Each year, several of Finland's top athletes join the Finnish Defence Forces as conscripts. So do music stars, who could similarly try to be exempted. Though the FDF--like most armed forces--exempts would-be conscripts only for health-related reasons, in many countries young men fake illnesses in order to avoid service. And young star athletes and artists would, one might think, have a good reason to avoid the draft, as their careers could suffer irreparably from a year away from the limelight. (Next year's cohort of conscripts will include one of the country's biggest pop stars, Robin, who will enter the navy.)

Indeed, as Granlund's and Robin's enlistments show, the FDF has managed a feat that other armed forces could learn from: it has made itself an attractive destination for conscripts and professional troops alike. This helps explain why the armed forces routinely have more applicants than openings for noncommissioned officer positions. According to a May Eurobarometer poll, 95 percent of Finns trust their army, a higher rate than anywhere else in the European Union. (In Germany, 66 percent trust the army; across the EU, the average is 75 percent.)

Granlund and many other Finns may consider conscription a patriotic duty, but militaries cannot count on citizens' love of country to fill their ranks. Consider the case of Russia: even though a June poll found that 87 percent of the country's citizens support President Vladimir Putin's handling of foreign affairs, only around 37 percent of its young men perform military service, which in theory is mandatory for everyone.

The appeal of Finland's military extends beyond patriotism and depends partly on its willingness to listen to its soldiers. In 2002, the FDF introduced a system that tracks and evaluates soldiers' and officers' experiences. "It has changed how we treat our soldiers and how soldiers view the FDF," said Brigadier General Jukka Sonninen, the FDF's head of training.

Coalition or solo ride? After Macron's tour of France, the upcoming European parliamentary elections in 2019 have provided a new impetus to REM, the president's party.

This vote takes places every five years in all countries of the bloc. And since 1976, three large parties or "groups", as they're called in Brussels, dominate the assembly: the European People's Party (EPP), the European Socialist & Democratic party (S&D), and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).

The latter, closer to Macron's REM, hasn't received any formal application from REM.

"Formally, they haven't yet become part of any European group," said Didrik de Schaetzen, communication director for ALDE.

On paper, political relations are quite real: Macron is close to Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel and his Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel - whose parties are both affiliated with ALDE.

During the presidential campaign, REM's alliance with centrist political party MODEM - itself a member of ALDE group - had strengthened the links between Macron and Guy Verhofstadt's group.

But the affiliation is far from certain. "Regarding ALDE, [affiliation] will not happen automatically. We are more progressive than liberal. We want to speak with everyone," said Arnaud Leroy, one of REM's directors.

"For the 2019 elections, we want to disrupt the European political game like we did in France. We are more inclined towards creating something ex nihilo," he explained.

Auch nach der Auszählung der Stimmkarten bleibt Tirol bei einem "Nein" für eine Bewerbung für Olympische Winterspiele 2026. Das Ergebnis habe sich durch die 29.030 ausgezählten Stimmkarten nur geringfügig geändert und liege jetzt bei 46,75 Prozent für "Ja" und 53,25 für "Nein" (zuvor: 46,65 "Ja" und 53,35 "Nein"), teilte Landeswahlleiter Josef Liener das vorläufige Endergebnis am Montag mit. - derstandard.at/2000066054063/Tiroler-Klein-Gemeinden-fuer-Winterspiele-2026.

Britain should engage its 'Blitz spirit' for the Brexit process and "stay calm and carry on" despite challenges ahead, a leading economist has said.

Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), said there was a "bumpy road ahead" but urged Britain to remember Winston Churchill and government efforts to raise morale during the Second World War.

The leader of Germany's Free Democrats (FDP), Christian Lindner, said he does not want Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble's conservative CDU party to head the finance ministry again.

Lindner said in an interview published Tuesday he would be on board with a new finance minister from the Green party, his own party, or even Merkel's sister party, the CSU.

"Anything would be better than keeping the chancellery and the finance ministry in the hands of the CDU," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

He added that the combination of Schäuble as finance minister and Merkel as chancellor for the past eight years has not "proven to be successful."

Der mutmaßliche Schweizer Spion Daniel M. kommt im Prozess um das Ausspähen der nordrhein-westfälischen Steuerbehörden voraussichtlich mit einer Bewährungsstrafe davon. Dafür muss der 54-Jährige aber ein umfassendes Geständnis ablegen und detailliert schildern, was mit zehntausenden Euro geschah, die er für die ihm vorgeworfene Spionagetätigkeit erhalten haben soll. ,,Oberste Bedingung sind glaubhafte Angaben", sagte der Vorsitzende Richter am Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt, Josef Bill, am Mittwoch. Dann könne er mit einer Bewährungsstrafe von anderthalb bis zwei Jahren sowie einer Geldauflage davonkommen. Die Höchststrafe für die M. vorgeworfene geheimdienstliche Tätigkeit beträgt fünf Jahre Gefängnis

"the most sceptic countries"? Ouch!
Toes of the EP are back in the spotlight, too. Note also the roll call inset, true to heritage language "accountability".
Finally the European Prosecutor's Office Is Born

The regulation was also made possible with the obligatory consent of the European Parliament, where 456 voted in favour, 115 against and 60 abstained.

The journalist who led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her home.

Daphne Caruana Galizia died on Monday afternoon when her car, a Peugeot 108, was destroyed by a powerful explosive device which blew the car into several pieces and threw the debris into a nearby field.

A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country's newspapers, Galizia was recently described by the Politico website as a "one-woman WikiLeaks". Her blogs were a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures that hold sway in Europe's smallest member state.

Her most recent revelations pointed the finger at Malta's prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and two of his closest aides, connecting offshore companies linked to the three men with the sale of Maltese passports and payments from the government of Azerbaijan.

LG Chem plans to spend 5.9 billion zlotys ($1.63 billion)[EUR 1.3B, KRW 1.812T] on the factory near the southwestern city of Wroclaw, according to Polish state industry agency ARP. ... The factory will employ 2,500 people. LG Chem, a subsidiary of Korea's LG Corp, did not name the likely customers but said they would include top car companies.

"The company has chosen Poland as the most competitive location for production to satisfy the needs of European and global car producers," said Chang-Beom Kang, vice president at LG Chem.

comparative advantage
VW targets 400,000 annual EV, plug-in hybrid sales in China by 2020 Jan 2017
"The company hopes to achieve the target by introducing 15 EV and hybrid models in China over the next three or four years."
VW plans to build first EVs with JAC in 2018
"In 2016, Volkswagen sales in China rose 12 percent to 3.98 million vehicles - more than any other foreign automaker."
Bowing to Beijing, VW accelerates EV timetable Jul 2017
"The 5.1 billion yuan ($761 million) plant, due to start production in late 2018, will build up to 100,000 EVs at full capacity."
VW taps electric Golf to help meet China's EV quota
"[I]nstead of procuring batteries from its usual suppliers -- South Korea's LG Chem or Panasonic of Japan -- Volkswagen will buy the cells from China's Contemporary Amperex Technology."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Bill Clinton instead got together with Vladimir Putin at the Russian leader's private homestead.

Don't Put Trump Above the Law, Emoluments Challengers Urge

To earn the right to take the president to court, [plaintiff's attorney Deepak] Gupta will have to prove not only that the president's business dealings are illegal, but that his clients have been harmed by them.

Gupta told the court that he has numerical proof [!] of Trump's competition with another of his clients, New York hotel mogul Eric Goode. Ranked 35th in the area, Trump SoHo's price differs by only $1 from Goode's Bowery Hotel, which outranks its nearby competitor by two points but has an important drawback.

"What our clients can't offer is the ability to curry favor with the president of the United States," Gupta said.

Since the emoluments clause proscribes certain foreign business transactions only "without the consent of Congress," the Republican-led Legislature presents another variable in the case.

"Your clients would not have a cause of action no matter how severe [their complaints] if [Congress] decided to consent," said [U.S. District Judge George] Daniels.

archived:
One significant flaw in the complaint exposes the standing of the gov't.s of MD and the D.C. to dismissal ...
Trump Reveals Flat Revenue at Controversial Washington Hotel
Losses Mount at Trump's Scottish Resorts
Donald Trump's first 100 days have been a moneymaking success story

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

whip it good
Mogherini lashes out [?] at Trump, says EU is the `only credible' global power

"It is a deal that prevented a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, next to us. That brought security in the region and to young people in the country. That was the European way and it was thanks to us because we were the mediator," she said.

US allies will also be "encouraged" to reach what for all practical purposes is a non-denial denial renegotiation. This can be easily interpreted as unilateral extorsion. It's not gonna happen - as the EU, Russia and China have made abundantly clear. Washington then will be de facto pulling out of the JCPOA. Or, in Trump's words, following the advice of the spectacular incompetent rabid neocon US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, the deal "will be terminated".

I understand you had a striking exchange in conversation with a senior African diplomat recently. What happened?

The exchange was with a former foreign minister of an East African country. We spoke several months ago while I was in his country to meet with army officers for my research on civil - military relations. Well read and well informed, he expressed distress over what he saw as the Trump Administration's attack on the foundations of American power in the world. He compared Trump to Gorbachev. I was curious about this comparison, given that most Americans generally view Gorbachev in a positive light.

He explained that Russians know Gorbachev as the man who destroyed a superpower. He said that "Trump is your Gorbachev" because he is also destroying his country's global power. He noted that Trump was systematically undermining the architecture of American power, such as NATO and all sorts of other arenas of cooperation that make America essential in the calculations of other countries. He pointed to people like Sebastian Gorka and took the time to find out who he and some of the other advisors actually are. His country, he explained, prefers to get advice from "reality-based professionals" and wondered how others in the American political establishment could tolerate people who are so harmful to American power.

The 1992 law, the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, was passed by Congress in response to the furor created by Oliver Stone's conspiracy-laden hit film "JFK," which was released the year before. As a result of the law, millions of pages of documents related to the assassination were made public in the 1990s--but not all.

A relatively small fraction--the 3,100 documents that the public has never seen, as well as the full text of more than 30,000 files previously released only in part--have been held back until now. Most of those documents were created inside the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department. Under the law, however, everything must be released, in full, by next Thursday unless Trump decides otherwise.

Until now, Trump, himself no stranger to conspiracy theories, including a seemingly bizarre theory offered during last year's presidential campaign that connected JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has given no clue in public on his plans for the JFK documents. (Cruz and his father adamantly deny the allegations of a family tie to Oswald.)

Those extraordinary powers were supposed to be temporary [?!]. But even [!] after 16 years, there's been no congressional [WHO?] oversight of the ["]emergency["].

South Sudan, the world's newest country, is like a jigsaw puzzle that has been broken apart, soaked in petrol and set alight. It will not be easy to put back together. It seceded from Sudan in 2011, after half a century of on-off rebellion and a peace deal in 2005. In a referendum, 99% of South Sudanese (who are mostly black and non-Muslim) voted to separate from the Arab, Muslim north. Sadly, clashes between different ethnic groups within South Sudan began almost immediately after independence.

(...)

The mayhem is now many-sided. The other tribes (of which the country has about 60) accuse Mr Kiir of funnelling government jobs and cash to Dinkas, and of using the national army to assert Dinka supremacy. Terrified non-Dinkas have formed armed groups to defend their homes, land and cows--and sometimes to raid the neighbouring villages. The government sees these groups as rebels to be exterminated, and tacitly encourages the ethnic cleansing of areas thought to support them. All sides slaughter civilians.

In Wau, Dinkas walk in the streets without fear (except at night, when robbers prowl). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of non-Dinkas huddle in tented camps nearby, guarded by UN peacekeepers. The non-Dinkas say they are too scared to return home. Many report being raped if they venture out to collect firewood. "Now it is death for anyone who is not a Dinka. If you can't talk like a Dinka, if you don't have the right [ritual] scars, they shoot you, no questions asked," says Abdullah, a farmer. "They want to clear the other groups and take control of everything. They kill you and take your land to graze their cattle on."

Out of South Sudan's pre-war population of 12m, the UN estimates that 2m have been displaced internally and another 2m have fled abroad. So bad is the violence that some flee into the war-ravaged Central African Republic, or into Sudan's troubled region of Darfur. Though South Sudan is fertile, more than half of its people face hunger. A famine earlier this year was averted by food aid. Diarrhoea, cholera and malaria have spread rapidly, along with kala-azar (a deadly parasitic disease carried by sandflies).

The economy is a disaster. The state depends on oil, which is 95% of exports. Not only has the oil price fallen by more than half since 2011, but output has collapsed in the fighting. The IMF guesses that real income has been cut in half since 2013. Inflation is over 300% a year. The government is short of cash. Unpaid soldiers rob civilians with impunity.

Much of the budget is stolen. Absurdly, half of the government's net oil revenues are spent on petrol subsidies--the government insists that fuel should be sold for far less than it costs. As a result, petrol stations have run dry. Outside each one, black-market traders sell fuel in water bottles for more than ten times the official price. The finance minister says fuel subsidies should be scrapped, but faces resistance from those who pocket them.

Why not build The Wall, after all? Oh yes, it will be expensive, and contentious, and time-consuming. Most of the land along the border is privately-owned, which will inevitably entail "lengthy legal proceedings, political blowback and substantial expropriation payments." Yes, there's a lot of doubt about whether a wall would even be effective in deterring border crossings, especially by cartel operatives, who can certainly afford ladders, and have been paying Border Patrol agents to look the other way for years already. Yes, it is a frivolous pet project of Trump's, not a serious solution to any immigration problems the Democrats supposedly care about. Yes, it's a clear waste of taxpayer money.

But here's the most important consideration: when you have a group of people, like those in Trump administration, who are determined to do evil, it is much, much better for them to be wasting money than using it efficiently. If Trump wants to pour money and time into The Wall, and Republicans in Congress are willing to go along with him, and Democrats can barter substantive, permanent relief for Dreamers and some other classes of undocumented people in return, that would actually be a pretty tempting offer. The construction of The Wall will be a logistical nightmare, and almost certainly won't be finished by the time Trump's term is up--and even if it is, well, walls are much quicker to take down than they are to put up. We can mark our calendars for a big bulldozer parade along the border, followed by dancing in the streets.

USA imposes economic sactions against 'Ba'athist Iraq' commerce beginning 1990.
USA invades Iraq 2003. With USA military troops. And armament. Recruits Shi'ia militia and politicians.
Total Iraqi combatant and civilian casualities undefined.

Iraq's state and militia defend its territory.
Veterans & Widows Say Big Pharma Funded Terror in Iraq

Dozens of families of U.S. troops killed or wounded in Iraq sued some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies Tuesday, claiming they paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq's Health Ministry for lucrative contracts, which financed the Iran-backed Shiite Mahdi Army.

Hurricane Harvey Repair Grant Application and Agreement by and between the City of Dickinson and

[...]

11. Verification not to Boycott Israel. By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.

When Jamal Ali Hussein, the former CEO of Citibank Tanzania and a Harvard alumnus, decided to directly engage in Somaliland politics six years ago, many Somalilanders were hopeful and believed that his positive impact would be visible in a short period. He later managed to be nominated as the presidential candidate of the Justice and Welfare Party, also known as UCID. He was accompanied by his vice presidential candidate Abdirashid Hassan Matan, another young educated but novice politician. However, Hussein's and Matan's political inexperience came to light soon....

"Africa has tremendous business potential, I have so many friends going to your countries trying to get rich. I congratulate you, they're spending a lot of money. It has tremendous business potential, representing huge amounts of different markets. It's really become a place they have to go, that they want to go."

Subsidies are not cash handouts. They're a mix of tax breaks, tax credits, and regulations that forego government revenue, transfer liability, or provide services at below-market rates. Another significant subsidy takes the form of uncompensated government costs for fixing roads damaged by heavy fracking trucks. Governments justify these as supporting economic growth and job creation.

The analysis looked at the impact of $4 billion a year in production subsidies given to oil companies. Study authors argue this money encourages companies to drill oil fields that would otherwise be unprofitable. That would likely produce 17 billion barrels and, once burned, add 7 billion tonnes of additional climate-heating carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by the year 2050.

The tropical storm, which passed the Brittany coast on its way north, brought with it particles of sand from the Sahara [!] desert and the smell of the huge forest fires that have ravished parts of Portugal [!] and Spain [!].

#ophelia yellow and orange clouds Bretagne pic.twitter.com/sxBzkMu6FE

— Charu (@Charurumi) October 16, 2017

archived: Ophelia is expected to transition...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless [?] of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.

 It was one of the world's most opulent railway stations, sitting imposingly on the French-Spanish border - but then it fell into disrepair. Now, writes Chris Bockman, the building is showing new signs of life.

When they built the station at Canfranc, it was on a grand scale and with no expense spared. It had to be bold and modern - an architect's dream come true, built in iron and glass, complete with a hospital, restaurant and living quarters for customs officers from both France and Spain.

At the time it was nicknamed the "Titanic of the Mountains".

To give you an idea of its size - there are 365 windows, one for each day of the year; hundreds of doors; and the platforms are more than 200m long. The question is, how did such an extravagant station, high up on a mountainside in a village with a population of just 500 people, ever see the light of day?

Facebook and Twitter are hurting those they should be protecting.

Add this all to the ongoing trainwreck regarding possible election interference on Facebook (a byproduct of the company running ads from essentially anyone who can pay and relying largely on user reports to weed out the bad), and it's very clear that there is a serious problem with how private corporations manage public speech. Namely, the corporations in charge of the largest speech platforms on Earth have utterly failed to manage speech on those platforms, and increasingly seem incapable of doing so.

The actions that Facebook and Twitter take to police speech don't follow any kind of moral compass, are disproportionately applied, and--at least outwardly--seem completely arbitrary. They are full of false equivalences, as in the case of Lil B being banned because, as one Facebook spokesperson told Motherboard, if you flipped his comment around to say black people are violent that would be hateful: "If you just took a step back and replaced it with anything else, those are the type of things that our hate speech policies are intended to capture and they apply equally to all races," the spokesperson said. As if these same platforms aren't full of white people, often with connections to power, saying racist, harmful, hateful things with impunity.

These companies' actions are also often arbitrary and callous, as is the case with Facebook's ongoing campaign to force trans people to use their legal names, a policy that also puts sex workers and survivors of abuse at risk.

In 2015, a Google Photo algorithm auto-tagged two black friends as "gorillas," a result of the program having been under-trained to recognize dark-skinned faces. That same year, a British pediatrician was denied access to the women's locker room at her gym because the software it used to manage its membership system automatically coded her title--"doctor"--as male. Around the same time, a young father weighing his two-and-a-half-year-old toddler on a smart scale was told by the accompanying app not to be discouraged by the weight gain--he could still shed those pounds!

These examples are just a glimpse of the embedded biases encoded in our technology, catalogued in Sara Wachter-Boettcher's new book, Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech. Watcher-Boettcher also chronicles more alarming instances of biased tech, like crime prediction software programs that mistakenly code black defendants as having a higher risk of committing another offense than white defendants, and design flaws in social media platforms that leave women and people of color wide open to online harassment.

Nearly all of these examples, she writes, are the result of an insular, mostly-white, tech industry that has built its own biases into the foundations of the technology we use and depend on.

You may think that offering your seat to someone elderly on public transport is a considerate thing to do, but experts have revealed that doing so could actually hamper their health as they age.

In fact, old people should be encouraged to stand and discouraged from taking it easy in order to keep themselves fit, an Oxford professor claims.

Sir Muir Gray, clinical adviser to Public Health England, has spoken out to say the elderly should try to walk for ten minutes a day and relatives should encourage to take the stairs instead of a lift or excalator.

Police: Neo-Nazi demo and anti-fascist counter-protest in Tampere restless - Investigation opened

Police first called the demos peaceful, but an investigation of violent activities in the counter-protest is to be opened.
[...]
The protests were organised by the Nordic Resistance Movement and the opposing group, called "Tampere Without Nazis". The counter-protesters numbered some 800 people according to police, an estimated four times more than the neo-Nazi rally.
[...]
Counter-demonstrators detonated at least three smoke bombs during the demonstration, Yle reports. Counter-demonstrators also shortly interfered with train traffic by walking on the tracks for about half an hour. One demonstrator was taken into custody on suspicion of assault, one was detained on grounds of endangerment and two more were apprehended in order to prevent escalation. All those detained were marching in protest to the neo-Nazi gathering.

YLE is a state organ. Counterfactual reporting, if any, invited.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

[L]ike Britain's National Health Service, the VHA provides direct care to veterans, via salaried personnel who are not paid on a fee-for-service basis. As the nation's largest publicly funded, fully integrated health care network, it's a model of socialized medicine more far-reaching than the single-payer plans proposed by Congressman John Conyers and [?!] Senator Bernie Sanders (who is also a leading defender of the VHA).
[...]
Bernie Sanders, former chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee in the Senate and longtime defender [!] of the VHA, has introduced legislation to reduce staff shortages by allocating $5 billion to new hiring. But Secretary for Veterans Affairs Dr. David Shulkin, who served in the Obama administration, is under White House and Congressional pressure to expand a program called "Choice" [!] instead. ...Created by Congress in 2014, Choice allows veterans who have to travel 40 miles or more to the nearest VHA facility, or who face appointment delays longer than 30 days, to use private providers instead.

archived: Faux Accompli

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

Die Spitzen von SPD, Linken und AfD haben sich heute in Berlin zu ersten Sondierungsgesprächen für die Bildung einer Opposition in der neuen Legislaturperiode getroffen. Dabei wollen sie ausloten, ob es eine gemeinsame Basis für Kritik an der Politik der Bundesregierung gibt.

Das Fazit nach den ersten Stunden war verhalten positiv, die Chance für Rot-Rot-Blau, das intern auch r2b oder Nordkorea-Opposition genannt wird, ist da.

A NYT editorial warns, "The German agent pervades the land."

THE RUMOR AS A WEAPON
As the channels of print are rapidly closed to the German Government's propagandists in the United States, they are resorting more and more to the spreading of poison by word of mouth. We are not now speaking of those who do the German Government's work without knowledge, the pacifists and Socialists, but of the actual agents of Wilhelmstrasse; for it is certain that this poison cannot be the product of any others. ...

With German-language papers now under strict censorship/ban by the Post Office, these agents' principle weapon is spreading rumors about sunk transport ships, mutinies, etc.

AMENADIEL: So what happened?
LUCIFER: It was terrible, brother.
AMENADIEL: No. I meant Mom.
LUCIFER: Didn't you get my text?
AMENADIEL: What do you mean? The string nonsensible emogies? Fire, sword, doughnut, spaceman, clock, dancing lady, flashlight, thumbs up? How am I suppose to know what that means?
LUCIFER: I ignited the flaming sword, used it to cut a hole in space and time, Mom's light flooded through it, and then it closed up behind her. All good!
AMENADIEL: Mom? Mom is ... Mome is gone?

I have, of course, "tried out" a few other internet exchanges(English-language domains)and am sad to confirm, for all the lip-service paid to transparency and "marginalized voices", actual tolerance for that is dissipating apace.

Apart from generalized paranoia attributable to the GWOT  and increasingly arcane "troll" defenses, I'm left to wonder if curiosity and indeed conversation are a lost skills.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.