Enormous Winter Storm Sweeps Across U.S. Heavy snow was falling across much of the Midwest as forecasters warned of the possibility of freezing rain and ice.
Over a Million Flee as Afghanistan’s Economy Collapses Thousands of Afghans are trying to sneak into Iran and Pakistan each day, as incomes have dried up and life-threatening hunger has become widespread.
The Lessons of Brooklyn Tech
So, You Think the Republican Party No Longer Represents the People
One Day in the ‘Parallel Universe’ of a London I.C.U. Britain’s government may have lifted coronavirus restrictions, but hospital workers say the return to a normal rhythm of work is still a long way off.
“You know, in Wave 1, we were heroes,” said Ms. Jenkins, the leader of the nursing team. “By Wave 2, we were the enemy. And that’s hard.”
Clues to the Next Variant Are All Around Us But there are places to look that may help scientists find new variants even faster: sewage and the air. People can shed the coronavirus in their feces and their exhaled breath. As a result, the virus can be spotted before people have been tested or developed symptoms.
What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump “Call it ‘soft fascism’ ” ....... a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state. One of the most disconcerting parts of observing Hungarian soft fascism up close is that it’s easy to imagine the model being exported. While the Orban regime grew out of Hungary’s unique history and political culture, its playbook for subtle repression could in theory be run in any democratic country whose leaders have had enough of the political opposition......... “Orban consolidated power through tactics that were procedurally legal but, in substance, undercut the rule of law. He stacked the courts with partisans and pressured, captured or shut down independent media.” ....... “Orban’s open assault on academic freedom — including banning gender studies and evicting the Central European University from Hungary — finds analogies in current right-wing efforts in Republican-controlled states to ban the teaching of critical race theory and target liberal and left-wing academics.” ..... Hungary is becoming what Denmark is for the left: part real-life model, part idealized dreamscape.
........ Trump will push the United States in a broadly similar direction: toward neopatrimonial governance. During his first term, Trump treated the presidency as his own personal property — something that was his to use to punish enemies, reward loyalists and enhance his family’s wealth. If he wins in 2024, we’re likely to see this on steroids ......... The U.S. is a large federation with a lot of capacity for private violence, a major international footprint and a multitrillion-dollar economy. Hungary is a minor player in a confederation dominated by democratic regimes............. Orban’s appeal to the right flank of the Republican Party, in Cooley’s view, lies in an ideology — which rests on redefining the meaning of “the West” away from liberal principles and toward ethnonational ideals and conservative values — and his strategy for consolidating power is to close or take over media, stack the courts, divide and stigmatize the opposition, reject commitments to constraining liberal ideals and institutions and publicly target the most vulnerable groups in society — e.g., refugees............ Orban has described Hungary under his rule as an “illiberal democracy.”
........ would be fueled by increased moral panic about white America’s decline ....... there is an active plan to reshape the political system so that elections are not winnable by Democrats, and the state be run without the foundation of a democracy......... The use of citizens as informants to enforce intrusions of this sort is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with democratic norms — reminiscent of East Germany, where the Stasi made use of an estimated 189,000 citizen informers. ...... A critical issue for Senate Republicans and a second Trump administration would be whether to eliminate the filibuster to prevent Democratic senators from blocking their wilder legislative plans. ...... The politics of a populist Republican administration will aim at undermining American democracy and changing the level playing field in favor of a party-penetrated state apparatus.
In responses to Moscow’s security demands, the U.S. and NATO rejected a demand that Ukraine never join the alliance but offered more transparency on missile deployments in Eastern Europe.
the Biden administration proposes a reciprocal “transparency mechanism” under which Russia could verify the absence of offensive missiles at the sites in Romania and Poland, while the United States would do the same at two missile-launching bases of its choice in Russian territory; one would likely include Kaliningrad, the slice of Russia bordering two Eastern European NATO members, Lithuania and Poland....... The flurry of diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis is proceeding along two broad tracks, one between Russia and the United States and NATO that included the exchange of published demands and written replies, the other a preparation for a summit of the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
"I Don't Want To Be A Mother To A Man"
What It’s Like to Be a Black Student at an Elite Boarding School We spoke with Kendra James, the author of “Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School.”
When James first arrived as a freshman, she was determined to make friends with white students — but nothing really worked out. She was the girl who was all but ignored by her white roommate. She was the girl who never got a “crush can,” a school tradition, from an admirer. It didn’t matter that her father also went to Taft, James couldn’t seem to fit in........ At some point in my senior year, the boys in one of the dorms decided to start peeing in bottles and dumping it out the dorm windows. I just remember one day, during English class, we all ran over to the window, because I think one of the bottles had landed on someone, or very close to someone, on the sidewalk. ......... I just would never send my child away to a place that I cannot get to within 15 to 20 minutes. ....... How can a white adult be in loco parentis to a Black child if that white adult does not have the tools, or the instincts, that are often necessary when it comes to being the parent of a Black child in America? That just stays with me. That’s simply something that you can’t change.
There is a Dong and a Doogan, a Goyer and a Huynh, a Subah and a Wai.
............ “I became aware of internalized shame at not being white and wealthy,” she said. “I learned kids did not sit at home in summer: They went to ‘camp.’” ....... She got in and the local Bengali newspaper ran her photograph and those of other Bengali teenagers who gained admittance to specialized high schools. “Family honor is tied to it,” she said. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” ........ There were Bengalis and Pakistanis and Indians, the Brown Squad. There was a Latino Squad, a Russian Squad, a Black Squad, similar in their yearnings. She stayed up past midnight doing homework, one advanced course piled atop another. ............ He applied to the highly competitive Mark Twain Middle School and scored in the 97th percentile. The test cutoff was the 98th percentile. ..... “Bring grades or class rank into it if you need to; we should strive for a world where we don’t need Brooklyn Tech,” said Ayaan Ali, a senior whose parents emigrated from Pakistan. “But abolishing the test is like putting a Band-Aid over a gunshot wound.”
Immigrants to America quickly learn that you don’t bargain when shopping. If a fishmonger prices something at $7.50 a pound, you don’t offer to buy it for $4.50, telling him that a fish that’s been dead longer than your grandfather (God rest his soul) can’t be worth what he asks.
A fixed price, says Roya Hakakian, can be depressing to immigrants for whom haggling was once “the most satisfying aspect of any shopping experience.” And yet, with its immense and disarming cultural genius, America offers the recent arrival something in lieu of the pleasure (now lost) of being able to beat a vendor down: the right to return a purchased product.
