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Category: Politics

China and Russia have set a nuclear collision course with the United States

China and Russia have set a nuclear collision course with the United States

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Gordon G. Chang writes: China, the New York Times reported last week, “can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.” Therefore, Beijing can, in the words of the paper, “make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate.” Too costly to contemplate? Unfortunately, assessments like these, often heard in U.S. policy circles, can embolden the already arrogant Chinese and make their…

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Why China and Russia are obsessed with vast new war games

Why China and Russia are obsessed with vast new war games

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Peter Apps writes: As the West obsesses over Donald Trump’s legal and political challenges, Brexit and a host of other domestic crises, Chinese troops will join their Russian counterparts for Moscow’s largest military exercises in more than three decades. Coming six months after Beijing’s biggest ever offshore naval drills, the joint war games are another reminder of how central military posturing now is to the world’s two most powerful authoritarian states. While neither likely desires or expects war with the…

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Trump sees his ability to provoke fear as the foundation of his power

Trump sees his ability to provoke fear as the foundation of his power

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The Washington Post reports: [In his new book, Fear, Bob] Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president. The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post, sought…

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As the world stands by, Assad and Putin are ready to crush the last of the Syrian revolution’s democrats

As the world stands by, Assad and Putin are ready to crush the last of the Syrian revolution’s democrats

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Leila Al-Shami writes: The Syrian regime is determined to reconquer all of the territory it has lost. Aided by Russian bombers and Iranian troops, and emboldened by its success in terrorizing the populations of Ghouta and Daraa into submission, President Bashar al-Assad’s government is now preparing to attack Idlib, the last remaining province outside of his control. Idlib is home to some three million people, about half of them displaced, or forcibly evacuated, to the province from elsewhere. Many are…

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Trump protects profits, not workers

Trump protects profits, not workers

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Politico reports: When President Donald Trump came into office pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health. But almost two years in, the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs and line speeds in meat processing plants, among others. Trump’s deregulatory moves on worker safety are at odds with his public stance as a champion of working class Americans, but…

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Germany’s week of right-wing riots highlights fears of racism becoming more mainstream

Germany’s week of right-wing riots highlights fears of racism becoming more mainstream

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Quartz reports: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. A few days later, World War II began. Last night (Sept. 1), the 79th anniversary of that invasion, thousands of neo-Nazis, far-right politicians, and locals took to the streets of Chemnitz, a town in the eastern German state of Saxony, spewing hatred against foreigners and demanding “Germany for Germans.” The significance of the riots happening on such a dark anniversary was not lost on many observers. Foreign minister Heiko Mass tweeted:…

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Russia softens up West for bloodbath it is planning in Syria’s Idlib province

Russia softens up West for bloodbath it is planning in Syria’s Idlib province

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Simon Tisdall writes: Russia is going to extraordinary lengths to justify in advance the murderous onslaught that observers fear is about to descend on Idlib, a province in north-west Syria that is home to nearly two million internally displaced people. Idlib is the last large populated area outside the control of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator. And Assad, backed by his Russian and Iranian allies, is determined to get it back – whatever the human cost. In a series of coordinated…

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Which hunt?

Which hunt?

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The big story that the Fake News Media refuses to report is lowlife Christopher Steele’s many meetings with Deputy A.G. Bruce Ohr and his beautiful wife, Nelly. It was Fusion GPS that hired Steele to write the phony & discredited Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary & the DNC…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2018 The New York Times reports: The revelation that Mr. Ohr engaged with Mr. Steele has provided the president’s allies with fresh fodder to…

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As technology makes billions of people economically irrelevant, their political power is likely to shrink

As technology makes billions of people economically irrelevant, their political power is likely to shrink

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Yuval Noah Harari writes: There is nothing inevitable about democracy. For all the success that democracies have had over the past century or more, they are blips in history. Monarchies, oligarchies, and other forms of authoritarian rule have been far more common modes of human governance. The emergence of liberal democracies is associated with ideals of liberty and equality that may seem self-evident and irreversible. But these ideals are far more fragile than we believe. Their success in the 20th…

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Courageous grassroots leaders provide the best hope to a troubled world

Courageous grassroots leaders provide the best hope to a troubled world

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Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who steps down tomorrow, writes: Across the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres, there are politicians who are too self-serving, or too spiteful, to care for and protect the most vulnerable. They are not just cowardly but profoundly foolish, because in producing these stress fractures [– the result of decades of mediocre leadership –], they place at risk not only their own futures, but everyone else’s as…

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Donald Trump’s unadulterated racism

Donald Trump’s unadulterated racism

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Eugene Robinson writes: President Trump’s bigoted hatred of Latino immigrants has been clear from the beginning. Now his administration is aggressively persecuting Latino citizens as well. It is hard to be shocked anymore, given the daily outrages committed by Trump and his minions, but a report Thursday by The Post was jaw-dropping: In the borderlands of southern Texas, the State Department is denying passports to hundreds and perhaps thousands of men and women who have official birth certificates demonstrating they…

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White House faces legal and communications skills deficit at perilous moment

White House faces legal and communications skills deficit at perilous moment

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The Associated Press reports: Increasingly convinced that the West Wing is wholly unprepared to handle the expected assault from Democrats if they win the House in November, President Donald Trump’s aides and allies are privately raising alarm as his circle of legal and communications advisers continues to shrink. With vacancies abounding in the White House and more departures on the horizon, there is growing concern among Trump allies that the brain drain at the center of the administration could hardly…

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Trump’s top targets in the Russia probe are experts in organized crime

Trump’s top targets in the Russia probe are experts in organized crime

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The Atlantic reports: Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissman. Andrew McCabe. President Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia. As…

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Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis

Conservative media move to front line of battle to undermine Pope Francis

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Reuters reports: Last March, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano dined on the outskirts of Rome at the home of a conservative Italian Catholic journalist. Over pasta, fish and white wine, the prelate poured out his concern for the future of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the start of about five months of contacts and collaboration between Vigano and several conservative journalists and media outlets that would lead to one of the greatest crises for the Church in modern times. In…

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Tom Watson demands answers about alleged Russian Brexit plot

Tom Watson demands answers about alleged Russian Brexit plot

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The Guardian reports: Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour party, has called on the government to confirm if the National Crime Agency is looking into whether there was Russian interference in the EU referendum. Watson suggested the vote may have been “stolen” and said that if the NCA was not investigating then a full public inquiry with powers similar to those of the US special counsel Robert Mueller must be held. Mueller is investigating Russian interference into the…

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China is treating Islam like a disease

China is treating Islam like a disease

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The Atlantic reports: One million Muslims are being held right now in Chinese internment camps, according to estimates cited by the UN and U.S. officials. Former inmates—most of whom are Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority—have told reporters that over the course of an indoctrination process lasting several months, they were forced to renounce Islam, criticize their own Islamic beliefs and those of fellow inmates, and recite Communist Party propaganda songs for hours each day. There are media reports of…

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