Devendra Shah
Does Language Affect Thought While Talking?
623 by DS
Language is a body of words and systems for their utility common to people who are from the same community or country, the same geographical location or the same cultural tradition. Language is the unique human gift, central to the experience of being human. It is the human capability to obtain and use complex systems of communication. It is estimated that there are between five thousand to seven thousand languages in existence on this planet. The speakers of different languages have different thought processes, which are directly influenced by the language they speak. A language places restrictions and permissions on the thought process in the minds of its speakers and directly affects their thinking when they talk in society.
As a curious language student interested in learning more about languages, I am eager to know how and why language affects human thought and society’s thinking. How does a language affect the thinking of its speakers anyway? How deep and lasting are these effects on human thinking? What are the types of the effects of language on its speakers? What is the language’s power over the mind? Are people speaking different languages thinking differently just because they speak different languages? Does learning a new language change the way we think? Who are actively involved in the research on the effects of language on human thinking? What are some evidence that prove a language affects the thought process of its speakers and the society? These questions and their answers helped me in my quest to learn more about how language affects the thought process of its speakers.
When we learn in our mother tongue, we acquire certain habits of thinking that molds our experience in significant and often surprising ways. Languages are different from one another in many ways. Each language requires different things from its speakers. For instance, when we have to say that we saw someone at a place: In Mian, a language spoken in the Papua New Guinea, the verb we use will reveal whether the event happened in the past, yesterday or just now, whereas in Indonesian language the verb used would describe nothing about the time or date of the event that happened. The Russian language would require us to reveal the gender of that someone who we met at the place. In Mandarin, a language spoken by Chinese people, we would have to reveal if that person is related or not, and if related, by blood or marriage because there are separate words that describe all these separate relations.
A language often puts restrictions on the thought process in the minds of the speakers of that language. For example, a speaker of Piraha language, a language spoken in the Amazon, cannot say the words “fifty-five” or “forty-six”. For him, there are no such words which describe these quantities. There are just words for “few” or “many”.
A language has diverse effects on the minds and actions of its speakers. There are circumstances when extreme feelings can arise in the minds of speakers just because of alanguage. For example, In Dennis Baron’s reading he raises a common question that arises in theminds of many Spanish speaking workers working in an English speaking work environment – “Can I be fired for speaking Spanish on the job?” (Baron1) The Spanish language has brought a fear in the minds of Spanish speaking workers. They are afraid of speaking their native language and think that they may lose their jobs, their way of livelihood and source of earning. Whether the worker gets fired or not depends. Federal law favors workers speaking in the languages of their choice when on breaks and when talking privately. Courts allow employers to designate the language of their choice they want their employees to be speaking in when dealing with the public. Thirty states in the United States of America have declared English as their official language. So, whether or not a worker speaking the Spanish language in an English work environment gets fired really depends. But, the fear of losing their jobs directly affects their thought process in deciding which language to converse in at the workplace.
As we can see that a language clearly affects thinking processes of different talking people in many contexts, it is fair to say that language affects thought while talking. Most questions about how languages mold thought start with a simple observation that languages aredifferent in many aspects. Let’s take an example. If we have to say “Bill read Brown’s famous novel”. Let’s focus here just on the verb “read”. To say this in English Language, we need to mark the verb read for its tense. We have to pronounce it like ‘red’ instead of ‘reed’. In theIndonesian language, we don’t need to. In fact, we cannot change the verb to indicate past tense. In Russian Language, we would have to change the verb to mark gender and tense. It means ifMelinda was reading Brown’s novel instead of Bill, the gender would use in Russian Language would be totally different. In Turkish language, we would have to indicate how we had obtained the information that Bill read Brown’s novel: whether we had got it from a second hand source or seen Bill reading Brown’s novel with our own eyes or simply heard about it or read about it. The verbs used to describe all these cases would be distinct in Turkish Language. It is clear that different languages require different things from their speakers. So does this imply that different speakers think differently about the world? Do English, Russian, Indonesian, and Turkish people end up experiencing and recalling their experiences differently simply because they speak different languages?
According to Lera Boroditsky, “For some scholars, the answer to this question is a straight yes. Look at the way these people talk, they might say.” (Boroditsky1) She says, “Certainly, speakers of different languages must attend to and encode strikingly different aspects of the world just so that they can use their languages properly.” (Boroditsky1)
Because people think about different aspects of an event to fulfill the syntax of the languages they are speaking, they must think differently. It is clear that the thought process is directly affected by the language of the speaker. Thus, a Language affects thought of its speakers.
It has been demonstrated in a series of tests that we even see colors through the lens of our mother tongue. There are distinct variations in different languages where languages carve upthe visible light’s spectrum. For instance, in the English language, the colors green and blue are totally separate and distinct colors. In some languages these two colors which we are said to be different are said to be the shades of the same color. Isn’t that weird?
According to Guy Deutscher,
“It turns out that the colors that our language routinelyobliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between the shades of color if these have different names in our language.” (Deutscher1)
In some languages, there are no left and right, there are just directions like east, west, south and north. So, if we ask a person speaking such language where his/her left leg is, he/she would say that it is on the southwest corner of his/her body. Confusing as it sounds, a language can create many confusions in the mind of a person who is not acquainted with that particular language. Obviously, it would take some time to learn that language, but the person would have to go through the whole process of learning that language to get what people are saying or talking about.
There might be people who do not support the statement that ‘A Language affectsthought while talking.’ It should be made clear to anyone who opposes that language affects thought that a language indeed affects the thought process of its speakers. Those people might say that language has no correlation with the thinking process of its speakers. They might say that we do not need language to think, we can think of anything. My response to this would be that people need language to think. We cannot just think of anything if we do not have words from our language to describe what we are thinking. And what are our thoughts anyway if we cannot describe them? They would simply be meaningless thoughts that we cannot materialize and we would not be able to make others think the same way we are thinking. It would be almost impossible to make other people think the same way we are thinking and make them believe what we are thinking if we do not have common words to describe our thought process. They might raise the question, Are you unable to think things because you don’t have words for them,or do you lack words for them because you don’t think of them? My answer would be that, the language limits us in our thinking because we don’t have any word to describe the thought. Language has once again directly affected the way we think. So what can be done? Should we think of more words to describe our thoughts or can we just not think about them? The questions remain. I suggest such people to learn other languages and broaden their thinking. That way they might be able to borrow words from other languages into their own languages and be able to describe their thoughts. That would solve the problem. They can now think and talk about it because they have words to describe their thought, and nobody can now say that we lack words to describe their thoughts.
Thus, we know that language affects the thought process of human beings, a society and people from a geographical location or the whole country while they speak or talk. Language penetrates social life. Components of social life constitute an intrinsic part of the way language is used. Language is a part of the mental architecture used to represent cultural experiences that are remnants of earlier cognitive evolution.
According to Boas,
“Structural features of a language that constrain what speakers can say will reflect cultural ideas otherwiseinaccessible to researchers.”(Todd, Fiske and Lindzey1)
Speakers of different languages may represent physically similar states of affairs quite differently. They have different thought processes that are directly influenced by the language they speak. A language places many restrictions and permissions on the thought process in the minds of its speakers and directly controls the thinking of talking people in society. A language often puts many restrictions on the thought process in the minds of the speakers of that language. Thus, it is clear that a language affects the thought process of its speakers when they talk. So, is it fair to refute the statement that Language affects thought?
Gilbert, Daniel Todd., Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey. “Language and Social Behavior.”The Handbook of Social Psychology. Vol. 2. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 41-88. The Handbook of Social Psychology. McGraw-Hill. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Boroditsky, Lera. “HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK?” HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? Edge, 11 June 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.
Baron, Dennis. “Language and Society.” PBS. PBS, 2015. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.
Deutscher, Guy. “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Aug. 2010. Web. 02 Mar. 2015.


30 Perplexing Rock + Metal Mashups With Other Genres
Philip Trapp Published: July 26, 2021
Mick Hutson / John Stanton / Apple
Mashups, at this point, represent a substantial slice of the new music that emerges each week. Wild to think about, right?
Still, listeners may not consider the creations in the same sphere as new original compositions, even if they are in seemingly equal abundance.
Do you ever listen to mashups, the audio endeavors that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are recordings made by "digitally combining and synchronizing instrumental tracks with vocal tracks from two or more different songs"? If so, what kind of mashups do you prefer?
Because, especially when it comes to mashups based on rock and metal, there are many entertainingly baffling ones out there. And, often, the mashups that draw the most attention combine a rock band's song with some strikingly different selection, such as a sugary pop tune.
If you're an avid Loudwire reader, you've probably seen some of those mashups on this very site. Whether it's a fusion of Slipknot and Spice Girls, Tool and Justin Bieber, or — a more outré pairing — System of a Down and Beethoven, we're always on the lookout for bracing mashups.
But what mashups of rock and metal are the most bewildering, the most jarring? What are the ones that will make you stand up and pay attention if you heard one playing in the background?
For easy access, we wanted to put them all in one place. So, here you go, the 30 most perplexing — but ultimately enjoyable — rock and metal mashups that we can find. Scroll and enjoy.
30 Perplexing Rock + Metal Mashups
Rock and metal can mingle with pop music (and pop culture) in fascinating ways, including the many puzzling but enthralling rock mashups that often mix artists who are heavy with songs that usually aren't.
2021's Best Rock + Metal Albums (So Far)
Loudwire's picks for the best rock + metal albums of 2021 so far
Source: 30 Perplexing Rock + Metal Mashups With Other Genres
Filed Under: Alanis Morissette, alice in chains, avril lavigne, Bill McClintock, danzig, disturbed, foo fighters, hall & oates, iron maiden, kanye west, katy perry, korn, Mastodon, megadeth, metallica, michael jackson, motorhead, my chemical romance, ozzy osbourne, pantera, Rick James, slayer, slipknot, system of a down, The Beach Boys, tool, van halen
Categories: Rock


Editorial of January 2022
On January 13, 2022 January 13, 2022 By officialblogunioIn Editorials
By Alessandra Silveira (Editor)
Talking openly about the federative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the EU integration
Jean Monnet stated that Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises. Crisis is the natural condition of Europe, and, as in every crisis the EU has survived in recent times – be it the sovereign debt crisis, the migration crisis, or the identity crisis with Brexit – at the beginning of the health crisis the imminent collapse of the EU was again proclaimed. And oddly enough, or not, those who were most critical of the EU’s initial silence were the same ones who traditionally postulate the least possible integration[1].
However, the existential risk at this time was also sensed by politicians and academics unsuspicious of any Euroskepticism – such as Mario Monti, Jacques Delors or Giscard d’Estaing[2] – which made that historical moment especially unique. The public opinion in the various Member States called for concerted EU action in the area of public health, in accordance with its competencies under the TFEU [both shared competencies (Article 4/2/k) and the so-called complementary competencies (Article 6/a), both set out in Article 168 under the heading “public health”], in order to fight a virus that knew no borders, endangered the health and lives of citizens, and threatened to cause an economic crisis of unimaginable proportions, foreseeably more serious than the recession crisis of the 1930s.
There was, indeed, a generalized perception that COVID-19 forced the EU to choose between the intrepidity that saves lives or the cravenness that leaves them to their fate. Bearing in mind the transboundary dimensions of the pandemic, specific EU measures were required in order to prevent unilateral action by individual Member States from compromising the interests of others or common interests if such actions were inconsistent with each other or based on divergent risk developments[3].
It goes without saying that the national authorities would have to be in the front line of fighting the disease, as they were in a position to assess the local evolution of the problem. Even in a unitary State like Portugal, the territory is not equally affected by the pandemic, and it was necessary to isolate the most affected populations. However, the implementation of joint purchasing measures for health response medical supplies, as well as the coordinated exchange of information and resources, for example, should be adequately carried out at the European level (as it was already evident from Decision 1082/2013/EU of October 22, 2013, on serious cross-border threats to health)[4].
The starting point of the pandemic was of evident turmoil, mainly due to disconnected solution and specific impulses from Member States, and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, saw fit to take responsibility for them[5]. While apologizing to Italy for the initial lack of solidarity, the European Institutions have broken their inertia by loosening rules on i) budgetary discipline (Stability and Growth Pact) and ii) the functioning of the internal market (ban on state aid) – measures whose unprecedented nature shows the exceptionality of the circumstances – as well as monitoring the restriction of free movement in emergency situations under Regulation (EU) 2016/399 (Schengen Borders Code).
Despite the fact that this easing of the rules immediately benefits the most fragile Member States economically speaking, it would also favor mid-term the most robust Member States, because the latter were in the position to introduce competitive advantages for their companies, compromising the integrity of the functioning of the internal market and thereby creating distortions of competition. Faced with such a paradox, it was important to avoid the asymmetric risk of a crisis that was originally symmetric, especially since the pandemic exposed the underlying tendency towards the renationalization of European politics, something that we have been witnessing since the consolidation of the single currency began to reveal economic imbalances between Member States, reaching a distressing peak during the sovereign debt crisis[6]. Thus, it was important to ensure that the pandemic and the remedies to fight it would not result in deepening the divergences within the eurozone.
In this context, the so-called “eurobonds” (then renamed “coronabonds”) became the target of an ideological dispute – inflated by internal tensions and national agendas marked by electoral timings – to the detriment of what they effectively were: financial instruments of a federative nature. There were unfortunate moralistic disputes between alleged doers and do-nothings, and disagreements between Northern and Southern Europe over how to deal with the constant pressure from nationalist parties. Southern Member States, led by then Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, argued that in the absence of a common response based on co-responsibility, the economic emergency could quickly turn into a political emergency. Moreover, it would not be too hard to imagine the difficulties for the recovery of the economies in the North if their counterparts in the South collapsed, because the basic lesson of supply and demand in a free trade system (and even more so in an internal market) has always been that of protecting potential customers. To whom did they intend to sell their products if the consumers were all in misery?
One episode deserves to be highlighted, involving the Dutch Finance Minister, Wopke Hoekstra, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, regarding the accusations then made against Spain and Italy that they had not been spared during the bonanza period in order to face possible crises – which gave rise to the “repugnant speech” controversy[7].The Dutch minister had even suggested an investigation on Spain when Madrid said it had no budgetary leverage to respond to the crisis caused by the new coronavirus without financial support from the Union. Spain was then, on March 27, 2020, the second most affected country by the pandemic in Europe, with more than four thousand deaths and on the way to sixty thousand infected – a situation that, tragically, would still get worse.
Eventually, a New Deal for Europe was drawn up,[8] through the adoption of a recovery fund aimed at regaining the trust of Europeans. Thus, at the fourth Extraordinary European Council, on April 23rd, there was unanimity on how to finance that fund, through debt issued by the European Commission, guaranteed by the European budget through new own resources. The issuance of debt securities by European Institutions was not exactly an unprecedented solution, but “on this scale, and in this way, the issuance of direct European debt at the ‘federal’ level, so to speak, had never been designed”[9].
Instead of debt mutualized by the Member States (i.e., shares jointly guaranteed by the States, the “eurobonds”), the option was for debt issued by the European Commission (i.e., debt securities of the Union, not just of the eurozone). And as with USA Treasury bonds, it would be the Union as a whole that would guarantee the debt, through its own resources coming perhaps from the taxation of financial transactions, income from the digital economy, carbon emissions, non-recycled plastic, etc.[10]. Either way, even without “coronabonds”, there would be mutualization of the debt to be contracted; if the “coronabonds” would be “confederal debt”, the Commission’s debt securities would be “federal debt”[11].
The solution was not conveyed in this way, because in the history of the European integration there are politically toxic expressions. The “name of the thing” could kill the idea, because the name refers to ghosts, nuisances, and desires that are unconsciously associated with it [12]. So, the European decision-making reflects the search for consensus between accommodating the interests of individual Member States and pursuing the common interest – the famous strategy of the “Founding Fathers'” small steps – until an idea whose time has come cannot be withheld.
What is for certain is that the European Institutions have gradually agreed to provide more than 3 trillion euros in various forms, be it via the European Central Bank (750 billion + 600 billion), the European Investment Bank (200 billion), the European Commission (100 billion), the Stability Mechanism (240 billion – and without the conditionalities of Troika days), in addition to the upward revision of the European budget proposal to values unthinkable until then (a 1.8 trillion package). In a joint statement on May 18, 2020, the Franco-German axis proposed the initial amount of 500 billion euros in grants (outright transfers) for the Recovery and Resilience Facility of the economies most affected by the pandemic. Moreover, on May 27, 2020, the European Commission put forward the proposal of 750 billion, 500 billion of which in grants, and named it the “NextGenerationEU”.
The magnitude of the 750-billion-euro fund would be similar to the economic package that President Barack Obama approved in 2008 to address the financial crisis. As Moritz Schularick, Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn explained to the Spanish newspaper “El País” on May 30, 2020, few things have more political force than a narrative of shared solidarity in the face of adversity, because it is with such matters that nations – or, in this case, a political Union – are built. The term “resurgence”, “rebirth”, “re-foundation” of the EU has become part of the lexicon of European Institutions, the academic community, and the leading media – in a discourse that is markedly apologetic for the founding values of European integration, including solidarity (Article 2 TEU).
In a long and disputed five-day European Council that started on July 17, 2020, different visions on European construction were confronted – especially those led by the “Frugal Four” (led by the Netherlands with Mark Rutte) and the “Visegrád Group” (led by Hungary with Viktor Orbán). The tactic of the “Frugal Four” (net contributors to the European budget and main beneficiaries of the internal market: Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Sweden) was to confront the convergence between the French-German axis and Southern Europe by dividing the remaining Member States based on two arguments: i) reclaim moral hazard (by subjecting the Southern Member States to constant peer review on the application of the funds, including the possibility of vetoes on resource transfers); ii) uphold the rule of law regarding the “Visegrád Group” (by providing for a regime of conditionalities on access to the fund, including corrective measures in case of infringement adopted by qualified majority).
When articulating these arguments, the “Frugal Four” were firstly opposed to the issuance of mutualized debts within the EU and then to the allocation of subsidies without conditionalities. They would eventually give in under two conditions: i) the rebates allocated to the net contributors to the European budget would be increased, and ii) the payment of the joint debt assumed by the European Commission would be made from the Union’s budget[13].
At the close of what was recognized as a “historic agreement”, the European Council would reduce the amounts of the recovery fund for grants to 390 billion euros – allegedly because it was not possible to increase the national envelopes and European programme allocations at the same time. However, it did so without reducing the overall amount originally envisaged or affecting direct transfers to Member States – but rather focusing on programs managed centrally by Brussels. Thus, the “NewGenerationEU” corresponds to 750 billion euros, of which 390 billion are grants and 360 billion are loans to the Member States. Hence, the main goals have been achieved – especially supporting the Member States most affected by COVID-19 – with Italy and Spain as the main recipients of support[14].
In any case, the key question has always been how to strengthen the EU’s financial capacity to respond to the health crisis by redistributing wealth – i. e., by transferring resources among the Member States. And here there was no point in wasting energy: one had to follow the historical lesson of federative systems, namely i) joint debt posting and ii) tax posting by the federal government.
In fact, Alexander Hamilton – one of the “Founding Fathers” of the USA and the first Secretary of the Treasury – said that a non-excessive debt would be a powerful anchor for that Union. In 1790, in the turbulent period following the Declaration of Independence, Hamilton struck a historic compromise whereby the federal government would assume the debt incurred by the federated states to wage war against the British Empire and repay the debt with a public loan financed by a new federal tax from customs revenue. The foundations were thus laid for a fiscal union that would imply democratic accountability, since citizens “do not pay taxes to a government they do not vote for”[15].
In this sense, it would be inevitable that the emission of European debt at an unprecedented scale to face the sanitary crisis would lead to the introduction of new European own revenues – because until then the European budget was mainly borne by the Member States. New own resources are indispensable to avoid budget cuts in the future. This is because until 2027 only interest will be paid on the common debt incurred. But after 2027, interest and amortization will be paid until 2058, which corresponds to an average of 15 billion euros per year. If the current budget figures are maintained without the Union’s own resources, this will represent a cut of 10 percent per year – those 15 billion euros from 2028.
It is clear that the introduction of European debt and European own resources has an impact on the evolution of the European political community (“EU polity”).[16] The pandemic revealed the extent to which Helmut Kohl’s claims were justified when he asserted that the very notion that you can maintain (in the long run) a monetary Union in the absence of a political Union would be absurd.[17]
Thus, instead of less or no Europe, the pandemic has driven the integration process towards much more Europe. In other words, the pandemic has imposed the need for more European politics and the densification of the “EU polity”, since the destination of the resources mobilized by the health crisis will now be decided in Brussels, starting with the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2021-2027. Many did not initially understand the political implications of the new fund for the economic recovery of the Union, based on the relaunch of productive activity and the strengthening of the internal market. However, in that apparently technical solution lay the deepening of the federative components of the EU’s legal-political system.
Although the European “Founding Fathers” were inspired by an ambitious project of a “United States of Europe”, European integration was achieved by the pragmatic ways of increasing the internal market – or, in broader terms, through an economic and monetary Union. In any case, the federative principles were always present, offering support to European integration. It should be made clear that this is not a matter of building a federal State, but of institutions and procedures that make possible, based on the trilogy “rule of law/democracy/fundamental rights”, both a common foreign and security policy and the staggered harmonization of domestic policies. And the consequence of this sharing of powers and competencies for the pursuit of common goals is the tendency to equalize living conditions in the different Member States – in legal, political, economic, and social terms.
As Jürgen Habermas once asserted, a federally constructed nation State – such as the Federal Republic of Germany, for example – cannot serve as a model for an EU of 27 nation States, all very much aware of their own language and history.[18] In this sense, the EU is in a position to offer the world a much more sophisticated form of organization of political power than that of the federal State, insofar as the State model itself corresponds to a historical construction stemming from constitutional modernity – and susceptible to evolution. Phenomena of federalism should not be considered as static structures that necessarily coincide with the State. In this perspective, Francisco Lucas Pires spoke about “federalising without federal State”,[19] perceiving federalism as a process of federalising a political community.[20].
[1] See Paulo Sande, Em defesa da Europa: os custos da não-Europa, Público, 6 May 2020.
[2] See Valéry Giscard d’Estaing et. al., Para uma Europa do amanhã, Público, 23 April 2020.
[3] On this subject see Teresa Freixes, The European Union and COVID-19, The official blog – Thinking & Debating Europe (UNIO – EU law jornal), 20 March 2020 (https://officialblogofunio.com/2020/03/20/the-european-union-and-covid-19/).
[4] See the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on serious cross-border threats to health repealing Decision No. 1082/2013/EU [COM(2020) 727 final], Brussels, 11 November 2020 (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0727) and the amendments adopted by the European Parliament on 14 September 2021 on that proposal (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-0377_EN.html).
[5] Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in a letter published in the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” and in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels on April 16, 2020, apologized to Italians: “Yes, it is true that no one was really ready for this. It is also true that too many were not there on time when Italy a needed a helping hand at the very beginning. And yes, for that, it is right that Europe as a whole offers a heartfelt apology. But saying sorry only counts for something if it changes behaviour. The truth is that it did not take long before everyone realised that we must protect each other to protect ourselves.” See “Speech by President von der Leyen at the European Parliament Plenary on the EU coordinated action to combat the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences”, European Parliament, accessed January 12, 2022, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_20_675.
[6] See Bernardo Pires de Lima, O regresso dos adultos à sala, Diário de Notícias, 25 April 2020.
[7] The reaction of the Portuguese Prime Minister reproduced by media, António Costa, echoed throughout the EU: “This speech is repugnant in the framework of a European Union. And that’s exactly the word: repugnant. No one is willing to listen to Dutch finance ministers again like the ones we already heard in 2008, 2009 and 2010. And this is a good time for everyone to understand that it was not Spain that created the virus, nor was it Spain that imported the virus – it hit us all equally. If any country in the European Union thinks it can solve the virus problem by letting the virus loose in other countries, it is very mistaken. The virus knows no borders. We all know that the first Portuguese who were infected were infected during trips abroad – and we can’t blame the countries where they were infected, and much less blame the people for having been infected (…). If we don’t respect each other or understand that in the face of a common challenge we must be able to respond in unison, then no one has understood anything about what the European Union stands for” (free translation).
[8] See Nuno Severiano Teixeira, Um New Deal para a Europa, Público, 6 May 2020.
[9] See Rui Tavares, O nascimento discreto dos unibonds, Público, 23 April 2020.
[10] See Rui Tavares, Conclusão de conclusões, Público, 22 July 2020.
[11] See Rui Tavares, Então e esse fim da União Europeia?, Público, 29 May 2020.
[12] See Pedro Madeira Froufe, O nome das coisas, Correio do Minho, 16 May 2020.
[13] On this subject see Teresa de Sousa, Quatro retratos (incompletos) do Conselho Europeu, Público, 22 July 2020.
[14]See “The EU’s 2021-2027 long-term Budget and NextGenerationEU – Facts and figures”, European Commission, April 2021, https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/d3e77637-a963-11eb-9585-01aa75ed71a1/language-en. On this subject see also José Manuel Fernandes, Editorial of March 2021, The official blog – Thinking & Debating Europe (UNIO – EU law jornal), 01 March 2021 (https://officialblogofunio.com/2021/03/01/editorial-of-march-2021/).
[15] On this subject see Nuno Severiano Teixeira, O momento quase hamiltoniano da Europa, Público, 15 July 2020. On the genesis of contemporary federalism and the period that saw its birth as an institutional reality – the USA between 1770-1790 – see Viriato Soromenho-Marques, A revolução federal. Filosofia política e debate constitucional na fundação dos EUA, Edições Colibri, Lisboa, 2002.
[16] With regard to the introduction of own resources, former MEP Rui Tavares predicted the following: “And the day will come when multinationals that evade taxes and benefit so much from the EU’s internal market will also start paying European federal taxes. All this will help the Union’s debt to get a “triple A” [AAA] rating and make the euro a much more competitive reserve currency against the dollar.” See Rui Tavares, Conclusão de conclusões, cit.
[17] On this subject see Viriato Soromenho-Marques, Tópicos de filosofia e ciência política. Federalismo: das raízes americanas aos dilemas europeus, Esfera do Caos, Lisboa, 2011.
[18] See Jürgen Habermas, Ay, Europa!, Editorial Trotta, Madrid, 2009, p. 85.
[19] See Francisco Lucas Pires, A revolução europeia por Francisco Lucas Pires – antologia de textos, Publicação do Gabinete em Portugal do Parlamento Europeu, May 2008, p. 57.
[20] The idea of federalism considered as a process (the federalising process theory) was developed by Carl Friedrich, Trends of federalism in theory and practice, Praeger, London, 1968. On this subject see José Luís da Cruz Vilaça/Alessandra Silveira, The European federalisation process and the dynamics of fundamental rights, Dimitry Kochenov (ed.), EU citizenship and federalism – the role of rights, Cambridge University Press, 2017. See also Alessandra Silveira, Waiting for a federal big bang in EU? Updating the theory of federalism in times of liquid modernity, The official blog – Thinking & Debating Europe (UNIO – EU law jornal), 2 June 2017 (https://officialblogofunio.com/2017/06/01/editorial-of-june-2017/).
Pictures credits: padrinan.
COVID-19covid19European integrationMFFNextGenerationEUpandemics
Summaries of judgments: Consorzio Italian Management e Catania Multiservizi and Catania Multiservizi| IS (Illégalité de l’ordonnance de renvoi)
Case C-817/21, Inspecția Judiciară. Compatibility of the organization of an authority competent to carry out the disciplinary investigation of judges, which is under the total control of a single person, with the rules of the rule of law


Sermons on the Resurrection – Second Sermon
SERMONS ON THE RESURRECTION
SECOND SERMON
by B.H. Carroll
“To whom also he showed himself alive after his death by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.” – Acts 1:3.
You will recall in the preceding sermon that I thought it important to show from the word of God that our Lord Jesus Christ when he was alive, at six different times — three times with his enemies and three times with his friends — especially fixed the test of his Messiahship, and that that test was that he would rise from the dead.
Three other things occurred in his lifetime bearing upon the same subject, all of them of tremendous signification. The first is the institution of the ordinance of baptism, which has no signification apart from the resurrection of the dead, it being a picture of a burial and an emergence from the grave. That this institution was appointed before he died, that it was appointed for perpetual obligation, showed the clearest apprehension in his mind of the nature of the test and the worth of this monumental evidence.
The second is the institution of the Lord’s Supper, whose only hope is in the resurrection of the dead. In the very act of commemorating his death he assures them that he will drink this wine anew with them in his Father’s kingdom, and that while this ordinance is to be a perpetual obligation and points significantly backward, it also points still more significantly to the future, in that it was to be observed until he came again. For 1,900 years these two monuments have stood in the eyes of the world. The third thing was that when they were saddened over the clear announcement of his departure from them by death, he gave them an assurance based upon his resurrection that he would not leave them always; that when he rose from the dead and reached his Father’s house, he would send the Holy Spirit, whose coming would confer upon them power to do all he had commanded them to do.
Thus the institution of baptism and the supper as perpetual ordinances and the promise of the Holy Spirit all conditioned on his resurrection, take their place with the test six times preannounced. That a mere man, and particularly that an impostor, would make such conditions of faith in himself is inconceivable.
Our former sermon closed at the grave of Jesus, and at the empty grave of Jesus. We stopped at the disappearance of the dead body that had been put in the grave, and with the question pending, What became of that body? I have never heard of but two theories concerning the disposition of the dead body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Both of the theories are possible . Both of them make allegations legitimately belonging to the domain of testimony; that is, they are matters upon which testimony may be received and susceptible of sufficient proof.
The first theory is set forth in the following language: “Some of the guard came into the city and told unto the chief priests all of the things that were come to pass”; that is, they told the chief priests that an earthquake came, and that there was dazzling appearance of an angel from heaven, and that they fell down like dead men, and that when they arose from that prostration by the power of the heavenly messenger the grave was empty. Those were the facts they recited to the chief priests. Then the record adds: “And when the chief priests were assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the guards, saying, Tell ye that his disciples came by night and stole him away while ye slept, and if this come to the governor’s ears we will persuade him and rid you of all care. So they took the money and did as they were taught, and this saying was spread abroad among the Jews and continueth until this day.” This first theory, therefore, was that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was stolen by night by his disciples and stolen for the purpose of making a claim that he was raised.
This was a possible solution of the question, and it was an allegation that could be sustained by adequate testimony. We know that there have been such things as robbers of graves. We know of many historical instances where dead bodies have been taken from the grave for some purpose; medical students, for example, who carry them to the dissecting table, or robbers, whose object is to obtain a large ransom from the afflicted relatives. So then, if the evidence is sufficient there is nothing in the theory itself to make it objectionable. The witnesses are sufficient in number. That guard constituted enough witnesses to prove any fact, so far as numbers go. The only thing is that what they testify must be subjected to the rules of evidence such as are commonly recognized among men. Let us look, then, at their statement.
They first gave a different account. In the second place, they accepted a bribe of a large sum of money to put this theory in circulation. In the third place, what they finally allege was absolutely impossible, so far as their knowledge could go, to wit, that the disciples stole that body while they were asleep. If they were asleep they could not testify as to any disposition of the body. They could not prove that anyone removed that body. Moreover, on the face of it, their last story is exceedingly improbable, namely, that when a special guard had been detailed for the express purpose of preventing the very thing which they now allege did take place, and when the very time had been given to them when they must be most particular in their vigils, it is unreasonable to suppose that a guard so appointed would have relaxed their vigilance.
It becomes more improbable from the death penalty assigned to a Roman sentinel who went to sleep upon the post of duty. It is still more improbable from the fact that no adequate motive can be suggested or conceived of why the disciples should want this dead body. It would be of no use to them. So that as far as this theory goes, and it is one of the only two that have ever been advanced, we may at once reject it.
Now, what is the other theory? The other theory is that Jesus himself rose from the dead: the particular point upon which human testimony is to be brought is not to show the processes by which he overcame death and brought back life to himself. No witness is introduced who alleges that he actually saw him rise from the dead. The only thing upon which they are to bear testimony is that they did see him alive after he was dead. Here we are met by a pertinent and important inquiry: Is the thing concerning which evidence is to be introduced a legitimate matter for evidence? I take it for granted that there are no other things upon which human testimony is accepted more readily than upon these two points: First, that a man is dead, and second that a man is alive. We accept evidence upon both of those points and act upon that evidence on innumerable occasions. It is oftentimes necessary to prove death. It is oftentimes necessary to prove life. In either case, it is easy to be understood what amount of testimony is sufficient to prove that death has taken place, or to prove that a man is alive.
The evidence of his death is abundant, official, and has never been denied. Therefore let us look at the evidence that Jesus showed himself alive after his death to his apostles and others. There are extant four independent histories of Jesus of Nazareth, written by contemporaries, and written while multitudes who also knew him personally were yet alive. There are extant also twenty-three other books, written by contemporaries, and written while thousands were yet alive who personally knew Jesus Christ. I refer to the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The most notable event in all of these records is that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. To this fact, according to these records, hundreds and thousands of eyewitnesses bear testimony, and who counted it the chief business of their subsequent life to repeat that evidence.
In other words, henceforth their life mission was to be witnesses of the resurrection. Fifteen distinct appearances of our Lord Jesus Christ, at least, are given in the New Testament, perhaps more, including the several appearances to Paul, to Stephen and to John on the Island of Patmos. But there are ten distinct appearances mentioned in these four histories.
These appearances, many of them, are connected with the most minute details of identification of the body. Sometimes he appeared to just one, as to Mary Magdalene, to Peter, to James. Sometimes he appeared to two, then again to three, then again to seven, then to ten, then to eleven and finally to five hundred at one time. These appearances covered a period of forty days. Some of them were in the morning, some of them at brightest midday, some of them at night ; some in the house, some out in the road, some in the suburbs and some in the city of Jerusalem ; some by the sea and some on the mountains of Galilee. Speaking collectively of these witnesses, they saw him often . They ate with him just as they had done before his death. They heard him often in both brief and long-sustained conversation. They witnessed closely every familiar mannerism of speech and tone and gesture. They handled him critically, touching the prints of the well-known wounds received at his crucifixion, and feeling of his flesh and of his bones, to assure themselves that a material substance was before them.
And this, too, by those who knew him most intimately in his lifetime, those who could least easily be mistaken as to the identity of his person, including his own skepticism as to his resurrection, well nigh incorrigible, and their tremendous interests at stake, required upon their part the most patient and exhaustive examination, and demanded abundant and infallible proof, not only to the bodily senses of sight, of hearing and touch, and to the keener mental tests of memory, intuition and reason, but to that more subtle and more satisfactory proof, spiritual recognition. They must not only know positively, unmistakably and absolutely that this was the very body which had died and was buried and was now alive, but also that it was reanimated by the same spirit which warmed it before death, so that in every respect, and beyond all possibility of doubt, this was the same person, the same Jesus who had been their teacher, and also that he possessed and made over to them power to do things that would make that resurrection a declaration that he was the Son of God with power.
In all the cases of the establishment of identity known to history there has never been one where the proof has been so abundant, so critical and so comprehensive, covering all departments of investigation, nor where the testimony was so unequivocal and so consistent. If these witnesses could not establish the proof that Jesus was alive, then no evidence could possibly prove any man to be alive.
So that you have before you the two theories and the evidence upon which those two theories rest; the first that the disciples stole the dead body, and next, that Jesus showed himself alive to his people after his death, not only by proofs, but many proofs, not only by many proofs, but by many infallible proofs.
I submit the following fundamental rules which govern matters of evidence: First, “In trials of fact by oral testimony the proper inquiry is, not whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true.” Second, “A proposition of fact is proved when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence.” Third, “In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every witness is to be presumed credible until the contrary is shown, the burden of impeaching his credibility lying on the objector.” Fourth, “The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon, firstly, their honesty; secondly, their ability ; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances.”
Now if we apply these four rules of evidence to what is said concerning the stealing of his body, that statement goes to the wall. If we apply them to the evidence that Jesus showed himself alive after death to his people, no sane man can question that the requirements of every one of them is met in every particular. The honesty of these witnesses cannot be impeached . Their ability of competency depends upon their being acquainted previously with the person of Jesus Christ, their having good sense enough to recognize one whom they had previously known, and their opportunities for seeing the one who is identified by their testimony.
There can be no question of the competency of these witnesses. There is nothing in their testimony that bears on its face suspicion. What, let me ask you, can create a suspicion against this evidence? It is consistent. What one says is consistent with what another says . Now let us look at these people who gave this evidence, and see if in all the collateral circumstances what they say is affirmed. For these men to state that Jesus was alive meant that they must take upon themselves the lifetime obligation of the publication of the fact of his resurrection; that to do this they must go counter to the world, its pleasures, its habits, its business; that they must entail upon themselves the most grievous burdens in life and the greatest hazards of death. They joyfully assume all these responsibilities. When they speak of Jesus as risen they impress every man that hears it with their sincerity. They testify it before kings, and the kings tremble as they listen. They testify it when chained to the martyr’s stake, and while the flames are burning their bodies, and with shouts and hosannas of triumph they declare in their own dying agonies that Jesus is risen. No amount of intimidation was ever able to shake their testimony. It was tried by imprisonment, tried by stripes, tried by poverty, tried by fire, tried by casting them to the ravenous, wild beasts in the Roman Amphitheater, and in every way possible to human effort; many experiments of the most excruciating kind were resorted to to shake the testimony of these men and these women.
I submit that if any man with an unbiased mind will read the Acts of the Apostles and see how that narrative glows, he will feel the power of these men giving this evidence. But we come now to another question in connection with it. Our Lord had told them in the last interview had with them there should come a confirmation that neither earth, heaven nor hell could doubt. He said, “I go to my Father, and if I go I will send upon you the Holy Spirit.” The history recites that ten days from that time a most remarkable transaction occurred openly in the city of Jerusalem. There were certain things visible in connection with it. Tongues as of fire seemed to rest upon their heads. There was the further remarkable phenomenon that these fishers of Galilee were able, under his power be stowed upon them, to speak in the languages of all of the nations of the earth, as if they had been born and reared in those tongues. It was evident that a power characterized them utterly foreign to their previous experience, and when they were called upon to explain, what was their explanation? Let me read it to you.
“Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
“Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:
“Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death ; because it was not possible that he should be holden of it, and he hath shed forth this which ye see and hear.”
They gave no other account of their power. They could heal the sick. They could raise the dead. They could perform other wonders impossible to men not spirit endued. They distinctly disclaimed that the power rested in themselves, and affirmed that it came to them from the risen and ascended and glorified Lord Jesus Christ.
The next question to be determined is, what significance did they attach to this doctrine of the resurrection? How important was it in their sight? How much in their judgment was involved in that issue? I read first from the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul is standing on Mars Hill, and he says: “The times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteous ness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”
Is there to be a judgment, and must all men stand before that divine bar and answer for the deeds which are done in the body? The only proof that there will be a judgment is the resurrection of the dead. Is there a heaven? There is but one proof of it, that Jesus when alive said to his people, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. In my Father’s house are many man sions.” Or let us read from the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, where this doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is specifically discussed. I commence at the twelfth verse:
“Now, if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
“But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and is also your faith vain.
“Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ; whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
“For, if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
“Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”
When ever before in issues made by men has there been such a readiness to stake everything upon one single fact; such an openness to concede that preaching is vain; faith is vain; forgiveness of sin is a falsehood; your fathers and mothers who died, perished; there is no judgment; there is no heaven; there is no hell; there is no hope; if there is no resurrection of the dead?
It is a matter of unspeakable sadness to me, particularly in the case of young people, to hear them speak lightly of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. And there are some who imagine that they can be skeptical upon this point and remain Christians. Is there anything left of Christianity with this surrendered? If its preaching be vain, if its faith be vain, if there be no such thing as the forgiveness of sin, if there be no such thing as the judgment, if there be no such place as hell, if all who have professed it are now utterly annihilated in their graves, what infinitesimal shred of Christianity is left?
When you say that you are only skeptical concerning the resurrection of the dead, you mean or ought to mean, that you are skeptical about the whole matter, in its height and width and length and breadth, in its center, in its solidarity and in its circumstances. You do not believe any of it. There is nothing to profess if you deny this doctrine. So far the discussion has been restricted to the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ and necessarily has shown the relation between his resurrection and the inspiration of the Scriptures.
The two subjects cannot be considered apart. They stand or fall together. In our next sermon will be considered the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as it applies to us, and the reasons given so far as Scripture light shines upon the subject, why this particular test of all others in the world was made the proof of Christianity, and a reply submitted to objections to the doctrine based upon exegesis or upon science.


Andrea Wendling is the director of rural medicine in the College of Human Medicine. She was recently named the recipient of the National Rural Health Association’s 2020 Outstanding Educator Award. This piece is repurposed content from a YouTube video from the College of Human Medicine. For more information about this award and Wendling, visit the College of Human Medicine.
I’m Andrea Wendling, I'm director of rural medicine for Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. I'm also a rural family doctor, and I’m excited to say that I was nominated for the National Rural Health Association's 2020 Rural Educator of the Year award.
Rural has always been part of who I am. I grew up in a small town on a Christmas tree farm in the thumb of Michigan — it's a centennial farm and my family still owns it today.
I went to undergrad and medical school at the University of Michigan, and I was one of those rare students who showed up on the first day saying ‘I want to be a rural doctor.’
At U of M, there certainly weren't very many of us, but I’ve spent my career trying to tip that balance and get the students who are interested in being rural doctors into medical school and then really help them feel like they have a home there.
Now, I practice in a small town in northern Michigan called Boyne City, where I've been able to work now for almost 20 years. I work with my husband, who is also a rural family doctor in a practice in our town that's associated with a critical access hospital, which is also one of Michigan State University's rural training sites.
MSU started one of the pioneer rural training programs in the nation — the Rural Physician Program in the upper peninsula of Michigan. That program is now almost 50 years old.
Over the last 10 years, we have worked to triple the number of students involved in our rural programs at our college, consistently admitting students to our classes now in the same proportion that they're found in our state, and then training those students on not one but three rural campuses that really are not single sites, but are actually campus systems that span many rural counties in the state with the thought that, for these regions, we’ll hopefully be able to replicate that same regional impact that we've seen in our upper peninsula.
I am so fortunate to have this job that has allowed me to try to change the world in exactly the way that I want to change it.
By: Andrea Wendling
Campus Health Life


Judge bars government from working on seismic permits during shutdown
Published Saturday, Jan. 19, 2019, 12:00 am
A federal judge has barred the government from moving forward with seismic permitting during the shutdown, settling the confusion the government created by recalling workers to process oil-drilling matters while, at the same time, not funding federal lawyers to respond to opponents in court.
Judge Richard Mark Gergel issued an order today effectively saying that the government could not have it both ways. His ruling concerned a Justice Department request for a pause — or stay — in a legal request by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson to join a lawsuit filed by 16 South Carolina coastal cities and a group of conservation organizations.
Government lawyers said they could not properly respond to Wilson’s request because of the shutdown. However, Wilson noted that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management had issued a directive for workers to keep processing a variety of matters needed to move forward with oil drilling. That set up an unfair situation, Wilson argued, of allowing the government to move forward on a controversial project while also sidestepping legal challenges.
Judge Gergel granted the government’s request for a stay, but told federal lawyers the seismic permitting could not move forward during the shutdown and for the time it takes the Court to rule on Wilson’s motion.
Practically, that means the case over the seismic permits will be on hold for the duration of the shutdown plus as many as 18 additional days to hear Wilson’s motion to intervene.
“The government was trying to have its cake and eat it too, and we’re pleased the Court did not allow that to happen,” said Laura Cantral, executive director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League, one of the groups suing to stop seismic blasting in the Atlantic. “This is an issue of critical importance to the coast, and one that must be handled openly, transparently, and fairly. This ruling will allow that to happen, and that is good for all concerned.”
The lawsuit was filed in Charleston Federal Court in December by several conservation organizations including SELC, CCL, Oceana, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, North Carolina Coastal Federation, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, Sierra Club, Surfrider, and One Hundred Miles. Sixteen South Carolina coastal municipalities filed a separate suit, and the two have since been merged.


Will COVID-19 Bring Industrial Policy Back in Vogue?
Pacific Money | Economy
The pandemic has forced an overdue discussion on what we have inaccurately considered to be “free” markets and “free” trade.
By Stephen Olson for The Diplomat
Credit: Official White House photo by D. Myles Cullen
Supply chain shocks and other economic dislocations precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed ostensibly market-oriented countries to consider – and in some cases implement – dirigiste policies that would have seemed inconceivable prior to the pandemic.
Even the United States has resorted to the “heavy hand” of government in directing private sector production of medical supplies. Utilizing a seemingly moribund Korean War-era defense production law, the Trump administration in March began ordering a number of leading companies — including General Motors, 3M, and General Electric — to produce ventilators and face masks.
The U.S. federal government has also intervened to block exports of medical supplies. Meanwhile, legislation is being considered in Congress that would require certain critical supplies to be purchased from U.S. sources only, and deliberations on similar policies continue in the White House.
The pandemic appears to be breaking down the longstanding taboo in the United States against what is loosely referred to as “industrial policy.” Typically, industrial policy refers to a highly proactive and interventionist effort by the government to guide the development of particular sectors of the economy (if not the entire economy). Common policy tools include direct and indirect subsidies, protection from foreign competition, preferential access to capital, implicitly or explicitly guaranteed purchases, and mandates from government on production, and import and export decisions. By definition, industrial policies are strongly nationalistic and are intended to fortify domestic production capabilities.
For decades, the term “industrial policy” has held extremely derogatory connotations in the United States. It conjured images of feckless Soviet-era bureaucrats dictating how many shoes would be produced and was contrasted unfavorably with the dynamism of the U.S. economy, where the market – not bureaucrats – called the shots. The eventual collapse of the Soviet economy seemed to permanently stamp “failure” onto any notion of industrial policy, at least in the minds of Washington policymakers. (This is more than a little ironic, given that the economic development of the United States was significantly driven by what could be considered industrial policies from the founding of the country until the middle of the 20th century.)
The conventional wisdom that has predominated U.S. policymaking since the 1980s is to allow economic efficiency and comparative advantage to drive production decisions, and to steadily reduce trade barriers so that products can (theoretically at least) flow across borders, irrespective of where they were produced. The less government intervention across these transactions, the better.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the downside risks associated with such an approach, as it has become evident that most of the world is overly dependent on China for medical supplies, devices, and pharmaceuticals. And despite lofty free trade rhetoric and reams of “free” trade agreements, when push comes to shove, dozens of countries have not hesitated to impose export restrictions on limited supplies of critical products, and even foodstuffs.
This stark reality has led to a recognition that production of some items – because of their health, safety, or strategic value – are too important to be left to the dictates of the market. And on top that, it has become clear that, in at least some cases, nationalistic government industrial policy rather than the “wisdom” of the market is what actually drives where critical production takes place.
Some comparative advantages are determined by natural endowments. Vietnam is a major powerhouse in rice production; Sweden is not. That makes sense. But in today’s world, the comparative advantages that matter most are driven not by natural endowments, but rather by government industrial policies, preferences, and protectionism.
For example, what natural endowments does South Korea possess that confer a comparative advantage in consumer electronics? None. South Korea’s comparative advantage was forged by government industrial policies that provided high levels of import protection to the nascent electronics industry, while funneling funding and credit to favored companies, and providing domestic preferences that allowed emerging giants like Samsung to find their footing.
Of course, once companies such as Samsung became world leaders, it was safe to lower trade barriers and crusade for free trade agreements to provide foreign market access for Samsung’s now competitive products. But that’s a very far cry from anything envisioned by David Ricardo and other classical free market, free trade economists. China closely studied the successes of its East Asian neighbors and then raised the game to a whole new level.
Just as it has in so many industries, China has come to dominate production of protective medical gear, and pharmaceuticals or active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus, China produced roughly half of the world’s face masks. Since then, it has expanded production 12-fold. China accounts for 71 percent of U.S. imports of mouth and nose protective gear. It’s a similar story with medicine. Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply 97 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States. The U.S. continues to be a leader in innovating new drugs, but production now takes place overseas, principally in China and India. It would come as an unwelcome surprise to most Americans to learn that the United States no longer has the capability to domestically produce penicillin.
China’s predominant market position is largely a reflection of deliberate government industrial policies. In fact, medical devices and pharmaceuticals are specifically targeted in China’s vaunted Made in China 2025 policy, which serves as an industrial policy master plan to achieve leading global positions in strategic industry sectors. All the tools of industrial planning – including government support, restrictions on foreign access, and strong-armed transfer of foreign proprietary information — have been deployed to put China on the top of the medial supply heap.
The pandemic has forced an overdue discussion on whether too much faith has been placed in what we have inaccurately considered to be “free” markets and “free” trade, especially when it comes to strategic sectors or products related to public health. South Korea has just unveiled a “Korean-style new deal” which is built on state-led investment in AI and 5G; Japan has moved to restrict foreign investment in “core” industries of “national concern”; and the United States, mindful of Huawei’s government-enabled lead in 5G, is considering support for U.S.-based competitors. Countries like the United States, which have traditionally eschewed industrial policy, seem to be concluding that such an approach might no longer be tenable if the industrial policies of other countries (China in particular) leave them vulnerable, especially in times of crisis. When the dust settles on COVID-19, industrial policy could very well be back in vogue — even in the United States.
Stephen Olson is a Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation.
China industrial policy
China manufacturing
COVID-19 economy
Made in China 2025
U.S.-China Competition
The US, China, and the Perils of Post-COVID Decoupling
By Yan Liang
Resorting to economic nationalism is the wrong lesson to take from the pandemic.
Chinese Factories Face New Threat: US Anti-Virus Controls
Just as China reopens for business, the U.S. is shutting down amid a massive surge in coronavirus cases.
The Asia-Pacific’s Free Trade Disagreements
By Joseph Cash
It’s not just the different agreements, per se – the distinctly different models of FTAs are complicating trade regimes in the region.
Shortages, Shipping, Shutdowns Hit Asian Factory Output
By Elaine Kurtenbach
Manufacturing contracted in both China and Japan as the pandemic and related ripple effects continue to take a toll.


BIONANO GENOMICS INC
Symbol BNGO
Takeaways from AMP 2019 in Baltimore: Users of Bionano ’s Saphyr System Presented Results from Multiple Studies Demonstrating the System ’s Utility for a Variety of Disease Indications
SAN DIEGO, Nov. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bionano Genomics, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNGO), a life sciences instrumentation company that develops and markets Saphyr®, a platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific structural variation detection in genome analysis, today announced key takeaways from presentations by Saphyr users given between November 6-9 in Baltimore at the annual meeting of the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) and the associated corporate workshop.
Focusing on molecular diagnostics, quality health care through excellence in clinical molecular testing is at the core of AMP. The association organizes an annual meeting to further its vision of providing global expertise in molecular testing that drives patient care. Saphyr users chose AMP as a venue to present updates to their findings using the Saphyr System for a variety of disease indications:
Moffitt Cancer Center. A team of clinicians and scientists from the Moffitt Cancer Center and Bionano Genomics, led by Dr. Anthony Magliocco, M.D, of Protean BioDiagnostics, presented a study on HPV-positive ovarian tumors and two pairs of primary ovarian tumors with matched ascites. Ascites is the abnormal build-up of fluid in the abdomen, which can be caused by an inflammatory reaction to metastatic cancer cells. Bionano whole genome imaging demonstrated in pairs of primary ovarian tumors with matched ascites that primary tumors contained many more rearrangements and had an unstable copy number profile compared to the ascites, with very few shared aberrations. This observed difference could have important implications for treatment of ovarian cancer, since ascetic fluid is considered the primary route of metastasis and origin of recurrent disease, and it is possible that the less complex genome of ascetic fluid requires a different therapeutic approach than the complex primary tumor genome.
MD Anderson Cancer Center. Professor Rashmi Kanagal-Shamanna, M.D., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, presented a validation study on the use of Saphyr for the clinical assessment of patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes, or MDS. MDS is a precursor for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), and the number and type of structural variation in the cancer genome has extreme predictive value on the median survival time, which varies from five years for genomes with a single reported variant to just over five months for those with more than three abnormalities.
In a pilot study on 10 patient samples, Saphyr identified 100% of all aberrations detected by karyotype and microarray analysis. Dr. Kanagal-Shamanna stated that this exact concordance between Bionano genome imaging and clinical diagnostic assays, and the high throughput of the Saphyr instrument, make it a candidate single-platform assay for clinical diagnostics. Dr. Kanagal-Shamanna discussed the planned expansion of the study to 100 MDS cases with the goal of identifying new genomic aberrations that only Saphyr can detect and that alter the risk or affect management of the disease.
Radboud University Medical Center, Netherlands. A team led by Professor Alexander Hoischen, Ph.D, from Radboud University Medical Center, presented an update on their ongoing validation of Saphyr as a tool to replace FISH, karyotyping and CNV-microarrays for the clinical analysis of leukemias and genetic disease. Of the samples analyzed so far, Saphyr identified all clinically relevant, previously reported aberrations observed using the three other technologies. They concluded that Bionano genome imaging is capable of replacing most traditional cytogenetic tests.
“We are pleased to see our users succeed in addressing their needs using Saphyr and with the progress clinicians are making towards establishing Saphyr as the leading platform for streamlining cytogenetic testing.” commented Erik Holmlin, Ph.D., CEO of Bionano. He added “Data generated by the Saphyr system are answering difficult questions in complex genetic diseases that have been historically very challenging according to each of the presenters who described their experiences with Saphyr. We are grateful to all our customers and collaborators for their inspiration and for their work in showing what Saphyr can do.”
More information about Bionano Genomics is available at www.bionanogenomics.com.
About Bionano Genomics
Bionano is a life sciences instrumentation company in the genome analysis space. Bionano develops and markets the Saphyr system, a platform for ultra-sensitive and ultra-specific structural variation detection that enables researchers and clinicians to accelerate the search for new diagnostics and therapeutic targets and to drive the adoption of digital cytogenetics, which is designed to be a more systematic, streamlined and industrialized form of traditional cytogenetics. The Saphyr system comprises an instrument, chip consumables, reagents and a suite of data analysis tools.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “intend” and similar expressions (as well as other words or expressions referencing future events, conditions or circumstances) convey uncertainty of future events or outcomes and are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our intentions, beliefs, projections, outlook, analyses or current expectations concerning, including among other things, the implications of clinical observations using data generated by Saphyr, impact of research incorporating the Saphyr system on the treatment of ovarian cancer, planned studies involving the use of Saphyr, Saphyr’s candidacy as a single-platform assay for clinical diagnostics, potential of Saphyr to replace most classical traditional tests and development of Saphyr as the leading platform for streamlining cytogenetic testing. Each of these forward-looking statements involves risks and uncertainties. Actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected or implied in these forward-looking statements. Factors that may cause such a difference include the risks that our sales, revenue, expense and other financial guidance may not be as expected, as well as risks and uncertainties associated with general market conditions; changes in the competitive landscape and the introduction of competitive products; changes in our strategic and commercial plans; our ability to obtain sufficient financing to fund our strategic plans and commercialization efforts; the ability of key clinical studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of our products; the loss of key members of management and our commercial team; and the risks and uncertainties associated with our business and financial condition in general, including the risks and uncertainties described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 and in other filings subsequently made by us with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made and are based on management's assumptions and estimates as of such date. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of the receipt of new information, the occurrence of future events or otherwise.
Mike Ward, CFO
Bionano Genomics, Inc.
mward@bionanogenomics.com
Ashley R. Robinson
LifeSci Advisors, LLC
arr@lifesciadvisors.com
Kirsten Thomas
The Ruth Group
kthomas@theruthgroup.com


Ronald v. Donald
by Ken Stratton
Ronald Reagan is a beloved icon to modern Republicans. Anyone trying to establish themselves as a legitimate figure within the party want to associate their name with Reagan— and President Trump’s supporters know it.
While discussing the 45th president’s summit with Kim Jong-Un, Sean Hannity outlined similarities between Reagan and Trump, something fellow Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham often does. Both are outsiders “hated by the media” who promise to “Make America Great Again.”
While both men share similarities on the surface, they are in fact very different. This is not only true in policy, but also in character and leadership style.
Reagan understood the importance of free trade, saying, “We should beware of the demagogues ready to declare a trade war against our friends, weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag.” This has long been a conservative principle, but Trump embraces the exact opposite position.
Trump has acknowledged his disagreement with Reagan on trade, favoring protectionist policies to support American workers and companies. Rather than embracing international competition and cooperation, Trump is against it. For instance, Trump has long criticized NAFTA, which has its roots in the Reagan administration.
On immigration, Reagan and his conservative contemporaries favored a “compassionate” solution to problems. “Rather than making them– or talk about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems,” Reagan said in 1980. This view has all but vanished from the party that claims to be molded in his image.
Instead, Trump would rather build a wall, and his efforts to work out such a solution have been hindered by the tweets he’s fired at members of Congress and the Mexican government. Border security is fine, but legal immigration and pathways to citizenship should be embraced.
By demanding “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” Reagan defended freedom by standing up to the Soviet Union and helping win the Cold War. Trump too believes in peace through strength, but he has proven soft on Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A country that took steps to influence our election through misinformation on the internet, that threatens freedom in Eastern Europe, and that is led by a man who jails his political opponents cannot be considered an ally of the U.S. deserving of a spot at the G7 table.
Both Reagan and Trump were once Democrats who made their way to the Republican Party. But Reagan’s ideological transition was gradual: working in Hollywood to combat communism, molding his beliefs after the likes of Eisenhower and Goldwater, and finally becoming the Governor of California. Trump’s transition was all over the place, starting as a Republican, before joining the short-lived Reform Party, becoming a Democrat during the years of George W. Bush, and registering as an Independent in 2011. Trump’s beliefs haven’t been molded after any other conservative leaders, and he has no previous experience in government.
Reagan’s 11th Commandment said, “Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” Trump shattered this golden rule during the campaign when he attacked “not a war hero” McCain, “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco,” and “Low Energy Jeb.” Trump is a classic narcissist and is all about “me.” He seems to forget that his job is about “We the People.”
The 40th President beautifully presented speeches that could bring a nation together. “We have every right to dream heroic dreams,” Reagan said in his 1981 inaugural address. He closed by saying, “It does require, however, our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.”
Often communicating in 140 characters or less, Trump is no Reagan. His press conferences immediately become confrontational, while his frequent rallies stoke partisan divides. Much of his rhetoric, including his inaugural address, paints America as a nation in decline: “For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.”
Contrary to what MAGA supporters may believe, President Trump is no second coming of Ronald Reagan. If Dutch were here today, tuning into Fox News’ primetime lineup, he would surely laugh and say, “There you go again.”
Ken Stratton
Ken Stratton is a law student and graduate of the Class of 2019 at Western New England University. As an undergraduate, he severed as Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper and held various leadership positions on campus. He's been an active member of his community as well, working with local elected officials and on several campaigns with MassGOP.
About Ken Stratton
@kenstratton97


Getting to the Root of Plant-Soil Interactions: Optical Instrument to Give Clearest 3D Images Yet of Rhizosphere
Georgia Tech researchers receive $2 million DOE grant to build optical instrument focused on understanding and imaging the rhizosphere
Posted December 2, 2021 • Atlanta, GA
An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology has received a $2 million federal grant to create tools that will provide the clearest three-dimensional images yet of the chemical and biomolecular interactions between plants and the soil in which they grow.
At just a few inches underground, the rhizosphere — the thin strip of earth that includes the soil-root interface — has so far been difficult to visualize on site. If scientists can build instruments that capture in real-time clearer images of the physical associations of microbes attached to roots, along with the oxygen-carbon-nitrogen chemical exchanges they mediate, it could help mitigate the effects of climate change and lead to the development of more sustainable fuels and fertilizers.
“From a microbiological perspective, we have catalogued what microbes are in the root zone and how abundant they are,” said Joel Kostka, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. “But there's been very little work to understand their dynamics under real soil conditions.”
Kostka, who also serves as associate chair for Research in Biological Sciences, joins Marcus Cicerone, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and principal investigator for the new grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research. The research team also includes Francisco Robles, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Lily Cheung, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Engineering.
Together, the researchers plan to produce a new optical instrument that will provide 3D images of dynamic metabolic processes with chemical specificity — meaning it will be able to identify carbon sources (sugars, organic acids) exuded by plant roots and nitrogen-rich compounds provided to the root by nitrogen-fixing (diazotrophic) microbes. The instrument will be built with commercially available components, and with an eye towards simplicity so that it can be easily leveraged by Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Centers and field sites.
A ‘hotspot for microbes’ in 3D
Understanding more about the metabolic processes happening in the rhizosphere will help the DOE develop a wider range of sustainable products like new types of biofertilizers and biofuels. The research will also help create practices for better crop management — and will help researchers use plants and soil as more effective carbon traps that sequester greenhouse gases from the atmosphere into the soil.
“The problem is that we don’t know much about the free-living bacteria in the soil, because we can’t get in there and look,” Cicerone said. “The DOE wanted somebody to build an instrument that would allow them to image or gather information about the metabolic processes, the interaction — the metabolic interactions between the microbes and the plants, in real time.”
Kostka adds that the rhizosphere is “a hotspot for microbes.”
“It’s often where the plant is communicating with the outside world,” he explained. “Our goal is to develop an instrument that they (the DOE) can use to better understand those interactions between plants and microbes and how those can be tweaked, say, to optimize plant production, crop production, biofuels and biomass production. And that's the long-term goal for us.”
How light gets scattered, smothered, and covered in soil
Cicerone says the visibility issue with soil involves how photons — or particles of light — scatter once they hit the soil. He likens it to someone putting a red light up to the back of their thumb.
“You turn your thumb around, your thumb glows red, right? So, the light comes through, but most of it scatters. The unscattered light contains the spatial information, but it is so weak that you can’t detect it by eye, and you lose the spatial information. The same thing happens with the soils. You get a lot of light scattering, and you lose spatial information,” Cicerone said.
Cicerone and Robles will build instrumentation that will focus light into the soil and that is “exquisitely sensitive to the minuscule amount of light that only scatters when it reaches its target.” Evaluating that light will help scientists learn even more about the chemical processes in the rhizosphere.
The visibility enhancements will be implemented in optical techniques with names like coherent Raman scattering and optical coherence tomography, which are commonly used for non-invasive imaging of thin biological material, like the retina of the eye — or the tiniest of plant roots.
“We learn two things from the light coming out of the sample. The amount of light coming out tells you about the refractive index of the material, and the light’s frequency change tells you about the chemical composition of the material,” Cicerone explained.
It’s through imaging and then optimizing those microbe-plant interactions that the DOE aims to design more sustainable products and practices, based on the chemistry to be learned from the team’s new optical instruments.
“This is a three-year funded project, and we hope at the end of the three years to have an experimental system, where we can do something that nobody else can do,” Cicerone added. “And that is that we can follow the biochemistry under the soil, in situ, in real time, to clearly see what's going on there and find out what the microbes really are doing in natural conditions. At that point, we can start manipulating the biology, start doing the experiments that the DOE is primarily interested in.”
Award Number: DE-SC0022121
Title: Deep Chemical Imaging of the Rhizosphere
Institution: Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA
Principal Investigator: Cicerone, Marcus
About Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.
Francisco Robles
Writer: Renay San Miguel
Communications Officer II/Science Writer
College of Sciences
Editors: Jess Hunt-Ralston, Georgia Parmelee
Email: renay.san@cos.gatech.edu
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Data DNA
Researchers have made significant advances toward the goal of a new microchip able to grow DNA strands that could provide high-density 3D archival data storage at ultra-low cost – and be able to hold that information for hundreds of years.


The Salt of the Earth
Self Released (2012)
Shostakovich on Soviet Party loyalty:
“It is as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing.’”
Shostakovich’s son Maxim said, “My father cried twice in his life: when my mother died and when he came to say they’ve made him join the Party.” Crying is actually an understatement. The man who publicly withstood Stalin’s entire, painful regime finally capitulated to the Party’s pressure in 1960, and he was a sobbing, uncontrollable mess. Then he wrote his 8th String Quartet in only three days.
After writing the quartet, Shostakovich wrote a letter to his friend, confessor Glikman, explaining,
“The title page could carry the dedication: ‘To the memory of the composer of this quartet’ […] while I was composing it I cried as many tears as I would pee after half-a-dozen beers.’”
In this man of paradoxes, one thing is certain: he was not ashamed of life’s rawness. And his music is the same. Rudolf Barshi – a composition student of Shostakovich – and the arranger of the String Quartet No. 8 as the Chamber Symphony, relates stories about Soviet copyists and editors changing Shostakovich’s dissonant, crunchy writing to be less offensive.
Barshai said: “His aim was to demonstrate that ambivalence exists. Wonderful harmony is suddenly interrupted by great discord. He was saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, things are not always harmonious. They are hard and tragic too.’”
As a pianist, Shostakovich’s playing was volatile and exhilarating, with fistfuls of wrong notes, tempi that seemed impossible and out of control. The legendary Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter said one time he played a duet with Shostakovich:
“Shostakovich would start at a certain tempo, then get faster or slower. He ignored the pedal completely. And he played incredibly loud all the time […] I was fighting a losing battle.”
Apparently, Richter always had interesting encounters with Shostakovich:
“I was outside the Odessa Opera. It was dusk, and the street lights hadn’t come on. There was a man staring at me. He had white eyes, with no pupils. Suddenly I realized that it was Shostakovich. I went weak at the knees […] I was always ill at ease in his presence. He was very odd: tense, yet extremely refined. A genius, but quite bizarre. A terrible depressive. He was totally crazy too.”
The essence of Shostakovich’s music-making, as composer and performer, was pure vitality, whether slow or fast, major or minor. His music cares not for posterity, only for the moment. And the moment is the only thing this music needs. It whispers and screams: “I am alive! Living hurts bad. It also feels good. Here I am.”
Ironically, the man who never seemed to care one bit about cataloguing and recording his own music has become one of the most recorded twentieth-century composers. So why should we join the ranks and make another recording of an already ultra-famous piece? The same reason anyone goes through the insane amount of time and effort to relive something: there is always more to say.
When we made this recording a couple things happened. The performance felt great. The visceral and emotional energy in the small, packed venue was palpable, and everyone played hard, fast, and beautiful. We assumed the recording would display these things.
But the live recording sounded terrible. To our conservatory-trained ears and minds we heard a slew of mistakes, rough patches, and moments of near collapse. We were confused and worried.
This recording is not edited from that performance. In the process of mixing the raw recording, the goal was to make it more raw, to relive the performance itself by proxy. We weren’t just making a live recording, but making a recording that feels alive. The mistakes we made in the performance are definitely there; in fact, they’re magnified. The bass is loud, the licks are fast, and the chords are crunchy. We hope it hurts good.