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Peter Zeihan – Earthquakes Wreak Havoc on Turkey and Syria [Peter Zeihan, Zeihan on Geopolitics]

By William McClain
In Peter Zeihan [Zeihan on Geopolitics], Politics
February 7, 2023
597 views
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• On February 6th, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the city of Gesantep in South Central Turkey, causing significant devastation.
• Early death estimates are already over 2,000 and are expected to increase to over 20,000 within a week due to the lack of earthquake–resistant infrastructure.
• Earthquakes often provide opportunities for diplomatic breakthroughs, and in this case Russia and Sweden may be able to provide emergency assistance in order to gain political advantage in Turkey.
• The response to the earthquake must be quick, as those buried in the rubble will be gone after a few days.

Published February 7, 2023
Visit YouTube to read Peter Zeihan’s original vlog Peter Zeihan – Earthquakes Wreak Havoc on Turkey and Syria

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UPDATE: Michigan fights back [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
February 6, 2023
633 views
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• A conservative group called the Great Schools Initiative (GSI) launched a plan called “Operation Opt-Out” to exploit a Michigan statute that allows parents to opt their children out of sex education in order to erase LGBTQ people from public schools.
• GSI created its own opt-out form to target anything during the school day that acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ people, such as a teacher wearing a rainbow pin or any book with LGBTQ characters.
• GSI has partnered with the Thomas More Society, a far-right legal organization, to enforce the GSI opt-out forms with aggressive legal action.
• The Michigan Department of Education has pushed back against GSI’s plot, stating that parents are not legally entitled to opt children out of programs, practices, and resources outside of sexual education.
• Two Michigan school districts — Rochester and Troy — have already said they will not accept GSI’s form.
• GSI’s organizers are not ready to give up and are planning to challenge the Michigan Department of Education’s memo.
• A Michigan Senate committee is considering legislation to add sexual orientation and gender identity or expression to the state’s anti-discrimination law.

Published February 6, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post UPDATE: Michigan fights back

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Peter Zeihan – The Solar Power Problem(s) [Peter Zeihan, Zeihan on Geopolitics]

By William McClain
In Peter Zeihan [Zeihan on Geopolitics], Politics
February 6, 2023
575 views
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• Solar intensity around the world varies drastically, making it difficult to use solar to generate meaningful amounts of electricity and reduce carbon footprints.
• Denver, Colorado is one of the best places in the world for solar due to its sunny climate, clear skies, and lack of heavy air pollution.
• Current solar technology is not efficient enough to make solar feasible in many places, especially densely populated cities.
• To make solar viable, more efficient solar panels must be developed, transmission lines must be built, and high velocity capital must be available to finance solar projects.

Published February 6, 2023
Visit YouTube to read Peter Zeihan’s original vlog Peter Zeihan – The Solar Power Problem(s)

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February 4, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 5, 2023
555 views
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• A U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter jet fired a missile to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon 6 miles off the South Carolina coast.
• The balloon had been flying above the U.S. for the last four days and was the size of three buses and weighed more than 1,000 pounds.
• U.S. defense officials took steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information and the Navy will recover the equipment from the shallow waters where it fell.
• It is believed that the balloon was trying to gather intelligence information and the incident has been used by Republicans to score political points.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his planned visit to Beijing over the incident and it has offered Biden’s opponents an opportunity to say he is not countering China strongly enough.

Published February 5, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 4, 2023

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February 3, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 4, 2023
575 views
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• Mike Pence recently proposed replacing the New Deal with a “better deal” by privatizing Social Security and cutting domestic spending.
• Republicans believe that cutting taxes and staying out of economic affairs will lead to wealth trickling down and creating more jobs.
• Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves refuses to accept an expansion of Medicaid, which is putting 38 rural hospitals in danger of collapsing.
• The Fifth Circuit recently ruled that a federal law prohibiting people who are under a domestic restraining order from owning a gun is unconstitutional.
• President Joe Biden and the Democrats are reviving the theory embraced by members of both parties between 1933 and 1981, which involves the federal government regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, investing in infrastructure, and protecting civil rights.
• Biden is also bringing supply chains home, rebuilding foreign alliances, and investing in research and development.
• The January 2021 jobs report showed an astonishing 517,000 new jobs added and unemployment falling to 3.4%.
• Biden believes that the next three to four years will determine what the country looks like for the next four to five decades.

Published February 4, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 3, 2023

 

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February 2, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 3, 2023
659 views
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• The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted along party lines to remove Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from her seat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
• Earlier, House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) used his own discretion to remove Democratic California representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
• The Democrats removed Gosar and Greene—both members of the far-right group—after they threatened violence against their Democratic colleagues, while Republicans removed Schiff and Swalwell over make-believe dangers and now have removed Omar allegedly over policy differences.
• McCarthy catered to far-right members in order to get the votes to become speaker; now he is giving those members what they want in order to keep them from ousting him and to get them on board for imperative legislation.
• The power the far-right representatives are getting is making them a force distinct from the rest of the Republican Party.
• Republicans in the 1980s made a deliberate decision to court voters with religion, racism, and sexism in order to hold onto power.
• The Republicans have created a group of voters and their representatives who are openly white supremacists and who believe that any attempt to use the government to hold the economic playing field level is socialism.
• The House voted to condemn socialism—another attempt to appease that far right—while Republicans then chided those Democrats who refused to vote in favor of that condemnation.
• Former president Trump “retruthed” the words of a person who warned that he and “80,000,000” were willing to fight for Trump and were “Locked and LOADED.”
• Some of the far-right group are wearing AR-15 pins, but have not, so far, introduced any gun bills.

Published February 3, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 2, 2023

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Material Processing: The Redheaded Stepchild [Peter Zeihan, Zeihan on Geopolitics]

By William McClain
In Peter Zeihan [Zeihan on Geopolitics], Politics
February 3, 2023
619 views
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• Processing is an energy–intensive process which is usually done in multiple steps and in different facilities.
• China is the largest producer of raw and finished steel due to subsidies and low–interest loans.
• There are already plenty of social and technological anti-bot filters, and fear of backlash will limit adoption.
• Russia imports raw materials, uses their cheap power and coal to process and exports the value–added materials.
• The world is facing a crisis due to the economic, demographic and security issues in China and Russia.
• We need to prepare for a system where materials from these two countries face a significant decrease in production.
• It suggests that chatbots could be used to trick people into believing they are talking to a real person.
• February 17th webinar explores the economic implications of the Ukraine war and Russian minerals processing.

Published February 3, 2023
Visit YouTube to watch Peter Zeihan’s original vlog Material Processing: The Redheaded Stepchild

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Why the College Board watered-down its new course on Black history [Tesnim Zekeria, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen
In [Popular Information]
February 2, 2023
617 views
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• The College Board released a revised framework for its new Advanced Placement (AP) course for African American Studies on February 1, 2021.
• The revisions address nearly all of the objections raised by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and other right-wing critics, including the removal of lessons on Black Lives Matter, the case for reparations, and queer studies.
• The College Board insists that any suggestion that politics played a role in the revisions is “a gross misrepresentation of the content of the course and the process by which it was developed.”
• In 2019, the College Board made over $1.1 billion dollars in revenue, and its CEO, David Coleman, took home more than $2.5 million in compensation in 2020.
• Nearly 600 African American Studies faculty from colleges and universities across the country signed a letter protesting DeSantis’ ban of the course in Florida, calling it “censorship and a frontal attack on academic freedom.”

Published February 2, 2023
Visit Popular Information to read Tesnim Zekeria’s original post Why the College Board watered-down its new course on Black history

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February 1, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 2, 2023
599 views
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• On February 1, 1862, Julia Ward Howe published her famous poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the Atlantic Monthly, which became the anthem of the Union during the Civil War.
• On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution of Congress passing the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
• On February 1, 1960, four Black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down at the F.W. Woolworth Company department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, to protest segregation.
• This sparked a sit-in movement that spread across the South and eventually led to the desegregation of public spaces.
• On February 1, 2023, Tyre Nichols’s family laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee, after he was severely beaten by police officers.
• The College Board also released the official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies, which had been stripped of information about Black feminism, the queer experience, incarceration, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Published February 2, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 1, 2023

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Deglobalization: There’s No Stopping It Now [Peter Zeihan, Zeihan on Geopolitics]

By William McClain
In Peter Zeihan [Zeihan on Geopolitics], Politics
February 2, 2023
514 views
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• Globalization for the US was never about economics or trade, but about security, as demonstrated by Cold War foreign policy.
• The US benefited from globalization due to its large economy, but now the rest of the world has a combined economy that is 3-4x larger making indirect economic subsidization untenable.
• US politics has shifted with the changing demographics, economics, and security, diminishing support for globalization.
• Demographic shifts (urbanization, industrialization, Baby Boomers) have resulted in a global population running out of people 40 and under, eliminating the ability to sustain the globalized system through trade.
• The Biden Administration is far more anti-globalization than the Trump Administration, meaning it would take at least 6 years for the US to re-enter the globalized system, by which point China will likely be gone.

Published February 2, 2023
Visit Youtube to watch Peter Zeihan’s original vlog Deglobalization: There’s No Stopping It Now

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