesla's value drops $50 billion as Musk's promised cheaper battery three years away  Investors had expected two significant announcements at Musk’s oft-touted “Battery Day”: The development of a “million mile” battery good for 10 years or more, and a specific cost reduction target -- expressed in dollars per kilowatt-hour -- that would finally drop the price of an electric vehicle below that of a gasoline car. Musk offered neither. ............... Tesla expects to eventually be able to build as many as 20 million electric vehicles a year. This year, the entire auto industry expects to deliver 80 million cars globally. Building an affordable electric car “has always been our dream from the beginning of the company” ...... price parity, or the point at which electric vehicles are equal in value to internal combustion cars, is reached when battery packs cost $100 per kilowatt hour (kWh). Tesla’s battery packs cost $156 per kWh in 2019



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Saturday, September 26, 2020

Coronavirus News (243)

U.S. Places Restrictions on China’s Leading Chip Maker The export controls follow a review in which the United States concluded that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation’s chips may be used by the Chinese military. .......... Factories in China churn out a huge share of the world’s cellphones, computers and internet equipment. But the silicon brains of that gear are often shipped in from overseas. ........... Last year, mainland China imported more than $300 billion in computer chips, more than it spent on crude oil. 

Brushing Off Criticism, China’s Xi Calls Policies in Xinjiang ‘Totally Correct’ Mr. Xi made the remarks at a meeting on the region of western China, suggesting that the Communist Party remains committed to drastically changing Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. ....... and vowed more efforts to imprint Chinese national identity “deep in the soul” of Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities. ......... Mr. Xi’s unyielding words signaled that condemnation from the United States, the European Union and other powers has not shifted his determination to subdue Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities through a dual strategy of political indoctrination and state-driven demographic change. ............ Mr. Xi used a similar meeting in 2014 to demand a much tougher approach to unrest, resistance and separatist violence in the region. .......... Ever since Chinese Communist Party forces took over Xinjiang in 1949, the authorities have struggled to establish lasting control over the region’s Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities. Their Turkic language and Muslim traditions have set them apart from China’s Han majority, and many members of these minorities have resented the expanding presence and power of the Han Chinese majority. .............. the Chinese government has tried to uproot hundreds of thousands of Uighurs from villages and assign them urban and factory jobs, where officials hope they will earn more and cast aside their traditional lifestyles. .......... thousands of mosques, shrines and other Islamic religious sites have been demolished in Xinjiang since 2017. .......... the indoctrination camps, which Chinese government officials have defended as a friendly vocational training centers ..........  internal speeches by Mr. Xi in 2014, when he called for all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” in Xinjiang using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.” ............ what he said were rising incomes of the people of Xinjiang and government spending. ........... the Chinese government would continue investing heavily in industrial and urban development in Xinjiang 

How to Debate Someone Who Lies Truth sandwiches, ridicule and other tactics for Joe Biden when he faces President Trump. ........ If you attempt to counter every falsehood or distortion that Mr. Trump serves up, you will cede control of the debate. .......... The first weapon maybe the most effective: humor and ridicule. .......... Mr. Trump, faced with a pandemic and an economic downturn, tells Americans what a great job he’s done. In response, Mr. Biden should smile and say with a bit of laugh: “And just where have you been living? South Korea? Or Fiji? You cannot be in the United States — except maybe on the golf course. We’ve got about 4 percent of the world’s population and 21 percent of all Covid deaths and the highest unemployment since the Great Depression! You must be living on another planet!” ............... He is  apparently so fearful of being the target of a joke that — unlike any president before him — he has skipped the last three roasts at the White House Correspondents Dinner............ “This is like the bad joke about the arsonist who shows up at the bonfire and started posing as a fireman! The guy who calls himself a stable genius seems to have forgotten that he’s been president during all this violence and that he’s been the instigator in chief with his racist rhetoric. The country’s biggest bully thinks he can fool you by playing sheriff.” ........... the president’s lies generally fall into two categories. The first are boastful and self-aggrandizing claims, such as “Only I can fix it. ” This swagger betrays a fragile self-esteem, and while outlandish and amusing, the lies are typically harmless. ................  The second type of lie aims to deceive others in pursuit of a specific goal. ............ This kind of lie is emblematic of individuals with antisocial traits who have a deficit in moral conscience. But if they also have strong narcissistic traits, they are exquisitely sensitive to criticism and especially to ridicule. Derisive humor threatens to expose them for the loser they secretly believe they are. ..............  “The fact is that more than 200,000 American have died — even if the president falsely suggests that the number is lower. But let’s focus on the grim truth: More than 200,000 of our loved ones died from coronavirus, many because of the president’s deception.” ............. a “truth sandwich” — a lie gets sandwiched between true statements. .............. “Wearing a mask is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But you sure wouldn’t know it from the president, who has run around in public without one and mocks people like me who wear them. Is it vanity or that he just doesn’t believe in science? I don’t know, but the science is undisputed: wearing masks saves lives.” ............. the goal is serious: to expose the truth and unnerve Mr. Trump by getting under his skin.

This Is the Casual Racism That I Face at My Elite High School Unexpectedly, the school did something about it. ...........  Navigating college applications and maintaining my G.P.A. while dealing with Zoom burnout and no physical connection to my friends. ............ I attend Regis, the academically rigorous Catholic high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. To those who get in, it is tuition-free, and it is regularly recognized as one of the top high schools in the country. ........... Even as classes have started remotely, the racism that many Black students like me have experienced and continue to experience in school feels more emotionally draining than ever. ............. Getting the “best education possible” is the mantra of my Jamaican-immigrant parents. ............. And yet even in this high-achieving environment, among peers who are “supposed to know better,” I have felt constantly diminished. ........ Classmates have made numerous comments over the years about how affirmative action puts them at a disadvantage for getting into top schools. ............. schools still need to do work to address institutionalized racism within their communities. ............. I am no stranger to racist behavior. In middle school, I was targeted with it, as well as enduring classmates casually using the N-word. ......... Within the first two weeks there, a photo of me was shared around school by a white classmate; the caption referred to me as a monkey. ........... Whether it’s heads turning toward you during a lesson about slavery in fourth grade or everybody staring at you when the civil rights movement is discussed ............... restorative justice. ........... a collaboration between victim and offender. The process is uncomfortable and tedious for everyone involved, but it leads to a transformative result. ................  Administrators facilitated real dialogue between me and my main offender, a former friend who had used the N-word in front of me on several occasions. ........... We talked at length over his thought process, and he even sent me a message apologizing and telling me exactly what it was he did wrong and that my frustrations were valid. ..............  Restorative justice doesn’t allow an institution to simply remove the bad apples. It inspires solutions that achieve value and respect for everyone. It forces an institution to look at community-oriented solutions that make everybody uncomfortable, not just those who are involved. But it’s the only way real change can be made. 

The Gilgo Beach serial killings were a cold case. Then a new police chief arrived.  

‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S. From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won’t the president commit to a peaceful transition of power? ............ Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border. ........... it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire ............ How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? ............... “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power,” Mr. Romney wrote on Twitter. “Without that, there is Belarus.” ............ its reputation seems to be in free-fall. .......... over the past year, nations including Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany have been viewing the United States in its most negative light in years. In every country surveyed, the vast majority of respondents thought the United States was doing a bad job with the pandemic. ..............  a disease unchecked, mass protests over racial and social inequality, and a president who seems unwilling to pledge support for the tenets of electoral democracy. ......... In places like the Philippines, Mexico and others, elected leaders have been compared to Mr. Trump when they have turned to divisive rhetoric, disregard of institutions, intolerance of dissent and antipathy toward the media. ........ Because of the coronavirus, American tourists are banned from most of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America. ............. “He has many nuclear weapons,” Sok Eysan, a spokesman for Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, said of Mr. Trump. “But he is careless with a disease that can’t be seen.”

Violinist Concetta Abbate Talks Trauma, Empathy & The Healing Process Of 'Mirror Touch' The prolific musician and music teacher shares the process of creating a poignant album from candid conversations with women and people who identify as nonbinary ........... Abbate’s lyrics, which filters the many stories she heard and absorbed into poignant, poetic verses that use just enough detail to be recognizable to the people that inspired her words, but open-ended enough to allow anyone to find solace within them. ...... this concept of mirror touch, which is a really extreme form of empathy ............. A large part of my livelihood is being a music teacher. I run a private school in Brooklyn teaching adults and kids. When you work one-on-one with someone, you end up being the first person to hear about a lot of difficult situations. It’s something that, as a music teacher, you don’t really get trained to deal with because you’re not a therapist. But the reality is that there’s some overlap there. ............ That’s why conversation and listening and empathy and validation are so important. As we share perspectives, we build and grow. ............ historically, certain demographics of people feel more comfortable talking to me. I could also be because men are less likely to express personal feelings and emotions. But if enough people are willing to share their stories, the systemic problems of society start to reveal themselves. ............. And this was all before the age of 12! [laughs] “Who am I if I don’t play violin? No one’s going to value me.” ......... I have students who never perform but they play every day. There’s something really special about that—that music is a personal thing instead of a product. ...............  When we have conversations, there should be a lot of moments of silence and listening. 



America is the Holy Roman Empire of the 21st century  The American Constitution is the oldest in the world still operating, and has been obviously out of date for well over a century. Half the basic mechanics of government are either malfunctioning kludges or a gross betrayal of its own founding principles. .......... Let's start with the Electoral College, which has developed a clear bias towards Republicans — a 2-3 point Biden popular vote win would mean a tossup according to its rules, while he would need about a 5-point victory to be sure. As I have argued before in detail, this is the goofiest method of selecting a head of government found in any rich nation, and quite possibly in the entire world. Not only has it delivered the presidency to the popular vote loser twice in less than two decades, it is mechanically possible to win while losing the popular vote 4-1. ................. The vast majority of states, both large and small, are virtually ignored by campaigns because their electoral votes can be taken for granted ............ another janky aspect of American government: gerrymandering. In most states today, it is also legal for the members of the state legislatures to draw their own district boundaries — choosing their own voters rather than the other way around. This is wildly impermissible in about every other advanced democracy, because it amounts to election-rigging. ................ (the most cutting-edge democracies today use multi-member districts or some kind of proportional representation). ........ in Wisconsin in 2018, for instance, they got 46 percent of the vote but 64 percent of the seats in the state Assembly. In other words, several of the legislative majorities that could potentially steal the upcoming election for President Trump are themselves the product of flagrant cheating. .............  one could theoretically rig the Senate such that Democrats had a permanent super-majority with the strategic migration of a few hundred thousand solid liberals from California and New York into sparsely-populated Western states. ..............  So we have a founding document declaring that "all men are created equal" and an 18th-century jalopy constitution that allows legal election theft and randomly gives residents of one state over 70 times the influence of another in one chamber of Congress. .......... Simply voting is a complicated and burdensome pain in the neck in many states. Voters routinely have to wait in line for hours, or face ridiculous administrative complexities. In Pennsylvania, for instance, thanks to a vaguely-written law and a recent idiotic court decision, mail-in voters are legally required to put their ballot into a pointless "secrecy envelope" before they put it in the normal envelope. Fail to do this, as about 5-6 percent of mail-in voters routinely do, and your vote will be thrown out. .................. The Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved when Napoleon, commanding the first modern national army, steamrolled the coalition opposing him at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. 


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Coronavirus News (242)

Face masks could be giving people Covid-19 immunity, researchers suggest Mask wearing might also be reducing the severity of the virus and ensuring that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic .........  universal face mask wearing might be helping to reduce the severity of the virus and ensuring that a greater proportion of new infections are asymptomatic. ......... universal mask-wearing could become a form of variolation (inoculation) that would generate immunity and “thereby slow the spread of the virus in the United States and elsewhere” as the world awaits a vaccine. ........... the amount of virus someone is exposed to at the start of infection - the “infectious dose” - may determine the severity of their illness .......... “viral load at diagnosis” was an “independent predictor of mortality” in hospital patients. ....... population-wide mask wearing might ensure that a higher proportion of Covid-19 infections are asymptomatic ......... there can be strong immune responses from even mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infection, researchers say that any public health strategy that helps reduce the severity of the virus - such as mask wearing - should increase population-wide immunity as well. ....... even a low viral load can be enough to induce an immune response, which is effectively what a typical vaccine does. ......... In a coronavirus outbreak on a closed Argentinian cruise ship, for example, where passengers were provided with surgical masks and staff with N95 masks, the rate of asymptomatic infection was 81 per cent. This is compared with 20 per cent in earlier cruise ship outbreaks without universal masking. 

Google Maps gets a COVID-19 layer View COVID data as easily as you view traffic or satellite data. ............  COVID-19 data is available for all 220 countries and territories that Google Maps supports, with more detailed state or province, county, and city-level data where available. 

Amy Coney Barrett Is No Ruth Bader Ginsburg When it comes to the Supreme Court, we’ve been to this identity politics movie before. ......... Judge Barrett, who is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, has impeccable intellectual credentials .......... She has written that abortion is “always immoral” .......... and publicly criticized Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. for voting with the high court’s liberal bloc to uphold the Affordable Care Act, saying he pushed the statute “beyond its plausible meaning” to save it. ........... Make no mistake: Judge Barrett’s confirmation will be the wrecking ball that finally smashes Roe v. Wade and undoes the Affordable Care Act. ......... (Justice Ginsburg was known as the “Thurgood Marshall of gender equality law.”) 


Will Amy Coney Barrett Cost Republicans the Senate? Mitch McConnell has a tricky needle to thread. ........... Democrats are still spitting mad about how Republicans cheated President Barack Obama out of his Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, in 2016 — based on some rubbish about how a vacancy shouldn’t be filled during a presidential election year. ......... Since Justice Ginsburg’s death, contributions have come pouring into progressive groups and individual campaigns at a level that political veterans say is unlike anything they’ve ever seen. ActBlue, which focuses on small-dollar donations, pulled in more than $100 million last weekend. ........... over the past decade, Republicans gave up on consensus building and doing “the hard work of passing laws,” and instead are aiming to “have the courts solve our problems.”  


The Meaning of Amy Coney Barrett Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s likely successor could become a different kind of three-initialed icon. ......... as the Notorious R.B.G., she embodied liberal feminism, a history of struggle and achievement condensed into three initials and one life. .......... can there be a conservative feminism that’s distinctive, coherent and influential, at least beyond quirky religious subcultures ............ A conservative feminism today .. takes for granted that much of what Ginsburg fought for was necessary and just; that the old order suppressed female talent and ambition; that sexism and misogyny are more potent forces than many anti-feminists allowed. It agrees that the accomplishments of Barrett’s career — in academia and now on the federal bench — could have been denied to her in 1950, and it hails that change as good. ............... But then it also argues that feminism’s victories were somewhat unbalanced, that they were kinder to professional ambition than to other human aspirations, and that the society they forged has lost its equilibrium not just in work-life balance but also in other areas — sex and romance and marriage and child rearing, with the sexes increasingly alienated from one another and too many children desired but never born. ............. integrate feminist insights with ideas from the old regime about the centrality of marriage, children and religious commitment to the good life. ............ shorter dating lives and earlier marriages, four or five children instead of two or fewer, and other more traditionally coded choices — more frequent churchgoing, denser social networks, living closer to extended family, work lives designed more around home life than the reverse. ........... her claim to any kind of feminism a cheat  

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Coronavirus News (241)

Airlines stare down dire future

This Is the Most Dire Prognostication on the Future of Airlines … and Travel  how slow the recovery in travel will happen, how this is a generational break from the past, how we may have already seen peak travel in various parts of it, how much of the demand may be permanently lost, and how long it would take for recovery to come close to pre-Covid levels (maybe a decade, maybe never?) .............  the dire fundamentals facing airlines carriers in the post-coronavirus world, how it will spawn a complete mayhem in the industry, and why it is the top airline executives, and the investment community that invests in them, who are deciding to ignore the obvious. ............ The airline industry is in denial about its imminent collapse and the reasons why that is. ............ proposes a solution on industrywide restructuring of the airline sector ...........  “The industry, capital markets and the business press have willfully ignored the actual magnitude of the collapse and remain wedded to absurd narratives that falsely assumed rapid, robust demand recovery. The industry and government officials who are actually dealing with the crisis have been myopically focused on narrow objectives (e.g. protecting the financial interests of select investors, minimizing direct government payments to workers). ............. “In the U.S., it is not clear that the competence to oversee an industry-wide restructuring focused on overall economic welfare exists anywhere in the federal government.”

Hubert Horan: The Airline Industry Collapse Part 4 – Total Paralysis Continues 

Alphavid: The airline sector is in denial about its imminent collapse He puts this down in part to duopolistic and monopolistic structures (driven by decades’ worth of industry consolidation) that have reduced any incentive for the sector to properly restructure itself in the face of 85 per cent declines in revenues due to coronavirus. .................. Barring the miraculously rapid development of an effective vaccine, no international airline companies are viable going concerns. ............. a situation where worldwide demand has totally evaporated.  


Hubert Horan: What Will it Take to Save the Airlines? the airlines need a deep restructuring, including a much greater focus on operational efficiency, to have any prospect of being self-supporting. Yet he deems the industry to be dead set against these changes and the US both unwilling to and incapable of imposing them. So we’ll have the worst of all possible worlds: permanent corporate welfare queens that get to keep private sector executive pay and perks. ................ Coronavirus has created the greatest challenge the airline industry has ever faced. For the large legacy carriers serving intercontinental markets, the threat is comparable to the meteor that caused massive climate change and drove dinosaurs into extinction. ......... the coronavirus meteor. ................. US airlines filled 85% of their seats in 2019 (up from 58% when the industry was deregulated and 70% 20 years ago). Once an airline has committed to the costs of operating a given schedule, almost all of the lost revenue from a shortfall of passengers directly reduces the bottom line. ............ Traffic through TSA checkpoints in US airports was down 96% versus the year before in mid April and 88% in mid-May. ........... Never before has flying on an airplane required accepting serious medical risk. ......... the idea of a rapid, “V-shaped” recovery to the January status quo seems wildly improbable. ............ the massive short-term substitution of videoconferencing may reduce business travel for years to come. ......... Cross-border travel bans have been key to slowing the spread of the virus,  and the point where the mass market is no longer concerned with the health risks is somewhere in the distant future. .......... capital markets will be a major obstacle to the major restructuring the industry desperately needs. ............ An industry based on open collusion and protected by huge entry barriers will not produce those improvements. ......... Approval of the domestic mergers and intercontinental alliances had been justified by the false claim that the current existence of three competitors is all that is required to indefinitely provide consumers will the full benefits of competition. The coronavirus crisis provides a painful demonstration why that was never true. .......... The airline bailout requests that led to the CARES Act clearly indicate that when the crisis began both the industry and Congress expected a fairly rapid “V-shaped” demand recovery that would protect the current owners of the major carriers. .................. The current revenue (and medical) reality demands an immediate move to bankruptcy protection for most carriers and an industry-wide restructuring program. The industry’s 2019 status quo cannot survive. ................. Bankruptcy is needed to protect assets that will be critical to the (much smaller) reorganized industry from short-term creditor claims, and to ensure that current owners and insiders cannot divert scarce cash into their own pockets. ........... One model for an industry-wide restructuring program is the U.S. Railway Association, a temporary Federal agency that successfully reorganized the bankrupt freight railroads in the Eastern US in the late 1970s. ..............  the many political obstacles that will likely prevent the needed restructuring from happening. ............. All efforts by airlines and Washington to deal with the crisis appear to have been entirely focused on protecting the owners and the future equity value of the incumbent companies, which totally precludes any consideration of the major downsizing and industry-wide restructuring that is actually needed. This is consistent with Washington’s overall emphasis on helping the owners of politically organized large corporations while providing only token support for suppliers, small business and workers. .................   Even if one argues that programs designed to protect the 2019 status quo for a couple months until a powerful “V-shaped” demand recovery occurred was a plausible position in March, it is now a delusional fantasy. Subsidies for the status quo will waste billions that could be used to allow the future industry to reorganize with more capacity and jobs. But the only people at the table discussing the future of the industry are executives totally dedicated to protecting their shareholders and Washington officials who see the interests of capital accumulators as superior to all other economic interests. .................. Between 2014 and 2019, the big 4 airlines used $42.4 billion of the cash they had generated to repurchase stock. The combination of stock buybacks and increased leverage (between 2016 and 2019 debt increased from $47 to $75 billion) was designed to inflate short term stock prices. This was done at the direction of these four boards, who had incentivized the four CEOs with $431 million in stock based compensation. Stock buybacks exceeded the free cash flow these airlines were generating, and increased even as key financial metrics began declining. ...............  The ability to deal with major industry crises always depended on government agencies tasked with representing broader public interests and judicial processes tasked with upholding evidentiary standards. But they also depended on the ability of capital markets to allocate resources based on objective information about corporate efficiency. The economy’s ability to  deal with the airline industry crisis has not only been compromised by the capture of oversight and bankruptcy processes but by the conversion of capital markets into a political utility disconnected from the real economy. The staggering cognitive dissonance between airline equity values and the actual evidence about airline economics suggests a level of “market failure” that may make the desperately needed industry recovery impossible. ............  the best interim solution may be to convert the industry to a regulated public utility for several years  

How Airline Alliances Convinced Regulators That Collusion Reduces Prices  In the space of just a few years, the North Atlantic, the world’s biggest aviation market, was converted from robust competition to a permanent oligopoly/cartel of three collusive alliances. By design, the consolidation of the North Atlantic, in turn, forced a wave of mergers that consolidated the domestic US market (the world’s second-largest) and forced most Transpacific and Latin American long-haul airlines to align with one of the three collusive groups. ...............  The Airline Deregulation Act’s focus on maximizing long-term consumer welfare was reinterpreted as the basis for DOT policies favoring the largest, most politically influential companies. ........ from 2003 onward, a totally new pattern emerged, with North Atlantic fares rising three times faster than domestic fares. ............... This fundamental shift in pricing behavior exactly tracks the move towards extreme North Atlantic concentration, which started when Air France announced its intention to acquire KLM, previously the largest single driver of price competition in European long-haul network markets. .............  They mounted a massive political attack on the three independent Middle Eastern hub carriers (Emirates, Etihad, Qatar) even though their network overlap was extremely small ..........  Backroom deals between government officials and the largest incumbent carriers have not just distorted market results, but have destroyed the corporate value of smaller competitors. ............. Government policies are no longer established by legislation based on extensive public debates and detailed analysis of objective evidence about industry economics. .........   International aviation presents a useful case example of the utter failure of competition policy and antitrust administration. Clearly written laws were ignored by senior officials of both Republican and Democratic administrations who employed falsehoods and serious misrepresentations without consequence. ................    absolutely no one in the legal or economics professions or the business media seemed the least bit troubled. .............. The people who now control the industry are the ones who spent the last 15 years undermining competition, maximizing artificial oligopoly market power in order to generate readily extractable cashflow, misallocating capital to less efficient airlines, and ensuring the hegemony of investors pursuing short-term capital appreciation over customers, workers, suppliers, local communities, and every other longer-term stakeholder. 






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