DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Opinion | The Great Struggle for Liberalism
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( David Brooks | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1978, the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a commencement address at Harvard, warning us about the loss of American self-confidence and will. “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today,” he declared. The enemies of liberal democracy seem to be full of passionate intensity — Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, campus radicals. He shows how it was created by real people in real communities who wanted richer, fuller and more dynamic lives. The Dutch merchant fleet was capable of carrying more tonnage than the fleets of France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal combined.

Persons: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ”, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Fareed Zakaria’s, Zakaria doesn’t Organizations: Harvard, Republicans, Trump Locations: Russian, West, Dutch Republic, Dutch, France, England, Scotland, Empire, Spain, Portugal, Paris

☆ Opinion | Nikki Haley’s Last Ditch
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-27 | by ( Bret Stephens | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

to lie in the last Ditch; intimating, that he would dispute every Inch of Ground with the Enemy, and at last would die defending the Liberties of his Country.”And that’s how it seems we got the phrase “the last ditch.”Nikki Haley, too, is in her last ditch. As I write, it looks like Donald Trump will trounce her in the G.O.P.’s Michigan primary by an even wider margin than in his South Carolina victory on Saturday. The Koch network has withdrawn its financial support for her. Super Tuesday is next week, and chances are strong that Trump will sweep all 15 states in play, along with those he’s already won. Too bad only 27 percent of voters bother to participate in party primaries on average, according to a 2022 analysis, ceding the field to the most motivated partisans.

Persons: William of Orange, “, ”, Daniel Defoe, ” Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Koch, he’s, Haley, she’s “, Joe Biden Organizations: Liberties, Trump Locations: Dutch Republic, ’, Michigan, South Carolina

☆ Opinion | The 17th-Century Heretic We Could Really Use Now
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-20 | by ( Ian Buruma | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza almost died for his ideals one day in 1672. Spinoza, a Sephardic Jew born in Amsterdam in 1632, was a passionate and outspoken defender of freedom, tolerance and moderation. Only one of his books, about the French philosopher Descartes, could be published under his own name during his lifetime. This is perhaps why new books about him are coming out all the time, including Jonathan Israel’s 2023 magnum opus “Spinoza, Life and Legacy” and even a best-selling French novel, “Le Problème Spinoza,” by Irvin Yalom. And all that for a philosopher who was denounced by Christians and Jews as the devil’s disciple long after his own time.

Persons: Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza, Johan de Witt, ”, rousers, hadn’t, Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, demagoguery, Jonathan Israel’s, “ Le Problème Spinoza, Irvin Yalom, George Eliot, unreservedly Locations: Amsterdam, Dutch Republic, British

☆ July 4: Was the last battle of the American Revolution fought in India?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Brad Lendon | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

The answer is: The last battle of America’s war of independence was fought on this continent. DuVal and others say two key protagonists of the Revolutionary War – Britain and France – actually fought the final battle of the conflict in Cuddalore, India, in June of 1783. Britain and, to a lesser extent, France were well established with colonies in India when the American Revolution began and had already brought their hostilities from Europe to the subcontinent, according to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. “They brought news that six months before in Paris, the British, French and the Americans – the Dutch were a little later – signed the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution,” he says. “Cuddalore, India, was indeed the last battle of the American Revolution.”

Persons: you’ve, Kathleen DuVal, ”, ” DuVal, DuVal, France –, “, Don Glickstein, Frederick the Great, Prussia, Maximilian Ulysses Count Browne, Prince Charles of Lorraine, it’s, Glickstein, ” Glickstein, David Allison, ” Allison, Generals Rochambeau, Marquis de Lafayette, – Organizations: CNN, University of North, British, US, Department, State Department’s Office, Austrian, Hulton, National Park Service, National Museum of, Smithsonian, Yorktown, Washington, Getty, Brits, American Revolution, Museum, American, British East India Company, Britain Locations: North America, Asia, University of North Carolina, United States, Massachusetts, Virginia, Britain, France, Cuddalore, India, British, Spain, Netherlands, American, Seattle, Yorktown, Quebec, Abraham, North Carolina, Pacific, Portugal, Canada, Prague, Yorktown , Virginia, “, Dutch Republic, Washington, Paris, Jamaica, Gibraltar, Europe, Philadelphia, Bengal

☆ Central bankers face a balance sheet reckoning
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Edward Chancellor | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

LONDON, May 26 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Central banks’ balance sheets have exploded in size since 2008. That’s not a problem, we’re told, since central banks are not bound by ordinary accounting rules. Ferguson and his colleagues examined fourteen central bank balance sheets over a period of 400 years. Central bank hawks on the other hand, are typically slow to expand their balance sheets during crises. Central banks with weak balance sheets are less credible bastions of a fiat currency.

Search resuls for: "Dutch Republic"

5 mentions found