U.S. Needs Immigrants To Maintain Global Economic and Political Power

"Demography is destiny," supposedly said 19th-century French philosopher Auguste Comte, noting that increases in population enhance the political and economic power of a region or nation, while decreases in population reduce the economic or political power of a region or nation. China and Russia are losing population, so is India and Japan, partly due to …

Indonesia’s War For Independence From the Dutch Empire In 1940s Illuminated by ‘The East’ Movie

A 2020 Dutch war film, "The East," popped up on my recommendations to stream. It is set in the Dutch East Indies of 1946 during the Indonesian National Revolution, also known as the Indonesian War of Independence. A soldier, deployed to suppress post-WWII rebellion in Indonesia, finds himself torn between duty and conscience when he joins an elite …

An American Expat in Egypt, Jordan, So Different From A Decade Ago

What's it like to be an American expat in the Middle East now, with regional tensions high and many locals blaming the U.S. for sticking with Israel? Samantha Childress on Substack shares her experiences in Egypt and Jordan. Goodbye to All That: On Loving and Leaving Cairo. Vignettes from Life in Amman. Despite a loud …

What An American Learned From Living in Africa

Terry Repak, her husband, and two young children in the early 1990s moved from the U.S. to Ivory Coast, West Africa where her husband, an epidemiologist, was tracking the AIDS epidemic at its height. As a "trailing spouse," in the expat lingo, Terry's experiences were both challenging and enriching. They also lived in Tanzania and …

Americans Are Taking Over Europe

Into Europe: Americans are moving to Europe, and turning the US into a country of emigration. 0:00 Introduction 1:25 1-Americans Are Emigrating 2:17 Sponsored Segment 3:26 2-How Many Americans Are Emigrating? 5:32 3-European Countries Want Americans 8:02 4-A Silver Bullet for Ageing Europe? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGmveMKEWE&t=52s

The American Century, From the 1940s to ?

My friend Bruce Johnson writes: "American civilization reached its zenith in the 1960s and 1970s. American music and American literature and American art were taken seriously all over the world.  American architecture and engineering arguably dominated the world. People all over the world listened seriously to the speeches of American politicians not just to predict what …

Roman Historian Boethius Explained the Fate of Nations and Empires

The Roman senator, consul, and historian Boethius (c. 480–524 AD) explained the fate of nations, empires, and societies more than a millennium and a half ago in his immortal treatise On the Consolidation of Philosophy. My friend Bruce Johnson explained in an email: The ups and downs of secular cultures are controlled by "the wheel of …

I Wish I Studied Global History Much Earlier In Life

I did not take World History in high school. I was warned off by another history buff, an older friend who laughed in ridicule at the teacher's introductory lecture. "Some of you more advanced students already know the difference between a country and a continent," she said without confidence, expressing the hope that she would …

75 Years After the UN Declaration on Human Rights, The World Is Disappointed

Inspiring statement of ideals and principles or a miserable failure? On December 10, 1948, led by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the United Nations General Assembly passed an International Declaration of Human Rights, designed to protect every human on the planet from genocides and the kinds of egregious violations that occurred during WWII, which was …

Powerful Predictors of the Future: Population Pyramids

Ted-ED: "Population statistics are like crystal balls -- when examined closely, they can help predict a country’s future (and give important clues about the past). Kim Preshoff explains how using a visual tool called a population pyramid helps policymakers and social scientists make sense of the statistics, using three different countries' pyramids as examples. Russia, …