23 February 2017
Politico: Does Trump herald the end of the West?
And while Trump has taken his complaint to an extreme by casting doubt on America’s pledge of collective defense, something no other president has ever even contemplated, it was Obama after all who loudly complained about “free riders,” countries who benefit from U.S. military spending and action and have sufficient resources but still don’t contribute their fair share. Most assumed Saudi Arabia and Germany were prime examples.
Beyond the question of NATO spending is the larger context of America’s willingness to act internationally and the extent to which it acts in concert with allies and partners. This part of the problem is too often ignored. The tragic truth is that it has been a long, long time since Washington has been both willing to lead internationally and willing to do so together with our Western allies. [...]
At the same event, foreign ministers from Russia, China and Iran were putting forward a more troubling premise. Each in their own way asserted that this year marked the end of the “West” and the onset of a new era for Europe and the wider world. Their analysis was surely premature and self-serving, inasmuch as those countries have been making similar points for many years now. Tragically though, unless something changes, this time they may be right.
Motherboard: The Father of Cryonics Never Really Died
Cryonics—that is, the deep chilling of corpses with the hope that at some point in the future, they can be resurrected—is the focus of my story in VICE's Future of Technology issue. All told, an estimated 300 or more people are cryogenically frozen in the US today, including Ettinger, the movement's unlikely father, who died in 2011 and is cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan.
Like the concepts he espoused, Ettinger remains controversial. While some revere Ettinger as an optimistic pioneer ahead of his time, others have lambasted him and his views as the stuff of snake oil, noting he sought to gather funds from unsuspecting individuals with a false promise of a second life. (Representatives with the Cryonics Institute did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) [...]
After the war, Ettinger returned home to write. In 1948, he published a short story called "The Penultimate Trump," a science fiction tome that laid out some of his ideas' potential (it does not reference the 45th President of the United States). Ettinger made contact with people on the "Who's Who in America" list with his pitch for freezing. Responses were lackluster.
But instead of retreating, Ettinger went bigger. That's when he published his cryonics magnum opus, The Prospect of Immortality.
The book is a strange paleo-future, unscientific pitch that at times bears more resemblance to an even more offbeat take on Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than a medical journal. Ettinger wrote that freezing would unhatch a world of unbridled positivity. With fetuses incubated, childbirth would become moot and through a eugenics-like lens, Ettinger proposed that those born with cerebral palsy could simply remain frozen.
The Conversation: Netanyahu’s visit prompts Australia to rethink its relationship with Israel
Israel can count on only a handful of friends on the international stage. Australia is one of them. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared Australia – which isn’t a member of the Security Council and so didn’t get a vote – would have dissented. She said the government was opposed to “one-sided resolutions against Israel”. It is the kind of support Israel needs. [...]
On Monday, more than 60 prominent Australians, including business leaders, academics, senior legal and church figures signed a statement opposing Netanyahu’s visit and the Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians. [...]
Australian Jewry has long been described as among the most Israel-centred of global diasporas. A 2009 study by the Monash University Centre for Jewish Civilisation found that 80% of Australian Jews regarded themselves as Zionists and 76% felt a special fear if Israel was perceived to be in danger. It also found over 70% had family in Israel.
Al Jazeera: Court rules ICC withdrawal plan unconstitutional
A South African court has ruled the government's plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was "unconstitutional and invalid", providing a boost to the embattled Hague-based institution.
The court has recently been fighting off allegations of pursuing a neo-colonial agenda in Africa, where most of its investigations have been based.
Three African states - South Africa, The Gambia and Burundi - last year signalled their intention to quit the ICC. The Gambia's President Adama Barrow, elected in December, said earlier this month it will remain in the ICC. [...]
"The cabinet decision to deliver the notice of withdrawal ... without prior parliamentary approval is unconstitutional and invalid," said judge Phineas Mojapelo in the North Gauteng High Court. [...]
The ICC, which launched in July 2002 and has 124 member states, is the first legal body with permanent international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Al Jazeera: Cyprus talks falter over nationalist commemoration row
Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci were scheduled to meet on Thursday at the divided island's buffer zone.
But tensions rose in recent days after a February 10 vote by Greek Cypriot MPs for public schools to honour the anniversary of a 1950 referendum for union with Greece, or "enosis" (the Greek word for union). [...]
The two sides are scheduled to be joined by Greece, Turkey and the UK, Cyprus's three post-colonial guarantor powers, in a meeting scheduled for early March in Geneva. A similar meeting in January ended without concrete progress.
The new regulation, which calls on secondary school students to learn about the enosis ideal and to commemorate the January 1950 referendum at schools, passed by 19 votes from the smaller parties in the 50 seat House of Representatives.
The Guardian: Kim Jong-nam's body targeted in morgue break-in, say police
“We knew there were attempts by someone to break into the hospital mortuary. We had to take precautions. We will not allow anyone to tamper with the mortuary,” the Malay Mail quoted him as saying. [...]
The detained Indonesian woman has said she was duped into playing a role in the killing, believing she was part of a television comedy prank.
But Khalid disputed that on Wednesday, saying the suspects were “trained” and had even practised the attack at different public places, including a major mall in downtown Kuala Lumpur.
“Yes, the two female suspects knew that the substance they had was toxic. We don’t know what kind of chemical was used,” he said. Samples from an inconclusive autopsy were sent away for lab tests.
ArchDaily: The Fossilized Soviet Architecture of Belarus, in Photos
As a result of heavy resistance to German invasion in WWII, much of the traditional Belarusian architecture, which included wooden houses, Baroque palaces and cathedrals, and Renaissance-inspired castles, was destroyed. [1] In 1919 the city of Minsk was chosen by the USSR as the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and as such was the site of Soviet efforts to rebuild and modernize after the wars, along with other cities such as Kiev and Smolensk. [2]
The rebuilding process of newly Soviet cities had to happen quickly, as many people had been displaced from their homes during the war. New apartment buildings and public transportation infrastructure were constructed in urban centers to facilitate industry by housing labor close to the country's production zones. The massive, concrete housing blocks that still exist in Belarus are a direct result of this urgency to house the populace, and constitute one aspect of the country's remaining Soviet Architecture. [...]
Large public squares are found in front of majestic state offices, city halls, and upscale apartment buildings that were almost always inaccessible for most citizens. The juxtaposition of elitist structures with public space provided a veneer of populism that fit with the communist ideology. [4] These buildings used a state-approved set of architectural vocabulary that drew on political histories of the time periods in which they were popular--for example, pastiches of classical styles were acceptable because of the Greek’s association with democracy. [5]
Jakub Marian: Special characters (diacritics) used in European languages
The “Basic Latin Alphabet”, as defined by ISO, consists of the following 26 letters and their uppercase variants (and is identical to the standard English alphabet):
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
However, English is the only modern major European language that uses the Latin alphabet without any additional letters formed by adding diacritical marks or completely new symbols. Although the letter “é” may be used in words like “café” and “fiancée”, it is usually replaced by “e”. Similarly, the diaeresis (two dots) is sometimes used, e.g. “naïve”, but such usage is rare. Such rarely used symbols are written in parentheses in the following map.
On the other hand, some basic Latin letters (e.g. W and X) are only used in recent loanwords in many European languages (these are written in square brackets in the following map).
The following map shows a list of special characters used for each national European language (minority and regional languages are not included, because they often do not have completely established orthographies and there are simply too many to fit into a map). Note that not all of the characters shown in the map are considered “letters” of the alphabet; for example, the character “á” is a separate letter in the Czech alphabet but not in the Spanish alphabet.
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