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Political Observer comments.

Demographics and population

Headline: Declining fertility rates will transform global economy, report says

Sub-headline: The proportion of births in low-income countries projected to nearly double to 35 per cent by 2100

Falling fertility rates in most countries over the next quarter century will drive a global demographic shift that will have a far-reaching social and economic impact, according to a new study.

Three-quarters of nations are projected to fall below population replacement birth rates by 2050, leaving growth concentrated in a minority of low-income states in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia that face acute threats from resource shortages and climate change.

The research published in The Lancet medical journal on Wednesday highlights the ever-sharper divide between the countries still powering population growth and those where birth numbers are dwindling.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/318ff981-d189-4bd6-b608-a9709097eedc

What @FT is really telling its privileged white readership, is that the Deluge of Immigrants from America’s ‘War on Terror’ was just the beginning of the end of ‘The Myth of the West’, as the sine qua non of Anglo-European Humanity! Oswald Spengler, Leo Strauss and the Neo-Liberal trinity of Mises/Hayek/Friedman are/were the grave diggers of this toxic Mythology?

Supported by revelatory Maps and Charts, and further paragraphs of the unwelcome news offered by two Technocrats:

“We are facing staggering social change through the 21st century,” said Stein Emil Vollset, the paper’s senior author and a professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. “The world will be simultaneously tackling a ‘baby boom’ in some countries and a ‘baby bust’ in others.”

The study of 204 countries and territories forecasts 76 per cent will dip below population replacement rates by 2050 — a number that will rise to 97 per cent by 2100. The proportion of live births in low-income countries is projected to all but double from 18 per cent in 2021 to 35 per cent by the end of the century. Sub-Saharan African countries are forecast to account for half of global births by 2100.

“The implications are immense,” said Natalia Bhattacharjee, co-lead author of the study and lead research scientist at IHME. “These future trends in fertility rates and live births will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power — and will necessitate reorganising societies.”

The Reader might wonder, and ask the vexing question who will be in charge of ‘the necessary reorganization of societies’ ? The indispensable Technocrats featured in this essay would be the obvious choice? The Reader need only look to the sub-headline to come to terms with the future. The Global South’s birth rate is set to double by 2100.

The proportion of births in low-income countries projected to nearly double to 35 per cent by 2100

Political Observer

Myra Breckenridge says pardon my brass!

International | Of Mars and Venus

Why young men and women are drifting apart

Diverging worldviews could affect politics, families and more

https://www.economist.com/international/2024/03/13/why-the-growing-gulf-between-young-men-and-women?utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content.evergree

Should it surprise that the once male dominated World View of ‘The Economist’ has ‘evolved’ under the female editor @zannymb, a rather notorious Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal, in line with the older generation of male editors. In the political present, as presented in this Economist essay, young women seem to be better educated and more ‘liberal’ that their less educated ‘conservative’ potential male partners?

This 3004 word essay is Pop Sociology with Subtitles, and evocative graphs, aimed a young female demographic. Although it is not Helen Gurley Brown, but in fact not many steps away!

Young and cranky

Making America virile again

The solution is offered by Richard Reeves, a liberal scholar, in “Of Boys and Men” and advocated by The Economist.

What neither side has done well is to tackle the underlying problems that are driving young men and women apart. Most important, policymakers could think harder about making schools work for underperforming boys. Mr Reeves suggests hiring more male teachers, and having boys start school a year later, by default, since they mature more slowly than girls do. Also, since “the desegregation of the labour market has been almost entirely one-way”, the state could beef up vocational training to prepare young men for occupations they currently shun, such as those involving health, education or administrative tasks. If such reforms help more boys and men adjust to a changing world, that would benefit both men and women.

It appears that men and women have different rates of reaching ‘maturity’ hardly a new concept. Vocational Training is advocated. I find this puzzling at best. In the latter part of my working life , I was was involved in Home Heath Care as a Service Representative. The staff was both men and women, of almost equal number. My last employment was for a vendor who serviced Surgical Equipment, in which I called upon Hospitals, Surgery Centers to arrange for repairs of various surgical equipment. Is the world of work so different than it was in 2010? I was not looking for a life partner. But I was made highly aware, of the way the highly credential fellow workers, treated me and the other support staff, with a kind of measured tolerance, and in times of high pressure, with near contempt, and gender did not matter!

Yours,

Myra Breckenridge

Political Observer on the jaunty cynicism, and self-congratulation of that boulevardier.

Headline: The era of the unfixable problem

Sub-headline: Refugee flows, low birth rates and left-behind regions persist because there is no answer, not because politicians are useless

https://www.ft.com/content/2095fc43-abf7-4397-827c-0520d8977954

Confronting Ganesh in this essay ‘on the unfixable problem’ is not the end of his boulevardier phase, but something like the birth of a political impressionism and at some points an even more abstract version of that ‘impressionism’, as the simulacrum of actual thought, as a fog dispersing in the sunlight. A bit too highfalutin for his regular readers who treat his essays as revelation.

I’ll collect/select various parts of his essay that might be revelatory as to his methodology?

empire of high-powered quangos, to lead the mission- London and its halo of commuter counties -How does this lie about the political class manage to live on? -the problem of left-behind regions might have no solution- technological automation and the other global forces-Ask the American Midwest- the UK regions is going to flop, again-This is the era of the insoluble problem, the baby bust, too low to maintain populations at their current level- Nordic nations would be ultra-fertile- huge upfront fiscal cost, and the pique of non-parents- Moral exhortation?, a byproduct of affluence and secularisation- the ultimate case of an insoluble problem in the modern world- to accept all, or most, or even a large percentage of the people- in catastrophic climates or in bandit-ravaged failed states- the purest example of an intractable situation in the world today-There are such things as intractable problems- There is such a thing as rational despair- we arrive at a cynical and acrimonious atmosphere- I am well-located to understand that sometimes there is no good move- it can’t raise taxes to improve public services without compromising incentives and animal spirits in business- but there is little stomach for the national rancour involved in trying to undo it anytime soon…

The above collection presents the strangled music of the long abandoned aperçus, that once made Mr. Ganesh a stylist worth reading, for the real music he could offer once to the Reader!

Mr. Ganesh’s final paragraph, that resembles the jaunty cynicism and self-congratulation of that boulevardier.

Is there a high-income country on Earth that is so exquisitely checkmated? I can’t think of one. But this does make Britain a good place from which to observe a fact of world relevance. Some problems can’t be solved, just mitigated at the edges. Pretending otherwise isn’t “optimistic” or enlightened, it is poisonous to a nation’s civic health. Oh, for more of the can’t-do spirit.

Political Observer

Old Socialist provide some @FT essays.

…

https://www.ft.com/stream/f0a1fc4b-f0c8-38b3-9737-9747de4c773d

Old Socialist

Political Reporter comments.

Headline: Biden praises anti-Netanyahu speech amid deepening rift with Israeli prime minister

Sub-headline: US president says call by most senior Democrat in the Senate for a new government reflects views of ‘many Americans’

https://www.ft.com/content/c9be1aae-ef22-498f-9c79-54182f0105b9

With the number of known dead in Gaza, as past 30, 000 and climbing, the Biden/Schumer alliance is out of necessity rather than choice, to state the obvious: They must now see their unconditional support of Israel, as unsustainable in the face of the continuing Genocide, as practiced by the near American proxy Netanyahu. This quote from Aaron David Miller, in this New York Times essay, is indicative of the opinions of a class of political/moral conformist :

…

As the war enters its sixth month, Mr. Biden finds himself in an investment trap that’s difficult to escape. He is increasingly frustrated and angry with Mr. Netanyahu. And yet he’s still in love with Israel. How to stand up to the first without damaging the second is proving to be an excruciatingly difficult challenge for a president whose regard for Israel runs deep in his emotional and political DNA and whose re-election campaign may depend upon which way he turns.

…

A long excerpt for The Financial Times report:

Joe Biden appeared to deepen his rift with Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, publicly praising a top Democrat’s remarks that called for the Israeli prime minister’s removal as a “good speech” that expressed “concerns” shared by many Americans.

His comments to reporters on Friday morning are the latest sign that the US president has all but given up on Netanyahu, who has angered his backers in the White House by failing to allow more aid into Gaza and pursuing war tactics that have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate and one of the most high-profile backers of Israel over his decades-long political career, sent shockwaves through the bilateral relationship on Thursday by calling Netanyahu an “obstacle to peace” who was weakening his country’s “political and moral fabric”.

Schumer, the most senior Jewish elected official in Washington, urged Israel to hold new elections to remove Netanyahu from office.

Biden confirmed on Friday that Schumer had given the White House advance notice of his speech and its contents. “I’m not going to elaborate on the speech,” the president said. “He made a good speech, and I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans.”

Netanyahu, who was close to former Republican president Donald Trump but clashed openly with Democratic president Barack Obama, has steadily lost support among the American left, an exodus that has sped up during Israel’s campaign in Gaza and has threatened to erode Biden’s base during a re-election year.

But until recently, the Israeli prime minister was able to rely on older Democrats in Washington — including Schumer and Biden — who have supported the Jewish state for decades.

…

Is it possible to be a Zionist and a United States Senator, whose main concern must be America ? This essay is instructive on that vexing question?

Headline: Schumer: I’ll live up to my name and be ‘Shomer for Yisroel’

https://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/Schumer-Ill-live-up-to-my-name-and-be-Shomer-for-Yisroel,5833

By Ed Weintrob

Senator Charles Schumer told Achiezer’s gala on Sunday in Atlantic Beach the he would fight any “bad deal” with Iran and would continue his commitment to serve as a “Shomer Yisroel” (guardian over Israel).

“When Prime Minister Netanyahu comes to America and says that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel, he means every word. Existential means the existence,” Schumer said.

“Palestinians are trouble, but Israel can handle it,” he continued. “Hamas and Hezbollah are trouble, but Israel can handle it. But a nuclear Iran could wipe out the state of Israel.”

Schumer said he would support tougher sanctions if there is no agreement, and “if there’s a bad agreement, Congress should have the ability to undo it.”

Playing on his name, Schumer said his family had been shomrim of a ghetto’s wall in Europe. His name, modified at Ellis Island, was “Shoimer.”

“I will always will be shomer Yisroel,” he pledged. “I will do everything I can to see that Am Yisroel chai.”

Schumer praised Achiezer’s work and recounted how he helped Rabbi Yaakov Bender, the father of Achiezer’s president, establish Hatzalah on East 7th Street in Flatbush in 1977.

Achiezer honored community leaders at its annual dinner at The Sands Atlantic Beach.

Political Reporter

Political Observer comments.

Headline: Is there a way out of the Israeli-Palestinian trap?

Sub-headline: Both sides are right to fear destruction, but change is not impossible

https://www.ft.com/content/459c1bad-a121-42da-8685-d639d6ca4073

As a critic, let me focus on these paragraphs of Harari’s History Made To Measure:

…
It would be wrong to equate the situation of Israelis and Palestinians. They have different histories, live under different conditions and face different threats. The point this article makes is only that both have good reasons to believe that the other side wishes to kill or expel all of them. They consequently see each other not just as run-of-the-mill enemies, but as an existential threat constantly hovering overhead. Unsurprisingly, both sides wish to remove this. However, the Israeli wish to remove the Palestinian existential threat poses an existential threat to the Palestinians — and vice versa. For the only way to completely remove it seems to be to get rid of the other side. 

The tragedy of this conflict is that the problem arises not from unjustified paranoia, but rather from a sound analysis of the situation, and from each side knowing only too well its own intentions and fantasies. When Israelis and Palestinians take a good look at their own dark wishes, they conclude that the other has ample reason to fear and hate them. It is a devilish logic. Every side says to itself: “Given what we wish to do to them, it makes sense that they will want to get rid of us — which is precisely why we have no choice but to get rid of them first.”

Is there a way out of this trap? Ideally, each side should give up its fantasy of getting rid of the other. A peaceful solution to the conflict is technically feasible. There is enough land between the Jordan and Mediterranean to build houses, schools, roads and hospitals for everyone. But it can be realised only if each side can honestly say that, even if it had unlimited power and zero restrictions, it would not wish to expel the other. “No matter what injustices they committed against us and what threats they still pose, we nevertheless respect their right to live dignified lives in their country of birth.” Such a profound change in intentions is bound to manifest itself in action, and eventually ease the fear and hatred, creating space for genuine peace.

Of course, accomplishing such a change is extremely hard. But it is not impossible. There are already numerous individuals on both sides who wish well for the other. If their number increases, eventually it should change collective policies. There is also one important group in the region that collectively feels a part of both sides, and doesn’t wish to see either disappear: the close to 2mn Arab citizens of Israel, who are usually referred to as either Arab Israelis or Palestinian Israelis.

…

What of the the right of a captive people’s to resist their oppressor? On this vexing question, The Reader would be best served by reading Margaret Moore’s whole essay.

Terrorism and the Right to Resist: A Theory of Just Revolutionary War

Christopher J. Finlay, Terrorism and the Right to Resist: A Theory of Just Revolutionary War, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 339pp., $103.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781107040939.

Reviewed by Margaret Moore, Queen’s University

2017.03.08

dpr.nd.edu/reviews/terrorism-and-the-right-to-resist-a-theory-of-just-revolutionary-war/

Harari essay is both about story telling, wedded to speculation about both motives and the emotions of the political actors. Yet the very real power dynamic of these actors remains beyond his ken. This places his commentary in the confines of a partially denatured propaganda!

Political Observer

Newspaper Reader comments.

Headline: Words Over Deeds: Why Biden Isn’t Pressuring Israel

Mr. Miller has impressive credentials:

…

Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations. He also served as the deputy special Middle East coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations, senior member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and in the office of the historian. He has received the department’s Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards.

Miller is a member of the  Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly served as resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has been a featured presenter at the World Economic Forum and leading U.S. universities. Between 2003 and 2006 he served as president of Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence. From 2006 to 2019, Miller was a public policy scholar; vice president for new initiatives, and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

…

https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1744

The opening paragraph of Miller’s essay posses a kind of literary flavor born of practice.

One could be forgiven for thinking that President Biden’s tough words on the Israel-Hamas war in his State of the Union address and his MSNBC interview on Saturday was the beginning of a much more critical U.S. policy toward Israel. After all, the president called for at least a temporary cease-fire, laying out, in his most emotional terms to date, the losses and suffering of the people of Gaza and delivered an unmistakably sharp signal that Israel must make the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza a priority. Those calls came on the heels of Vice President Kamala Harris’s high-profile meeting with Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rival and likely successor — a snub to Mr. Netanyahu who has been denied a White House visit.

The Reader needn’t fear there are Comic Moments in Millers analysis:

Early in his career, it was easy for an impressionable young senator who made his first visit to Israel at age 30 to connect with the saga of Israel’s struggle for independence and its fight for survival in a hostile neighborhood. In the years since, Mr. Biden has repeatedly recalled his father’s references to the Holocaust and the dangers of silence in the face of evil. No other president describes himself repeatedly as a Zionist; no other occupant of the White House has asserted that if there were no Israel, “We’d have to invent one.”

Joe Biden has always been a reliable loud-mouthed bully:

The Technocrat, Mr. Miller and his allies, operate within the bounds of political respectability : while the brazen Joe Biden, in his salad days, lectured his betters with the abandon of the Corrupt, the Powerful!

Reader, my patience with Mr. Miller wanes , so I will quote his last two paragraphs. I have highlighted the final paragraph. It is shit !

Perhaps most important, Mr. Biden needs Mr. Netanyahu to agree to a hostage deal and an extended cease-fire with Hamas. Without that agreement, Mr. Biden cannot hope to de-escalate the war, increase humanitarian aid in a meaningful way, put an end to the devastating images out of Gaza and have a chance to pursue a broader peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

As the war enters its sixth month, Mr. Biden finds himself in an investment trap that’s difficult to escape. He is increasingly frustrated and angry with Mr. Netanyahu. And yet he’s still in love with Israel. How to stand up to the first without damaging the second is proving to be an excruciatingly difficult challenge for a president whose regard for Israel runs deep in his emotional and political DNA and whose re-election campaign may depend upon which way he turns.

Newspaper Reader

Political Observer & Political Cynic

__https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/03/15/macron-repeats-nothing-excluded-on-ukraine-rebuts-accusations-of-electoral-opportunism_6621643_5.html________________________________________________________________________________

___https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/03/15/on-ukraine-aid-macron-walks-a-tightrope_6621940_23.html

_____________________________________________________________________________

__https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/03/14/macron-says-russian-ukraine-victory-would-reduce-europe-s-credibility-to-zero_6619721_7.html________________________________________________________________

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/03/14/war-in-ukraine-emmanuel-macron-s-metamorphosis-from-dove-to-hawk_6618730_5.html

Political Observer & Political Cynic

Political Cynic comments.

Mr. Friedman can’t stop himself from being the servant of The American National Security State, under the amped-up Senile Old Joe!

Call this Friedman Political Hysteria!

Israel today is in grave danger. With enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, Israel should be enjoying the sympathy of much of the world. But it is not. Because of the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been conducting the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, Israel is becoming radioactive and diaspora Jewish communities everywhere increasingly insecure.

I fear it is about to get worse.

No fair-minded person could deny Israel the right of self-defense after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 Israelis in one day. Women were sexually abused, and children were killed in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. Scores of abducted Israeli men, women, children and elderly people are still being held hostage in terrible conditions, now for more than 150 days.

But no fair-minded person can look at the Israeli campaign to destroy Hamas that has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, about a third of them fighters, and not conclude that something has gone terribly wrong there. The dead include thousands of children, and the survivors many orphans. So much of Gaza is now a wasteland of death and destruction, hunger and ruined homes. Urban warfare brings out the absolute worst in people, and that is certainly true for Israel in Gaza. This is a stain on the Jewish state.

But Israel is not alone in creating this tragedy. The stain on Hamas is black as well. This Islamist militia started the conflict on Oct. 7 without any warnings, protections or shelters for Gazan civilians, and it did so knowing full well from experience that Israel would respond by bombing Hamas strongholds tunneled under homes, mosques and hospitals. Hamas showed a total disregard for the lives of Palestinians, not just Israelis. But Hamas was already branded as a terrorist organization. It is not a U.S. ally and never claimed to practice purity of arms.

Friedman has always been a Zionist Partisan, who screeches about Israel’s right to Self-Defence, yet he equates the resistance of a captive population, to the Zionist murder on the instalment-plan. Since, or even before, the creation of The Zionist State over generations, as possessing parity! The equation defies the very notion/practice of parity. Friedman is a Zionist Partisan, the highlighted third paragraph ending with ‘This is a stain on the Jewish state.’ Then meets the fourth paragraph that expresses the imagined ‘parity’ ,between a besieged population, and a State armed by American Weaponry. The Zionist Faschist State continues its Genocide, the only resistance is the The Houthis.

Political Cynic

Myra Breckenridge surveys a small pile of dung!

What might The Reader/Viewer think of Mr. Shapiros’ title ‘The Oscars Is Filled With Trash Humans’ as just convenient hyperbole, but that not just probably refers to Jews, in an industry once dominated by Jews? This story from The Hollywood Reporter provides insights on that very question:

Guest Column:

Headline: The Academy and ADL Explain Why Museum Needed to Tell Hollywood’s Jewish Origin Story With Upcoming Exhibit

sub-headline: An important element of this story is “the role the movies themselves played in exposing the effects of antisemitism in society,” write Bill Kramer and Jonathan Greenblatt.

MARCH 21, 2022 10:02AM

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/why-telling-hollywood-jewish-origin-story-important-1235115400

…

There is a deep connectivity between Jewish film artists and the fight against antisemitism. Take screenwriter and producer Dore Schary, for example. In the late 1950s, after experiencing antisemitism in his own life and seeing its deleterious impact on society, Schary went on to become national chairman of ADL. Most Americans may not remember his name, but Schary was a pioneer both in the industry itself and in standing up for the rights of leftist filmmakers during the anti-communist Red Scare. He paid an incredible price for his activism, but nevertheless became a courageous and valiant leader against antisemitism in the U.S. His name is largely forgotten by the American public — and shouldn’t be.

Another important element of this Hollywood story is the role the movies themselves played in exposing the effects of antisemitism in society. Take Gentleman’s Agreement, the groundbreaking 1947 film starring Gregory Peck. The story follows a journalist who decides to write an exposé about antisemitism by pretending to be a Jew himself. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three, including best picture. Films like this helped to raise public awareness about the detrimental impacts of casual antisemitism in society. … No one can be this willfully ignorant of the History and contribution of Jews to the Hollywood Mythology !

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Mr. Shapiro political remit has expanded to Cultural Critic, from his usual Political Commentary? He has granted himself a new avenue of attacking ‘Liberals’ as the creature of his darkest thought configurations. The Reader is best served by quick rhetorical jumps, from minute by minute, to longer intervals, that makes Mr. Shapiro appear as a Max Senate Keystone Cops reel at high speed!

Myra Breckenridge