China’s historic moon landing boosts rivalry with U.S.
A ‘reign of fear’ takes hold in Nicaragua with new crackdown
The Washington Post reports: Reporters for an online news site are writing their stories in secret locations. Editors of the country’s only 24-hour news network have been jailed. And employees of a major human rights organization have escaped into the mountains. Except one. “I am 80 years old, and I am in no condition to go up into the mountains, not even to save my life,” said Vilma Núñez, a well-known lawyer who founded the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights….
An unbridgeable gap has opened between American Jews and Israeli Jews
Jonathan Weisman writes: The events of the past year brought American and Israeli Jews ever closer to a breaking point. President Trump, beloved in Israel and decidedly unloved by a majority of American Jews, moved the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May, with the fiery evangelical pastors John Hagee and Robert Jeffress consecrating the ceremony. In October, after the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, President Trump went to that…
Arab states move to reconcile with Syria
Deutsche Welle reports: Nearly eight years into a devastating war and with victory in sight, Syrian President Bashar Assad looks set to be freed from his isolation in the Arab world in 2019. Syria was booted out of the Arab League seven years ago as Arab states recalled their ambassadors, and Gulf Arab states shuttered their embassies to isolate the Assad regime amid a crackdown on protesters and descent into civil war. Now Arab states are seeking to reconcile with…
China’s gulag for Muslims
Mustafa Akyol writes: One of the darkest episodes of the 20th century was the gulag — the Soviet system of forced labor camps where dissidents were imprisoned in terrible conditions, often to perish. The camps were established by Lenin, expanded by Stalin and finally exposed to the world by the great Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, with his 1973 masterpiece, “The Gulag Archipelago.” “Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of Archipelago,” he wrote, and “it is enough…
William Arkin’s farewell memo
In his farewell memo, NBC military analyst William Arkin writes: When the attacks of 9/11 came, I was called back to NBC. I spent weeks on and off the air talking about al Qaeda and the various wars we were rushing into, arguing that airpower and drones would be the centerpiece not troops. In the new martial environment where only one war cry was sanctioned I was out of sync then as well. I retreated somewhat to writing a column…
Paul Whelan probably isn’t a spy. So why did Russia detain him?
Siobhán O’Grady and Amie Ferris-Rotman report: According to Russia’s domestic security services, a former U.S. Marine named Paul Whelan was in Moscow on a “spy mission” when he was arrested there last week. But experts say Whelan’s detention doesn’t look like a spying case at all. Whelan received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines in 2008, according to military records. He is now the corporate security director at BorgWarner, a Michigan-based automotive parts supplier, and his family said he was…
The denial of climate change and the denial of racism rest on the same foundation
Ibram X. Kendi writes: For two years, they formed a community of experts, about 1,000 in all, including 300 leading climate scientists inside and outside 13 federal agencies. For two years, they volunteered their time and expertise to produce the Fourth National Climate Assessment. There is no parallel process to tackle the questions I study; there is no ongoing national racial assessment mandated by a law summarizing the impact of racism on the United States, now and in the future….
Time to get out of Afghanistan
Robert D. Kaplan writes: The decision by President Trump to withdraw 7,000 of the roughly 14,000 American troops left in Afghanistan, possibly by summer, has raised new concerns about his impulsive behavior, especially given his nearly simultaneous decision to pull out all American forces from Syria against the advice of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But the downsizing of the Afghan mission was probably inevitable. Indeed, it may soon be time for the United States to get out of the country…
Trump gives no timetable for Syria exit, wants to protect Kurds
Reuters reports: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States would get out of Syria “over a period of time” and wants to protect the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the country as Washington draws down troops. Trump did not provide a timetable for the planned military exit from Syria, which he announced last month against the advice of top national security aides and without consulting lawmakers or U.S. allies participating in anti-Islamic State operations. The decision prompted Defence…
Brazil is about to show the world how a modern democracy collapses
Travis Waldron reports: The tanks began to roll into Rio de Janeiro on the morning of April 1, 1964, some of them from the neighboring state of Minas Gerais, others from São Paulo. The Brazilian capital had moved to Brasília, the new planned city in the country’s interior, a few years prior, but Rio remained the effective center of power, and somewhere in the city, President João Goulart was clinging to power. Goulart, a leftist who became president in 1961,…
Is revolutionary fervor afire — again — in Tunisia?
Robin Wright writes: On Christmas Eve, Abderrazak Zorgui, a thirty-two-year-old television reporter, posted a chilling cell-phone video shot in Kasserine, a city in western Tunisia that dates back to ancient Roman times. “I have decided today to put a revolution in motion,” he said, looking intently into the camera. “In Kasserine, there are people dying of hunger. Why? Are we not humans? We’re people just like you. The unemployed people of Kasserine, the jobless, the ones who have no means…
Outrage after Netflix pulls comedy show criticising Saudi Arabia
The Guardian reports: Netflix has taken down an episode of a satirical comedy show critical of Saudi Arabia in the country after officials from the kingdom complained, sparking criticism from Human Rights Watch, which said the act undermined the streaming service’s “claim to support artistic freedom”. It comes three months after the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – which US senators have blamed on the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – and…
China’s campaign of state terror against Muslims
Joanne Smith Finley writes: In an old Silk Road oasis town on China’s western border, these days a thirsty traveller can knock back a cold beer in a local mosque. The former place of worship is now a bar for tourists. And it is with the customers’ views in mind—and, perhaps, the aspirations of China’s leaders—that the place is called “The Dream of Kashgar.” For Kashgar’s Uighur residents, however, and for other Muslims across the Chinese region of Xinjiang, that…
Child soldiers from Darfur on the front line of the Saudi war in Yemen
The New York Times reports: The civil war in Darfur robbed Hager Shomo Ahmed of almost any hope. Raiders had stolen his family’s cattle, and a dozen years of bloodshed had left his parents destitute. Then, around the end of 2016, Saudi Arabia offered a lifeline: The kingdom would pay as much as $10,000 if Hager joined its forces fighting 1,200 miles away in Yemen. Hager, 14 at the time, could not find Yemen on a map, and his mother…
Journalists faced ‘unprecedented’ hostility this year, report says
CNN reports: More journalists were killed, abused and subjected to violence in 2018 than in any other year on record, with those in the profession facing an “unprecedented level of hostility,” a new report has found. Murder, imprisonment, hostage-taking and enforced disappearances of journalists all increased compared to last year, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), who criticized politicians and public figures for encouraging disdain for the news media. A total of 80 journalists were killed, including non-professional journalists and…