Duty, Honor, Country
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We aren’t fans of monarchy. It’s an antiquated institution whose role in public life is (thankfully) mostly ceremonial. Even so, the thought of people having titles like King, Queen, Duke, or Duchess seems absurd in this day and age. Additionally, royals today have more wealth than influence and so are more of a distraction with their shenanigans than they are with regard to their contributions to society. At the same time, we respect and admire individuals who had to overcome hardship, served the common good, practice noblesse oblige if they come from wealth and privilege, and who have sacrificed for others (or given as much as they have received). For these reasons, we think the United Kingdom is very well represented by Prince William and Harry. Especially the latter, who graduated from Sandhurst, deployed twice to Afghanistan, and started the “Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style sporting event for injured service members, to inspire and support the wounded.” We also respect and admire individuals who understand the importance of history, and for that reason commend Prince William for naming his third child Louis in honor of Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten was assassinated by the IRA in 1979 but more importantly was “a brilliant military commander [during World War II]. In his later years, he served as the last viceroy of India and [an] elder statesman for the royal family.” |
| SEASONED NUTS: QUOTABLE |
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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds…” – Theodore Roosevelt “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” – Ibid. |
| IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READ |
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American Royalty in the United Kingdom: She defies almost every conventional British expectation for a royal bride. She is a divorced, biracial commoner from a broken home, an American TV actress three years older than her fiance. She’s also an educated, self-made, independent, articulate, and beautiful young woman with a sincere desire to help make the world a better place. Saturday she married her prince. It was a splendid day in Windsor, England, replete with all the usual pageantry, royal stagecraft, and throngs of enthusiastic on-lookers, when Rachel Meghan Markle married Henry Charles Albert David, better known as Prince Harry. But it was so much more. A genuine love story, and a tribute to the monarchy’s ability to change with the times to more closely reflect a changing country. Harry’s father, Charles, Prince of Wales, was expected to marry a young aristocratic woman, which he did. Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was barely 20 when she married Charles in 1981. She dutifully gave birth to an heir, William, and a spare, Harry, before divorcing Charles in August 1996, and dying in a car crash almost exactly a year later in 1997. Harry was only 12 and so affected by her death that he spent a lot of the next 20 years acting out. He dated upper-class British girls until meeting Markle on a blind date in the fall of 2016. There was instant attraction, made all the more intense over a shared purpose of charity work. Many royal watchers think the dynamic, popular, newly-titled Duke and Duchess of Sussex might actually come to upstage Harry’s brother Prince William, second on line to the throne, and wife Kate. They also say the Windsors’ acceptance of a self-made woman of color into the royal family is a nod to shifting societal sentiments, particularly in multicultural London, where more than a third of the population is foreign-born and 41% are black and minority ethnic. |
| MIXED NUTS: QUICK TAKES ON WORLD NEWS |
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– Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is courting American evangelicals, much as President Trump has done. Many of Trump’s top evangelical advisers attended the embassy dedication in Jerusalem last week, and later met privately with Netanyahu to “plan their next steps.” Liberal Israelis caution that increasingly close ties between the Israeli right and the American right is accelerating a polarization and could turn support for Israel into a partisan division in Washington. (NYT) – Something so sad is happening in rural regions of Australia. Small farmers, unable to participate in the booming agricultural export phenomenon, are committing suicideat twice the rate of city dwellers. (NYT) – US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin participated in two days of trade deficit talks in Washington last week with China’s vice-premier, Liu He. Mnuchin announced Sunday the talks had “borne fruit” and the two sides will put those punishing reciprocal tariffs on hold for a while. Mnuchin said the parties had reached “a consensus on taking effective measures” to cut the US trade deficit, but China wouldn’t agree to a specific amount. (The Guardian) More News Reads: |
| NUTS IN AMERICA |
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| NUTS AND BOLTS: SHOULD READ |
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China Flexes in the Pacific: China’s industriousness in the South China Sea is surely reminiscent of Ben Bradley’s famous line in The Post: “The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish.” China wanted to control as much of the South China Sea as it could, so in 2013 it just began building artificial “islands” out of the reefs and shoals that are part of the Spratly islands, and apparently arming them with radars and missiles. The “islands,” made up of coral reefs and sandbars with no indigenous populations, nonetheless lie amid strategically important fisheries and shipping lanes; they could also have reserves of oil and natural gas. Who should exercise stewardship over the archipelago is hotly disputed. The largest natural feature of the Spratlys is a forested, sun-drenched Taiwanese-occupied outpost called Taiping island, or Itu Aba. Unfortunately in 2016 an international arbitration panel, adjudicating a claim brought by the Philippines against China, declared Itu Aba a “rock,” meaning it cannot sustain human habitation or economic activity. Had the panel agreed with Taiwan’s argument that Itu Aba was an “island,” Taiwan would have had control of an large exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles. Its designation as a “rock” means Itu Aba generates a paltry 12-nautical-mile territorial sea around it, and Taiwan loses coveted rights to millions of dollars worth of fish, oil, natural gas, and other resources. The 2016 arbitration panel also rejected China’s claims in the Spratly Islands, but Beijing simply ignored the ruling. Despite claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia, China has begun landing bombers, including long-range nuclear-strike capable ones, and doing training exercises on the islands in what looks to be preparation for battle. The US has sent warships to the disputed areas to challenge China’s sovereignty claims. |
| LOOSE NUTS: FASCINATING NEWS |
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– As much as Daily Pnut sounds like an unserious publication, we like the name because we love nuts (and yes, readers have let us know that peanuts are not nuts, they are legumes. We have sharp readers!). That said, we also love fruits. We love “simple” fruits like watermelon and oranges. But we also love lesser known fruits like mulberries (currently in season in California) and muscadine grapes. As much as we love these fruits, we likely wouldn’t cause a revolution over them. Unless they were, of course, essential to our diet. “The island fruit that caused a mutiny: In French Polynesia, breadfruit is an essential part of both the islanders’ diet and their culture – so much so, that its story is cemented in history.” (BBC) – “What This 76-Year-Old Man Can Teach About Healing.” Some of his advice: “Know oneself, be in control of your food intake and be aware of your body.” (NYT) – For some children in the developing world, they aren’t aware that some of the drugs they are taking are fake and faulty: “The World Health Organization estimates that between 72,000 and 169,000 children may die each year because of substandard or fake antibiotics.” (NPR) – Being aware of your body and exercising “Can Help You Recall Words.” (NYT) – One very opinionated take on why “Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster” and why Americans shouldn’t devote “40 million acres, nearly half as much land as we set aside for our biggest crops, to an inedible carpet.” (Earther) –‘Crush Them’: An Oral History of the Lawsuit That Upended Silicon Valley: Twenty years ago, Microsoft tried to eliminate its competition in the race for the future of the internet. The government had other ideas. It is probably only a matter of time before the United States government goes after Facebook, Amazon, and Google for monopolistic practices. The only reason it won’t is because a) these companies have become incredibly savvy and effective with lobbying to avoid government scrutiny – they learned from Microsoft’s experience; b) the US government doesn’t have the skills and people to bring these companies down to size; c) these companies somehow lose market share to a new competitor (we don’t see it happening); or d) the US government wants these companies to be large because of international competition (namely Chinese firms). – We have fake news, fake drugs, and fake plastic trees: “We made plastic. We depend on it. Now we’re drowning in it. The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it’s choking our waterways.” (National Geographic) More Fascinating News:
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“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” – Theodore Roosevelt |
