you cant social distance in a slum- apart from communities with lots of elders, poorest communities in developing world have no answers to corona unless eg the g7 helps now instead of just emitting nationalist propaganda the way Dismal Capitals led by washington pr lobbyists do- big vested interests are totally blind to ordinary peoples local sustainability challenges - why they werent jailed after 2008 subprime remains the most fatal media and financial falsehood -it impacts any main street of the homeless, as well as everywhere the billion poorest people live in cities which by defintion have beed designed to be where distance between humans is minimised
help us report what to learn from first incidences of corona war on poor citizens - elmhurst queens ny, new orleans, india, africa, madrid slums
nb the twist in much of italy, france , spain is elders retired to idyllic vilages which are also escape homes of rich kids- usually for summer vacations but in this case kids rushed to the villages to escapte scary corona capital cities only to infect weakest eldes in places far from city hospitals- the mixture of dumb media and politicians behind the curve of an infection that can multiply 30 fold in 12 days may be understandable the first time but isnt each time it repeats- this shows that poiticians who cant learn across boderes will be aiding the virus kill the people
| in human population terms the greatest education and innovation miracles needed to stem from asia-pacific -see rural keynesian mapmaking since 1977- moores law has been multiplying 100 times more human connectivity per decade since moon landing- it was inevitable that by 2020s the east and west's greatest risks and need for solutions would be the same- in economic terms edutech needed to connect win-wins between youth of all hemispheres race to sdgs- you cant be 5g ai ed 5-sense cyber space interconnected and have some communities thriving and others collapsing- make an index of who was testing ready, what big data they can now ai analyse and the opposite league table- you may conclude that any millennial who wants to help the war on virus needs hitrust millennial friend across the far east islands of japan taiwan hk singapore the peninsular of south korea, mainland china , every border of china that wants data without fatal gaps human development economics- the economist mapped these between 1962 and 1978- then turned to educational and financial entrepreneurial revolution needed to win-wn worldwide if the post-industrial knowhow webbing planet was to huper connect millennials as the first sdg generation | .....after world war 2 the main community resiliency needs were mappable across the continent of asia where over 60% of human beings lived without access to electricity grids because europes colonial empires led the island-led mernatike world uk pound economy had focused on mercantile trade- moreover the way the usa had developed across the continent was not replicable to asia- however asian development solutions might have some parallels for developing two more tenths of human beings living in africa and central and south america- we track 4 technology revolutions that grew ; deming inspired engineering, rural keynesianism beginning with borlaug crop science and barefoot medis, satellites space , telecoms and mobiles- and analytical digital capacity beginning with von neumann as father of programmable computing and promising 100 times moore analytical power per decade through moores law-whee and how did these force ,ultipliers map human development win-wins- and how did they intersect positively or negatively with macroeconomists who kept on perpetrating paper currencies dynamics of the pound and then its far bigger successor the dollar economy..... | Economistindia.net and EconomistBangla.com and EconomistRefugee.com welcome you to the hitchhikers guide to the oceans Belts and Continents railRoads/pipes/cables etc -bottom up solutions need replicating through communities as digital leapfrog collaboration permits what half a millennium og mercantile colonisation never could celebrate - health is the most fundamental service of girl empowerment communities - so special thanks from girls to health servants like Brilliant, Kim ,Sir Fazle and universal health id network of Nilekani. UNwomens linkedin:..schools new curricula:2/5 of people live in china & s.asia- how to share their sustainability solutions everywhere; 2/5 of world's land is in china and its north and north west-how do overland roads linking in sustainability; far more than 2/5 of world shipping trade revolves round coastal belt east of china- how will sustainbility world trade roures map- join us at BRI.school- next week long retreat BRACinn Dhaka sept 30 to Oct 6. Special thanks to AlibabaUni.com and NormanMacrae.net for this special opprtunity to celebrate yerr 50 of The Economist's Entrepreneurail Revolution - redesign every market's value chain to SME networks thrive by changing education until youth livelihods match sustainability goals rising everywhere. RSVP isabella@unacknowledgedgiant.com | .. .. | what can unicorn analysis tell us about whether investors and educators want youth to be the SDG generation? related tour asia rising with nhk GOAL 1 - ending poverty begins with ending the lottery- current odds about 1 in 4 - that the next girl born will have next to no chance of a decent livelihood- mostly this results from history's era of colonisation which spiralled over 5 centuries 16th to 20th as a few monetarily large nations (about tenth of peoples) decimated the economies of others; it wasn't really to 1972 that one of 10 most populated ex colonial nations bangladesh started today's benchmark solution to ending rural poverty- born as a new nation bangladesh had next to zero taxes to govern social solutions with but unlike other colonies its 2 most extraordinary economists went the villages to live and learn with the poor- and to see how partnering with foreign assistance bottom-up girl empowered communities could build - the greatest case of Entrepreneurial Revolution since journalist records began in 1968. Consider Bangladesh's grassroots networking involved 25 years of no electricity and no digital development follows by partnering tech companies with experiments since 1996 today economistpoverty benchmarks solutions at brac and bkash and since april 2018 chinese greatest fintech for small enterprise have joined in these partnerships so that sino-s asia is the space to celebrate girl empowerment and every extreme solution to goals 1 to 17 .. those who wish to end poverty in old cities of big nations might start linking ted leonsis 1 2 Asia's SDG advocates 1 2 hail from : India: Dia Mirza 1, Qatar Sheikha Moza 1, China Jack Ma, Iraq Murad |
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Monday, February 10, 2020
i realise there is a lot going on.emanuel before leave for seoul and tokyo at weekend may i ask that everywhere you link you search for people who want to share green engineering news-
i gave you my jeju contacts-aiib 2917
Young Professionals Program - Career - Opportunities - AIIB
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it seems a long time ago but back in june 2017 aiib jeju launched green big bang as what it wanted to connect everywhere asian infrastructure banking is connected- aiib convened in luxembourg 2019 and mumbai 2018-
brits at the moral heart of aiib are gordon browns main civil servant when he was pm at lse nick stern and sir danny alexander in beijing Danny Alexander (@dannyalexander) | Twitter
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- aiib's president jin celebrates great literature- his daughter at lse is her generations smartest new economy connector- ccg is easily able to connect these people and english speaking broadcasters at cgtn - sors and schwarzman scholars can form a subnetwork celebrating this only route to engineers contributing to sdgs
News
Beijing, China, Feb. 10, 2020
AIIB to Invest in Emergency Public Health Infrastructure in China
READ MORE
Beijing, China, Jan. 26, 2020
Statement of Support
READ MORE
Beijing, China, Jan. 17, 2020
AIIB Investing to Address the Digital Divide in Asia
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i am wondering if soros vienna university sent out invitations to link green engineering clubs and eg tesla chais as one of austrian empires most famous engineers which companies and place hubs would it aim to gravitate or an adam smith chair of green engineering
i assume that green engineering is most likely to be valued by those with the deming mindset - ie tokyo-seoul
i am also heartened by tatas approach-see footnote but if we were to start ranking engineering companies by green engineering capability i have no idea which corporate ecosystems/supply chains rank top
we have actually gone backwards starting 2020s versus starting 2000s in media coverage of greening whole industry supply chains
i remember ck prahalad and ray andersen inviting industries to join i remapping whole supply chains to be carbon zero the way rau andersen led with carpet tiling- he started in 1994 and explained changing a whole supply chain took 10 years of relentless leadership anderson site%3Ainterface.com - Google Search
vienna has a great location to look east to see who really has critical mass to green engineering industry sectors
chris 1 240 316 8157 EconomistAsia.net
As part of Tata Motors’ theme for Auto Expo 2020, which is building a sustainable future through aspirational, innovative mobility solutions in India, the company unveiled Ultra T.7 Electric, India’s first intermediate commercial electric truck.
The Ultra T.7 Electric is the latest offering from Tata Motors in the ILCV segment under the vehicle range of Ultra Platform. “It is developed for Indian roads, redefining the transportation industry leveraging enhanced technologies, blending ideally both technology and economy of operations,” said the company.
The Ultra T.7 Electric can be fully charged in around two hours using a DC fast charger. It has been designed to address the specific needs of the evolving Hub & Spoke model of goods distribution.
The truck would deliver faster turnaround time, higher payload capacity, easier maneuverability delivered through a narrow aerodynamic cabin and sharp turning circle radius (6.95 mt). “Our EV portfolio is in line with India’s vision to promote clean and green vehicles,” said the company.
Related Article: Electric Vehicles This Week: Govt To Roll Out New EV Policy, Ahmedabad Municipal Body To Get 50 E-Buses, And More
Additionally, the Tata Group is also looking at other innovative solutions in people and goods transport and it is planning to make electric cars and batteries, set up charging stations and build a battery recycling plant to solidify an EV ecosystem.
Tata Motors, Tata Chemicals, Tata Power and Tata Croma are reportedly pooling resources and expertise to build an electric vehicle ecosystem. The announcement of the plans came at the recent launch of Tata Motors’ Nexon EV.
Tata Power plans to set up 650 charging stations in more than 20 major Indian cities over the next year. The company has set up 100 charging stations to date. All stations will support fast charging and will be linked to a mobile application developed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for payments and to check availability.
Other than Tata Group, many automotive players have lately been upping their EV game. South Korean automobile company Hyundai is working on bringing a new mass-market electric vehicle (EV) to the Indian market within the 2-3 years. Hyundai had earlier announced to invest $17 Bn over the next six years on new technologies to speed the switchover to electric and autonomous vehicles.
German luxury carmaker Audi has said that it will be bringing its e-Tron premium electric SUV later this year to India. Audi India is currently focussing on training manpower and ensuring readiness for the components and spare parts for EVs.
The Auto Expo 2020 also saw numerous new electric vehicles. MG Motor unveiled its all-new electric sports utility vehicle called the ‘Marvel X, Mahindra showcased its first compact electric SUV called eKUV100 and Maruti Suzuki announced its electric mobility plans for the future at the expo.
The event will also be witnessing the presence of over 18 startups, including Okinawa Autotech, Devit Motors, eVERVE Motors and ONB technologies and Evolet India among others.
Sunday, February 2, 2020
regarding student scholars of Fashion value chain and hk top 20 supercity www.valuetrue.com -- do you know dr jenny chan in hong kong https://www.polyu.edu.hk/apss/people/academic-staffs/352-dr-chan-wai-ling-jenny/ - she might be pivotal to intersection of garment workers value chain and musicians sports- friend emanuel founder of www.asia-institute.org knows jenny if your team would like an intro- and this is one of ways forward for hong kong - for the next 6 months the biggest opportunity to lead china-japan-korea-girls empowerment asia- emanuel organises 20 person student exchanges at a time -when can we start connecting his 20 person student subnetworks with some of yours? study gropus such as 10 students who care about relations with hong kong or 10 who care about japan or korea or vietnam- all of this emanuel can student group match if brac u has such
Think tanks have long sought to provide policymakers and the general public with sound analysis and expert advice on the most pressing political and economic issues of the day. During a time of escalating political crises and economic challenges throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, think tanks have become more relevant than ever. However, it can be difficult in these turbulent times for think tanks to provide analysis and advice that are timely, relevant and impactful. To overcome this challenge, think tanks must deploy new means of communicating with their target audiences, that cut through the deluge of the 24-hour news cycle to provide thoughtful and rigorously researched perspectives on current events.
https://www.brookings.edu/events/why-think-tanks-matter-the-role-of-think-tanks-in-times-of-crisis/ As part of their joint annu al series on “Why Think Tanks Matter,” Al Jazeera Center for Studies and the Brookings Doha Center invite you to a discussion on the role of think tanks in times of crisis. The discussion will address the following questions: How should think tanks adjust their roles in times of crisis? How can they ensure that their work reaches the right audiences, amid a breakneck news cycle and constant social media commentary? And how can think tanks communicate their research and ideas more effectively to these audiences, in order to galvanize policy action?
Ahmed Taha
Ahmed Taha
Presenter - Al Jazeera Mubasher
Panelists
Nader Kabbani
Nader Kabbani
Director of Research - Brookings Doha Center Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development
Ezzeddine Abdelmoula
Ezzeddine Abdelmoula
Manager of Research - Research Department at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies
Nayef Bin Nahar Alshammari
Professor - Qatar University
binnahar85
AGENDA
Thursday, January 30, 2020
israel palestine
from politico recommended by george soros
OPINION | WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD
The Real Goal of Trump’s Middle East Plan
It’s not peace. It’s power.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration's plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
By ROBERT MALLEY and AARON DAVID MILLER
01/28/2020 05:39 PM EST
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Robert Malley is president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. He was the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region under President Obama.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Trump administration’s long-awaited and ill-named peace plan has many objectives, but making peace isn’t among them.
Neither is jump-starting negotiations, or nudging the parties toward compromise, or even enshrining implicit, private understandings in the hope Israelis and Palestinians might eventually publicly espouse them—each one of which, as we know from successful and unsuccessful experience, has been featured as the goal of past American plans.
Advertisement
The motives behind a document conceived without any Palestinian input, unveiled on the same day as an important vote in the Israeli parliament on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunity, and less than a year before Americans vote for their next president, are at once more mundane and more grandiose.
The mundane reasons, first. It’s hard not to see in the timing an effort by Trump to help Netanyahu in Israel’s elections six weeks from now, and, more than that, an effort by Trump to help Trump—to shore up support from evangelicals and conservative Republicans as he heads into his reelection campaign.
Critics argue that the administration ought to have waited for the outcome of the March Israeli elections and the formation of a new government, but that misses the point. To wait that long would mean waiting until May, if not longer should elections once again end inconclusively, which means taking the risk of not releasing it at all. Besides, the rollout provides a welcome distraction from the impeachment trial, allowing the president to claim he is dedicated to important matters of state as Democrats fiddle with crass politics.
Whether this ends up really helping either Netanyahu or Trump is unclear, although that too is beside the point. The Trump team believes the plan will help both its campaign and Netanyahu’s, whether they are right in that regard or not. Some right-wing constituencies may balk at the suggestion that this could lead to a Palestinian state—although that would occur well into the future and only if and when the Palestinians meet a series of unrealistic conditions. And even then, any putative state would be so fragmented, disjointed, surrounded by Israel and subject to Israeli security control that it would be at best a state in name only. Those critics likewise may be angry at the suggestion that the Palestinians could have a capital in East Jerusalem—although the parts of the city that the U.S. plan contemplates forming this capital are of such minor significance that most people would hardly equate them with Jerusalem itself. In theory, hard-line Israelis could also protest the notion that there will be no new settlements for years—but even that constraint is essentially meaningless, since the plan already munificently grants to Israel all the West Bank territory in which it has wished to build settlements.
Advertisement
In short, this is a plan that gives Israel everything it wants, concedes to Palestinians everything Israel does not care for, tries to buy off the Palestinians with the promise of $50 billion in assistance that will never see the light of day, and then calls it peace.
So a politically expedient move intended to boost Trump and Netanyahu’s election chances, yes. But without any broader implication? Not so fast.
The ideas put forward by the administration may not tell us anything much about the future of Middle East peace, other than to make more plain what was already manifest—that the notion of a viable two-state solution increasingly is a thing of the past, and that the de facto annexation of West Bank territory may soon become de jure. Israelis for the most part will accept the proposal, Palestinians of all stripes will reject it and Arab states will utter bland pronouncements designed to neither upset a U.S. president whose reprisals they dread nor outrage their public opinions whose moods they fear. But those ideas tell us quite a bit about the unfolding nature of Trump’s foreign policy as an ever-expanding and ever-more aggressive attempt to erase traditional rules and impose new ones.
A line can be drawn from the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, to this attempt to fundamentally rewrite the parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement at the Palestinians’ expense. Each reflects an administration increasingly confident in its way, indifferent to the views of others, enamored with the exercise of its own power, certain that it can change reality by the mere fact of enforcing its will. Each decision feeds on the prior ones, as the administration is emboldened by the absence of serious, immediate backlash to any of its precedent-shattering steps.
It was warned that transferring the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could prompt massive anti-American protests in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The move was greeted with the equivalent of a diplomatic shrug. The administration was then cautioned that killing Soleimani would trigger dangerous Iranian retaliation, potentially leading to yet another costly U.S. war. Thirty Iranian ballistic missiles but no American deaths later, Trump’s team can yet again depict its critics as unduly alarmist.
There is a countervailing view, of course. Moving the embassy undermined any remaining pretense that the U.S. administration could play a mediating role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As for Iran’s reaction to Soleimani’s killing, it may have been containable, but when is the last time a state launched a salvo of missiles on an American military base, and when is the last time the U.S. failed to respond? It is likely that neither Tehran nor its myriad militant nonstate allies have said their last word; rockets aimed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remind us of that. But much of that is conjecture, and for the most part the more serious costs that are mentioned lie in the future. For the Trump administration, speculation on what might lie ahead tomorrow is immaterial, for it discounts the transformational effect of what it has done now. The administration traffics in what is palpable; it deals exclusively with the here and now.
t
So, when Palestinian indignation at a plan that runs roughshod over their aspirations is not matched by any concrete action, when Arab states react in muted tones to a proposal that negates any Muslim claim to Jerusalem’s holy sites, when European governments at best mouth well-worn support for an increasingly illusory two-state solution, the lesson the Trump administration will learn is that it can get away with what it does as long as it has the boldness to do it. Impunity will breed an encore.
It is easy to condemn the Trump administration for lacking a strategy. Easy, but wrong.
The Trump administration’s strategy is unfolding before our eyes, the sum total of every new step it takes. It reflects the Trump team’s conviction that power unexercised is power wasted, that power ought to be used to break up the ways of the past, and that past presidents spent far too much time fretting about how America’s rivals would react to our actions when America’s rivals ought to worry about how America will react to theirs. The collective bill at some point will come due, and it could be steep. Until then, the world will be dealing with an increasingly unshackled administration. Prospects for a fair and viable Israeli-Palestinian peace will be just one of its many casualties.
OPINION | WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD
The Real Goal of Trump’s Middle East Plan
It’s not peace. It’s power.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration's plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
By ROBERT MALLEY and AARON DAVID MILLER
01/28/2020 05:39 PM EST
Link
More
Robert Malley is president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. He was the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region under President Obama.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Trump administration’s long-awaited and ill-named peace plan has many objectives, but making peace isn’t among them.
Neither is jump-starting negotiations, or nudging the parties toward compromise, or even enshrining implicit, private understandings in the hope Israelis and Palestinians might eventually publicly espouse them—each one of which, as we know from successful and unsuccessful experience, has been featured as the goal of past American plans.
Advertisement
The motives behind a document conceived without any Palestinian input, unveiled on the same day as an important vote in the Israeli parliament on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunity, and less than a year before Americans vote for their next president, are at once more mundane and more grandiose.
The mundane reasons, first. It’s hard not to see in the timing an effort by Trump to help Netanyahu in Israel’s elections six weeks from now, and, more than that, an effort by Trump to help Trump—to shore up support from evangelicals and conservative Republicans as he heads into his reelection campaign.
Critics argue that the administration ought to have waited for the outcome of the March Israeli elections and the formation of a new government, but that misses the point. To wait that long would mean waiting until May, if not longer should elections once again end inconclusively, which means taking the risk of not releasing it at all. Besides, the rollout provides a welcome distraction from the impeachment trial, allowing the president to claim he is dedicated to important matters of state as Democrats fiddle with crass politics.
Whether this ends up really helping either Netanyahu or Trump is unclear, although that too is beside the point. The Trump team believes the plan will help both its campaign and Netanyahu’s, whether they are right in that regard or not. Some right-wing constituencies may balk at the suggestion that this could lead to a Palestinian state—although that would occur well into the future and only if and when the Palestinians meet a series of unrealistic conditions. And even then, any putative state would be so fragmented, disjointed, surrounded by Israel and subject to Israeli security control that it would be at best a state in name only. Those critics likewise may be angry at the suggestion that the Palestinians could have a capital in East Jerusalem—although the parts of the city that the U.S. plan contemplates forming this capital are of such minor significance that most people would hardly equate them with Jerusalem itself. In theory, hard-line Israelis could also protest the notion that there will be no new settlements for years—but even that constraint is essentially meaningless, since the plan already munificently grants to Israel all the West Bank territory in which it has wished to build settlements.
Advertisement
In short, this is a plan that gives Israel everything it wants, concedes to Palestinians everything Israel does not care for, tries to buy off the Palestinians with the promise of $50 billion in assistance that will never see the light of day, and then calls it peace.
So a politically expedient move intended to boost Trump and Netanyahu’s election chances, yes. But without any broader implication? Not so fast.
The ideas put forward by the administration may not tell us anything much about the future of Middle East peace, other than to make more plain what was already manifest—that the notion of a viable two-state solution increasingly is a thing of the past, and that the de facto annexation of West Bank territory may soon become de jure. Israelis for the most part will accept the proposal, Palestinians of all stripes will reject it and Arab states will utter bland pronouncements designed to neither upset a U.S. president whose reprisals they dread nor outrage their public opinions whose moods they fear. But those ideas tell us quite a bit about the unfolding nature of Trump’s foreign policy as an ever-expanding and ever-more aggressive attempt to erase traditional rules and impose new ones.
A line can be drawn from the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, to this attempt to fundamentally rewrite the parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement at the Palestinians’ expense. Each reflects an administration increasingly confident in its way, indifferent to the views of others, enamored with the exercise of its own power, certain that it can change reality by the mere fact of enforcing its will. Each decision feeds on the prior ones, as the administration is emboldened by the absence of serious, immediate backlash to any of its precedent-shattering steps.
It was warned that transferring the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could prompt massive anti-American protests in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The move was greeted with the equivalent of a diplomatic shrug. The administration was then cautioned that killing Soleimani would trigger dangerous Iranian retaliation, potentially leading to yet another costly U.S. war. Thirty Iranian ballistic missiles but no American deaths later, Trump’s team can yet again depict its critics as unduly alarmist.
There is a countervailing view, of course. Moving the embassy undermined any remaining pretense that the U.S. administration could play a mediating role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As for Iran’s reaction to Soleimani’s killing, it may have been containable, but when is the last time a state launched a salvo of missiles on an American military base, and when is the last time the U.S. failed to respond? It is likely that neither Tehran nor its myriad militant nonstate allies have said their last word; rockets aimed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remind us of that. But much of that is conjecture, and for the most part the more serious costs that are mentioned lie in the future. For the Trump administration, speculation on what might lie ahead tomorrow is immaterial, for it discounts the transformational effect of what it has done now. The administration traffics in what is palpable; it deals exclusively with the here and now.
t
So, when Palestinian indignation at a plan that runs roughshod over their aspirations is not matched by any concrete action, when Arab states react in muted tones to a proposal that negates any Muslim claim to Jerusalem’s holy sites, when European governments at best mouth well-worn support for an increasingly illusory two-state solution, the lesson the Trump administration will learn is that it can get away with what it does as long as it has the boldness to do it. Impunity will breed an encore.
It is easy to condemn the Trump administration for lacking a strategy. Easy, but wrong.
The Trump administration’s strategy is unfolding before our eyes, the sum total of every new step it takes. It reflects the Trump team’s conviction that power unexercised is power wasted, that power ought to be used to break up the ways of the past, and that past presidents spent far too much time fretting about how America’s rivals would react to our actions when America’s rivals ought to worry about how America will react to theirs. The collective bill at some point will come due, and it could be steep. Until then, the world will be dealing with an increasingly unshackled administration. Prospects for a fair and viable Israeli-Palestinian peace will be just one of its many casualties.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
The tiny island of Run is an insignificant speck in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago--remote, tranquil, and now largely ignored. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, Run's harvest of nutmeg turned it into the most lucrative of the Spice Islands, precipitating a fierce and bloody battle between the all-powerful Dutch East India Company and a small band of ragtag British adventurers led by the intrepid Nathaniel Courthope. The outcome of the fighting was one of the most spectacular deals in history: Britain ceded Run to Holland, but in return was given another small island, Manhattan.A brilliant adventure story of unthinkable hardship and savagery, the navigation of uncharted waters, and the exploitation of new worlds, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a remarkable chapter in the history of the colonial powers.
Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History Paperback – July 1, 2000
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Friday, January 17, 2020
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