This is so wrong. Protestors have every right to protest but they do not have the right to demand that others join them in their protest nor do they have the right to invade the personal space as a crowd in another individual.
I rarely say good things about Thomas Friedman as he is typically too far left, in my opinion. However, I regularly read his columns (when the NYT doesn’t block me) and I think I have read all of his books because it is good to understand all sides of an argument.
This analysis of the recent deal in the Mideast is very well done. Probably the best that I have read. If you are not blocked by the NYT paywall, you should read it.
This deal is amazing. In a normal news cycle, this would be the top headline in every newspaper and every news site (but this isn’t a normal news cycle). This is a deal that no former POTUS has been able to pull off. Is it a Nobel worthy as what James E. Carter or William J. Clinton did? No. But it is a lot better than what George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, or Barack H. Obama did in the Mideast (and Obama received the Nobel prize just for giving good speeches not for actually doing anything). Trump won’t get a Nobel for this because the committee hates Trump. But even if you are a Trump-hater, you have got to give credit for getting this deal done.
Thankfully, Mr. Friedman does that and kudos to him to look past politics and focus on a great result that will make the world a better place. Friedman writes a lot about the Mideast and he knows a massive move forward when he sees it.
To allay the fears of some of you that have read this far, I am still not voting for Trump for re-election even though he accomplished one of the biggest international wins of the 21st century so far. I am still supporting Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party candidate as I feel that her platform is the closest to mine and I think this nation needs a change in the political discussion of something other than Left or Right but instead a focus on personal liberty and personal responsibility. If you believe in personal liberty and personal responsibility, please give an honest look at her platform and then join me in changing the US to be a better place.
Since NYT may block you from reading the article, here are the first couple of paragraphs but will keep it under 300 words to protect NYT copyright. The following are not my words but Mr. Friedman’s:
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”
It is not Anwar el-Sadat going to Jerusalem — nothing could match that first big opening between Arabs and Israelis. It is not Yasir Arafat shaking Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn — nothing could match that first moment of public reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
But it is close. Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.
A simple mathematical mistake may explain why many people underestimate the dangers of coronavirus, shunning social distancing, masks, and hand-washing.
Many people consistently underestimate how fast the value increases – a mistake known as the “exponential growth bias” – and while it may seem abstract, it may have had profound consequences for people’s behavior this year.
A spate of studies has shown that people who are susceptible to the exponential growth bias are less concerned about Covid-19’s spread, and less likely to endorse measures like social distancing, hand washing, or mask-wearing. In other words, this simple mathematical error could be costing lives – meaning that the correction of the bias should be a priority as we attempt to flatten curves and avoid second waves of the pandemic around the world.
The researchers speculate that some of the graphical representations found in the media may have been counter-productive. It’s common for the number of infections to be presented on a “logarithmic scale”, in which the figures on the y-axis increase by a power of 10 (so the gap between 1 and 10 is the same as the gap between 10 and 100, or 100 and 1000).
While this makes it easier to plot different regions with low and high growth rates, it means that exponential growth looks more linear than it really is, which could reinforce the exponential growth bias.