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malonema1

Trump's hard-line approach clashes with Tillerson on Qatar | New York Post - 0 views

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  • President Trump on Friday demanded that Qatar stop funding terrorism, striking a hard line against the tiny emirate just hours after his State Department had urged other Gulf nations to end their blockade of the besieged country. “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. The time has come to call on Qatar to end its funding,” Trump said at the White House. “Hopefully it will be the beginning of the end of funding terrorism. It will, therefore, be the beginning of the end to terrorism. No more funding.”
Javier E

Opinion | Yes, There Is a Clash of Civilizations - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In 1996 the political scientist Samuel Huntington offered several strong claims about the post-Cold War world.
  • Global politics was becoming not just “multipolar” but “multicivilizational,” he argued, with competing powers modernizing along different cultural lines, not simply converging with the liberal West.
  • “The balance of power among civilizations” was shifting, and the West was entering a period of relative decline.
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  • A “civilization-based world order” was emerging, in which societies “sharing cultural affinities” were more likely to group themselves into alliances or blocs.
  • And the would-be universalism of the West was setting the stage for sustained conflict with rival civilizations, most notably with China and the Islamic world.
  • These claims were the backbone of Huntington’s book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,” which was seen as a sweeping interpretive alternative to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, with its vision of liberal democracy as the horizon toward which post-Cold War societies were likely to converge.
  • often lately Huntington has been invoked either warily, on the grounds that Putin wants a clash of civilizations and we shouldn’t give it to him, or in dismissal or critique, with the idea being that his theory of world politics has actually been disproved by Putin’s attempt to restore a Greater Russia.
  • Christopher Caldwell also invokes Huntington’s seemingly falsified predictions about Orthodox Christian unity. But then he also offers a different reason to reject Huntington’s application to our moment, suggesting that the civilizational model has been a useful framework for understanding events over the last 20 years, but lately we have been moving back to a world of explicitly ideological conflict — one defined by a Western elite preaching a universal gospel of “neoliberalism” and “wokeness,” and various regimes and movements that are trying to resist it.
  • Caldwell’s analysis resembles the popular liberal argument that the world is increasingly divided between liberalism and authoritarianism, democracy and autocracy, rather than being divided into multiple poles and competing civilizations.
  • if you want to understand the direction of global politics right now, the Huntington thesis is more relevant than ever.
  • The first years of the 21st century, in other words, provided a fair amount of evidence for the universal appeal of Western capitalism, liberalism and democracy, with outright opposition to those values confined to the margins — Islamists, far-left critics of globalization, the government of North Korea.
  • American power has obviously declined relative to our rivals and competitors, or that our post-9/11 efforts to spread Western values by force of arms so often came to grief.
  • The specific divergences between the world’s major powers have also followed, in general ways, the civilizational patterns Huntington sketched out.
  • None of the emerging non-Western great powers have yet built grand alliances based on civilizational affinities, meaning that the third of the four big Huntingtonian predictions looks like the weakest one tod
  • wherever smaller countries are somehow “torn,” in his language, between some other civilization and the liberal West, they usually prefer an American alliance to an alignment with Moscow or Beijing.
  • This speaks to the West’s resilient appeal, to enduring American advantages even in a multipolar world. But it doesn’t mean that liberalism is poised for some sweeping return to the position it occupied when American strength was at its height.
  • while aspects of Fukuyama’s end of history have clearly spread beyond the liberal West, it’s as often the shadow side of his vision — consumerism and childless anomie — as the idealism of democracy and human rights.
  • Still less does the conflict in Ukraine mean that the export of American-style “wokeness,”
  • Quite the reverse: Most of wokeness feels inward-looking and parochial, a specifically Western and especially Anglo-American response to disappointments with the neoliberal period
  • the current culture war may actually be reducing ethnic polarization in our political parties — drawing some racial minorities rightward, for instance — while resurfacing some of the oldest divides in Anglo-American politics.
  • The woke often seem like heirs of the New England Puritans and the utopian zeal of Yankeedom; their foes are often Southern evangelicals and conservative Catholics and the libertarian descendants of the Scots-Irish; and the stakes in the debates are competing interpretations of the American founding, the Constitution, the Civil War and the settlement of the frontier.
  • if there’s going to be a clash of civilizations, the clash inside America is over what kind of civilization ours should be.
anniina03

Clashes With Police Cut Short Hong Kong Protest | Time - 0 views

  • Clashes broke out between protesters and police in Hong Kong on Sunday, cutting short a rally after thousands had gathered at a park to call for electoral reforms and a boycott of the Chinese Communist Party. Police fired tear gas near the park, known as Chater Garden, after some protesters attacked men whom they believed to be plainclothes officers, in a return to the violence that has roiled the Chinese territory off and on for months.
  • “We want real universal suffrage,” the protesters chanted. “Disband the police force, free Hong Kong!”
  • Frictions between democracy-minded Hong Kongers and the Communist Party-ruled central government in Beijing came to a head last June, when proposed extradition legislation sparked months of mass demonstrations.
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  • The bill — which would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial — has been withdrawn, but the protests have continued for more than seven months, centered around demands for voting rights and an independent inquiry into police conduct.
  • The months of unrest have sent the financial hub’s economy reeling, as shops have shuttered during clashes and tourists have stayed away. Hong Kong police gave approval for Sunday’s rally, but not for a march that organizers had also planned. The march didn’t happen, and the protest was curtailed by clashes after police ordered an end to the rally hours before the pre-approved finishing time.
  • Several young protesters were handcuffed outside the park, as officers made arrests and conducted searches into the evening. One man who refused to be searched retreated into a public restroom that was promptly surrounded by riot police.
B Mannke

BBC News - Ukraine president warns Kiev protesters amid clashes - 0 views

  • Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has warned that the country's stability is threatened by continuing clashes between police and anti-government protesters in the capital Kiev.
  • The authorities say police have the right to use firearms in self-defence.
  • "now, when peaceful actions are turning into mass unrest, accompanied by riots and arson attacks, the use of violence, I am convinced that such phenomena are a threat not only to Kiev but to the whole of Ukraine".
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  • At least 30 people have been arrested in the clashes, and about 100 injured, including dozens of police officers.
  • Former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who was injured in clashes earlier this month, is among four representatives of the opposition who will be taking part in the talks with the authorities, according to the website for Ukraine's Fatherland Party.
  • The police have been firing plastic bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades, and even throwing back the cobblestones, he reports. EU foreign ministers also released a statement on Monday expressing "deep concern" about the new legislation, which they said was passed under "doubtful procedural circumstances".
  • A ban on the unauthorised installation of tents, stages or amplifiers in public places Provision to arrest protesters wearing masks or helmets A ban on protests involving more than five vehicles in convoy Hefty fines or jail for breaches of law
  • The group is not thought to support the idea of Ukraine joining the EU, but is against the government and sees the current unrest as an opportunity "to destroy the state skeleton", according to the BBC's Ukrainian Service.
katyshannon

U.S., Russia sign memo to avoid clashes in air over Syria | Reuters - 0 views

  • U.S. and Russian military officials signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday that includes steps their pilots should take to avoid an inadvertent clash over Syria as they carry out separate air strikes against militant groups, the Pentagon said.
  • issue of aircraft safety started after Russia began bombing targets in Syria last month. Moscow says it is attacking Islamic State, but many of its air strikes have hit territory held by other rebel groups fighting against Russia's Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad.
  • “The U.S. and Russia will form a working group to discuss any implementation issues that follow," Cook said during a press briefing.
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  • he full text of the memo would not be released at Russia's request, but it included specific protocols for air crews to follow, plus the creation of a ground communications link between the two sides in the event air communications fail.
  • He said the document called for U.S. and Russian aircraft to maintain a safe distance, but he declined to be more specific about whether the protocols included specific distances.
  • He added that the agreement covered coalition aircraft. Coalition members include Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
  • The U.S. State Department said the agreement is only about keeping pilots saf
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    US and Russia sign memo to avoid clashes in Syria's airspace and ensure pilots' safety
ethanshilling

As Europe's Covid Lockdowns Drag On, Police and Protesters Clash More - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In Bristol, an English college town where the pubs are usually packed with students, there were fiery clashes between the police and protesters.
  • In Kassel, a German city known for its ambitious contemporary art festival, the police unleashed pepper spray and water cannons on anti-lockdown marchers.
  • From Spain and Denmark to Austria and Romania, frustrated people are lashing out at the restrictions on their daily lives.
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  • In Bristol, the trigger for the clashes was sweeping new legislation that would empower the police to sharply restrict demonstrations.
  • Right-wing politicians who bridle at lockdown restrictions are as angry as the left-wing climate protesters who regularly clog Trafalgar Square in London as part of the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations.
  • In Britain, where the rapid pace of vaccinations has raised hopes for a faster opening of the economy than the government is willing to countenance, frustration over recent police conduct has swelled into a national debate over the legitimacy of the police
  • The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, harshly criticized the violence, blaming much of it on outsider agitators who he said had seized on a peaceful demonstration as an excuse to pick a fight with the establishment.
  • The violent clashes in Bristol, which left two police vans charred and 20 officers injured — one with a punctured lung — are deeply frustrating to Mr. Rees, who is the son of a Jamaican father and an English mother.
  • This time, however, he fears that the images of shattered windows and burned police vehicles will help Prime Minister Boris Johnson pass the police law, which has already cleared two key hurdles in Parliament.
ethanshilling

Thousands Protest Against Policing Bill in Britain, With Clashes in London - The New Yo... - 0 views

  • Thousands of people protested Saturday in several cities across England and Wales against a sweeping crime and policing bill, with some in London clashing with the police in scenes that may further fuel a raging national debate over law enforcement tactics in Britain.
  • In London, protesters peacefully marched from Hyde Park in central London to Parliament Square, but the gathering gave way to scuffles with officers in the evening, and 26 demonstrators were detained, the police said.
  • “After reviewing a huge body of evidence — rather than a snapshot on social media — we found that there are some things the Met could have done better,” the leader of the inspection team, Matt Parr, said of the Metropolitan Police.
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  • The faceoffs on Saturday come amid an increasingly tense environment between the police and demonstrators across Europe. Over the past year, protesters have clashed with the police during Black Lives Matter protests, anti-lockdown rallies and, in countries like France, against similar security laws.
  • “No E.U. country is immune to threats to democracy, and more concrete efforts are badly needed to revert worrying trends,” the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe said in a report published last month.
  • Protesters also marched in Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and many other cities on Saturday, the latest events in what have become known as “Kill the Bill” demonstrations. Critics of the bill say it would hinder the right to protest and constitute an attack on democracy.
  • The clashes on Saturday may add to the ongoing debate about excessive force used by the country’s police, which in London have been shaken by several recent controversies.
  • Unlike the vigil organized last month for Ms. Everard, protests are now legal in England and Wales as long as event organizers make a risk assessment and take measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Commander Ade Adelekan said in a statement Saturday night that a majority of demonstrators had adhered to social distancing rules and left when asked to by the police. But officers arrested protesters, he added, after a minority refused to comply with orders.
  • “We remain in the middle of a global pandemic and we have made great progress in controlling the spread of the virus,” Mr. Adelekan said. “We will not allow the selfish actions of a small number of people to put Londoners progress in jeopardy.”
B Mannke

Clashes Between Militants and Army Spread in Iraq - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • A confrontation between Iraqi insurgents and government forces in the western city of Falluja edged closer to the capital on Sunday, after clashes between militants and the army left at least 14 people dead in the Abu Ghraib district in Baghdad Province, according to security officials.
  • killing at least 14 civilians.
  • Instead of using the military, Mr. Maliki appeared to be leaning on Sunni tribal leaders to expel the militants themselves, and has been providing them with weapons and money for that purpose.
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  • We will be in this for the long haul,” Mr. Zebari said. “Probably as long as Syria is going on.”
  • The Obama administration “feels that if this is not contained, it’s moving toward an all-out sectarian confrontation,” he said.
  • Several of the refugees in Karbala said Sunday that they had little hope of returning home soon, and no clear notion of the identities of the gunmen fighting in their city — said to be a mix of tribesmen, Qaeda militants and others.
  • at least four soldiers and 10 civilians were killed, according to security and hospital officials.
  • In a statement, Fadhel al-Barwari, a commander in the Special Operations Forces, pledged to “kill a thousand Al Qaeda members” for each of the soldiers.
qkirkpatrick

Separatists say 15 people killed in clashes in east Ukraine: report | Reuters - 0 views

  • A senior rebel commander said around 15 fighters and civilians had been killed as a result of clashes between Ukrainian government forces and separatists near rebel-controlled Donetsk on Wednesday, separatist press service DAN reporte
  • "At the moment around fifteen people have been killed, these are the Donetsk People's Republic's losses," rebel military official Vladimir Kononov was quoted as telling journalists in Donetsk. The report could not be independently verified.
  • Earlier, Ukraine's defense minister said an attempt by pro-Russian separatists to advance on Ukrainian troop positions near the town of Maryinka west of Donetsk had been halted for now. Rebels denied launching an offensive.
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    Ukraine and Russia 
anonymous

Saudi Arabia Charges Iran With 'Act of War,' Raising Threat of Military Clash - The New... - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia Charges Iran With ‘Act of War,’ Raising Threat of Military Clash
  • Saudi Arabia charged Monday that a missile fired at its capital from Yemen over the weekend was an “act of war” by Iran, in the sharpest escalation in nearly three decades of mounting hostility between the two regional rivals.
  • “We see this as an act of war,” the Saudi foreign minister, Adel Jubair, said in an interview on CNN. “Iran cannot lob missiles at Saudi cities and towns and expect us not to take steps.”
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  • “Today confrontation is the name of the game,” said Joseph A. Kechichian, a scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who is close to the royal family. “This young man, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is not willing to roll over and play dead. If you challenge him, he is saying, he is going to respond.”
  • The accusations raise the threat of a direct military clash between the two regional heavyweights at a time when they are already fighting proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, as well as battles for political power in Iraq and Lebanon.
  • Even before the launching of the missile on Saturday, which was intercepted en route to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the crown prince had staged another surprise demonstration of the kingdom’s newly aggressive posture toward Iran and Lebanon
  • Mr. Trump has encouraged Saudi Arabia and its allies “to be more forceful against Iran, and to take more charge of their own neighborhood, and they have taken that to heart,” Mr. Jordan said. “They know America will have their back.”
Javier E

Historians Clash With the 1619 Project - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • “They had not seen this type of demand for a print product of The New York Times, they said, since 2008, when people wanted copies of Obama's historic presidency edition,” Hannah-Jones told me. “I know when I talk to people, they have said that they feel like they are understanding the architecture of their country in a way that they had not.”
  • For Nikole Hannah-Jones, the reporter who conceived of the project, the response has been deeply gratifying.
  • When The New York Times Magazine published its 1619 Project in August, people lined up on the street in New York City to get copies. Since then, the project—a historical analysis of how slavery shaped American political, social, and economic institutions—has spawned a podcast, a high-school curriculum, and an upcoming book
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  • U.S. history is often taught and popularly understood through the eyes of its great men, who are seen as either heroic or tragic figures in a global struggle for human freedom.
  • The 1619 Project, named for the date of the first arrival of Africans on American soil, sought to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” Viewed from the perspective of those historically denied the rights enumerated in America’s founding documents, the story of the country’s great men necessarily looks very different.
  • given the stature of the historians involved, the letter is a serious challenge to the credibility of the 1619 Project
  • he letter sent to the Times says, “We applaud all efforts to address the foundational centrality of slavery and racism to our history,” but then veers into harsh criticism of the 1619 Project. The letter refers to “matters of verifiable fact” that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing’” and says the project reflected “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” Wilentz and his fellow signatories didn’t just dispute the Times Magazine’s interpretation of past events, but demanded corrections.
  • Underlying each of the disagreements in the letter is not just a matter of historical fact but a conflict about whether Americans, from the Founders to the present day, are committed to the ideals they claim to revere.
  • while some of the critiques can be answered with historical fact, others are questions of interpretation grounded in perspective and experience.
  • Both sides agree, as many of the project’s right-wing critics do not, that slavery’s legacy still shapes American life—an argument that is less radical than it may appear at first glance. If you think anti-black racism still shapes American society, then you are in agreement with the thrust of the 1619 Project, though not necessarily with all of its individual arguments.
  • Was America founded as a slavocracy, and are current racial inequities the natural outgrowth of that? Or was America conceived in liberty, a nation haltingly redeeming itself through its founding principles?
  • The clash between the Times authors and their historian critics represents a fundamental disagreement over the trajectory of American society
  • The 1619 Project, and Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay in particular, offer a darker vision of the nation, in which Americans have made less progress than they think, and in which black people continue to struggle indefinitely for rights they may never fully realize.
  • The letter is rooted in a vision of American history as a slow, uncertain march toward a more perfect union.
  • Inherent in that vision is a kind of pessimism, not about black struggle but about the sincerity and viability of white anti-racism.
  • “The biggest obstacle to teaching slavery effectively in America is the deep, abiding American need to conceive of and understand our history as ‘progress,’ as the story of a people and a nation that always sought the improvement of mankind, the advancement of liberty and justice, the broadening of pursuits of happiness for all,”
  • The letter’s signatories recognize the problem the Times aimed to remedy, Wilentz told me. “Each of us, all of us, think that the idea of the 1619 Project is fantastic. I mean, it's just urgently needed. The idea of bringing to light not only scholarship but all sorts of things that have to do with the centrality of slavery and of racism to American history is a wonderful idea,” he said. In a subsequent interview, he said, “Far from an attempt to discredit the 1619 Project, our letter is intended to help it.”
  • The letter disputes a passage in Hannah-Jones’s introductory essay, which lauds the contributions of black people to making America a full democracy and says that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery” as abolitionist sentiment began rising in Britain.
  • “To teach children that the American Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery would be giving a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the American Revolution was all about but what America stood for and has stood for since the Founding,” Wilentz told me. Anti-slavery ideology was a “very new thing in the world in the 18th century,” he said, and “there was more anti-slavery activity in the colonies than in Britain.”
  • Where Wilentz and his colleagues see the rising anti-slavery movement in the colonies and its influence on the Revolution as a radical break from millennia in which human slavery was accepted around the world, Hannah-Jones’ essay outlines how the ideology of white supremacy that sustained slavery still endures today.
  • On this question, the critics of the 1619 Project are on firm ground. Although some southern slave owners likely were fighting the British to preserve slavery, as Silverstein writes in his rebuttal, the Revolution was kindled in New England, where prewar anti-slavery sentiment was strongest. Early patriots like James Otis, John Adams, and Thomas Paine were opposed to slavery, and the Revolution helped fuel abolitionism in the North.
  • it is this profound pessimism about white America that many of the 1619 Project’s critics find most galling.
  • The most radical thread in the 1619 Project is not its contention that slavery’s legacy continues to shape American institutions; it’s the authors’ pessimism that a majority of white people will abandon racism and work with black Americans toward a more perfect union.
  • In an interview with the World Socialist Web Site, Oakes said, “The function of those tropes is to deny change over time … The worst thing about it is that it leads to political paralysis. It’s always been here. There’s nothing we can do to get out of it. If it’s the DNA, there’s nothing you can do. What do you do? Alter your DNA?”
  • The project’s pessimism has drawn criticism from the left as well as the right.
  • A major theme of the 1619 Project is that the progress that has been made has been fragile and reversible—and has been achieved in spite of the nation’s true founding principles, which are not the lofty ideals few Americans genuinely believe in.
  • “The fight for black freedom is a universal fight; it's a fight for everyone. In the end, it affected the fight for women's rights—everything. That's the glory of it,” Wilentz told me. “To minimize that in any way is, I think, bad for understanding the radical tradition in America.”
  • the question of whether black Americans have fought their freedom struggles “largely alone,” as Hannah-Jones put it in her essay, is subject to vigorous debate.
  • “I think one would be very hard-pressed to look at the factual record from 1619 to the present of the black freedom movement and come away with any conclusion other than that most of the time, black people did not have a lot of allies in that movement,” Hannah-Jones told me. “It is not saying that black people only fought alone. It is saying that most of the time we did.”
  • “The tone to me rather suggested a deep-seated concern about the project. And by that I mean the version of history the project offered. The deep-seated concern is that placing the enslavement of black people and white supremacy at the forefront of a project somehow diminishes American history,”
  • To Wilentz, the failures of earlier scholarship don’t illustrate the danger of a monochromatic group of historians writing about the American past, but rather the risk that ideologues can hijack the narrative. “[It was] when the southern racists took over the historical profession that things changed, and W. E. B. Du Bois fought a very, very courageous fight against all of that,” Wilentz told me. The Dunning School, he said, was “not a white point of view; it’s a southern, racist point of view.”
  • In the letter, Wilentz portrays the authors of the 1619 Project as ideologues as well. He implies—apparently based on a combative but ambiguous exchange between Hannah-Jones and the writer Wesley Yang on Twitter—that she had discounted objections raised by “white historians” since publication.
  • Hannah-Jones told me she was misinterpreted. “I rely heavily on the scholarship of historians no matter what race, and I would never discount the work of any historian because that person is white or any other race,” she told me. “I did respond to someone who was saying white scholars were afraid, and I think my point was that history is not objective. And that people who write history are not simply objective arbiters of facts, and that white scholars are no more objective than any other scholars, and that they can object to the framing and we can object to their framing as well.”
  • When I asked Wilentz about Hannah-Jones’s clarification, he was dismissive. “Fact and objectivity are the foundation of both honest journalism and honest history. And so to dismiss it, to say, ‘No, I'm not really talking about whites’—well, she did, and then she takes it back in those tweets and then says it's about the inability of anybody to write objective history. That's objectionable too,”
  • The problem, as Du Bois argued, is that much of American history has been written by scholars offering ideological claims in place of rigorous historical analysis. But which claims are ideological, and which ones are objective, is not always easy to discern.
  • Newt Gingrich called the 1619 Project a “lie,” arguing that “there were several hundred thousand white Americans who died in the Civil War in order to free the slaves." In City Journal, the historian Allen Guelzo dismissed the Times Magazine project as a “conspiracy theory” developed from the “chair of ultimate cultural privilege in America, because in no human society has an enslaved people suddenly found itself vaulted into positions of such privilege, and with the consent—even the approbation—of those who were once the enslavers.
hannahcarter11

Protesters Gather Across The World For May Day : NPR - 0 views

  • Protests surged in cities around the world for May Day as demonstrators called for better working protections and other causes. They come as COVID-19 and a stumbling economy continues to disrupt the world.
  • May 1 marks International Labor Day which commemorates laborers and the working class. Marches and demonstrations typically occur every year in many countries, but took on a new meaning after a year of lockdowns affecting many workers' livelihoods.
  • In Paris, at least 17,000 people gathered, many of them to oppose a change in government unemployment benefits.
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  • Video and images of the protests saw some demonstrators clashing with police, breaking windows and starting fires. In response, police fired tear gas and made 34 arrests.
  • A French pensioner who only gave her name as Patricia to AFP spoke about the protests, saying, "There are so many motivations for a revolt that are building up — the management of COVID, the so-called reforms that are going to take away people's ability to live, job-seekers who are going to lose their benefits."
  • In Berlin, at least 5,000 people protested against social inequality. Demonstrators clashed with police and some people threw fireworks, bottles and rocks, Reuters reported.
  • According to Reuters witnesses, demonstrators and union leaders were pushed to the ground and detained by police, some of whom were in plainclothes.
Javier E

Opinion | Vladimir Putin's Clash of Civilizations - The New York Times - 0 views

  • let’s assume that he expects some of those consequences, expects a more isolated future. What might be his reasoning for choosing it?
  • Here is one speculation: He may believe that the age of American-led globalization is ending no matter what, that after the pandemic certain walls will stay up everywhere, and that the goal for the next 50 years is to consolidate what you can — resources, talent, people, territory — inside your own civilizational walls.
  • In this vision the future is neither liberal world-empire nor a renewed Cold War between competing universalisms. Rather it’s a world divided into some version of what Bruno Maçães has called “civilization-states,” culturally-cohesive great powers that aspire, not to world domination, but to become universes unto themselves — each, perhaps, under its own nuclear umbrella.
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  • In this light, the invasion of Ukraine looks like civilizationism run amok, a bid to forge by force what the Russian nationalist writer Anatoly Karlin dubs “Russian world” — meaning “a largely self-contained technological civilization, complete with its own IT ecosystem … space program, and technological visions … stretching from Brest to Vladivostok.”
  • The goal is not world revolution or world conquest, in other words, but civilizational self-containment — a unification of “our own history, culture and spiritual space,” as Putin put it in his war speech — with certain erring, straying children dragged unwillingly back home.
Javier E

FC96: The English Revolution: (1603-88) - The Flow of History - 0 views

  • In religion, Elizabeth skillfully maintained peace in England while much of Europe was embroiled in religious wars. She did this by grafting moderate Protestant theology onto Catholic style ritual and organization.  She also blunted the ferocity of the religiously radical Puritans (Calvinists) by incorporating many of them into the hierarchy of the Church of England.  However, this put many Puritans into positions of authority where they could demand more sweeping reforms beyond the Queen's lukewarm Protestantism.  In addition, many of these Puritans were also members of the gentry (lower nobles) and middle classes who controlled the House of Commons in Parliament and voted on taxes.  Thus the issues of religion and money became even more tangled.
  • Religious wars, which threatened everyone's peace and security, and inflation, which made maintaining armies too expensive for rebellious nobles, also combined to help with the rise of absolutism in Europe.  This rising tide of absolutism would influence the Stuart kings of England to try to establish absolutism in their own realm in spite of popular opinion.  A less skillful and diplomatic ruler than Elizabeth would have trouble dealing with these new forces rising up in England.  Such an undiplomatic ruler succeeded Elizabeth in the person of James I (1603-1625).
  • While Elizabeth had so skillfully kept the issues of money and religion in check, James' absolutist beliefs and abrasive personality brought them to the surface.  As far as religion went, James fought the largely Puritan Parliament to keep the Church of England's Catholic style ritual, decorations, and hierarchy of clergy, over which he as king had control.  In money matters, king and Parliament clashed over James' growing requests for money to support his lavish lifestyle.  He also angered the middle class by raising customs duties, one of his main sources of revenue, to keep pace with inflation.  While James and Parliament never completely broke with one another over these issues, their constant squabbling did set the stage for the revolution that was to follow.
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  • While the individual events of the English Revolution could be somewhat involved and complicated, they did fit into a basic pattern.  Parliament and the ruler of England would clash over the issues of religion and taxes as the government became less decisive and/or reasonable.  This would trigger a reaction by Parliament that would bring in a new ruler, and then the process would start all over again.  This cycle would repeat itself three times over the next sixty years, with each successive stage feeding back into the aforementioned cycle as well as into the next stage
  • The first stage would see England plunged into civil war (1642-49) that would result in the beheading of Charles I and the rise of the Puritans and Parliament to power.  In the second stage, continued fighting over religion and money, this time between Parliament and its army, would bring in military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650's.  After Cromwell's death (1658) would come the third stage with the restoration of the monarchy (1661-88).  However, the old conflicts over money and religion would resurface in the reign of James II and lead to his overthrow by Parliament with the help of William III and Mary of Holland in 1688.
rachelramirez

The Middle East: Where Policy and Culture Collide - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • How Should Culture Affect Foreign Policy?
  • Think of all the arguments about the so-called Sunni-Shia divide, the alleged millennia of conflict between these two Islamic sects that purportedly shape politics in the Middle East today, or the “clash of civilizations” that Samuel Huntington first wrote about in Foreign Affairs in 1993.
  • It strikes me that it is worth asking if the dynamic interaction between Western cultural preconceptions of the region and Middle Eastern predispositions is a reasonable explanation for Washington’s failures in the Arab world.
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  • It is hard to take arguments about culture seriously whey they are presented in their most extreme form because they often boil down to the noxious, self-serving claims of Islamophobes and Islamists alike.
  • It seems worthwhile, at least, when thinking about U.S. policy in the Middle East, to understand the way in which Western ideas—which many in the West believe to be universal—interact with the principles, ideals, and mythologies that make Middle Eastern societies tick.
  • Second, I am well aware of the dangers of cultural relativity. The Egyptian government has already employed this tactic in its efforts to deflect criticism of its appalling human rights record. Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry has, for example, argued that human rights is a Western concept that does not necessarily apply in other cultural settings.
  • But again, I wonder if analysts are missing something when they avoid thinking about culture, specifically a political culture cultivated by the state.
drewmangan1

'Not a Regular Day': What a Trump Rally Clash Reveals About a Divided Nation - The New ... - 0 views

  • Mr. Tong considers himself a moderate. During the booming 1990s, he once cast a ballot for Bill Clinton. He says he does not agree with Mr. Trump’s remarks about immigrants and Mexicans.
johnsonle1

Trump and Mexican President Speak by Phone Amid Dispute Over Wall - The New York Times - 1 views

  •  
    The White House issued an almost identical statement, calling it "a joint statement." But it differed in one key respect: It did not include any mention of an agreement to refrain from speaking publicly about the wall or its financing. The standoff with Mexico's president was the first full-blown foreign policy clash with a foreign leader of the Trump administration, and was the culmination of months of tension between the two men surrounding Mr. Trump's pledge to build the wall and renegotiate Nafta, the trade accord.
Javier E

In clash between Trump and the Khans, new signs of a cultural and political divide - Th... - 0 views

  • Trump — who famously said in January that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” — remains confident that what would be fatal breaches of political etiquette in most elections will only cement his reputation as a fearless truth-teller.
  • The more outrageous the comments, the more some voters will conclude that Trump is the candidate who would break some china and get things done, said Mark Burnett, who produced “The Apprentice,” Trump’s popular TV reality show. “People want to hear the unvarnished, that same style that he showed on ‘The Apprentice,’ ” Burnett said in an interview earlier this year, “the ability to speak his mind clearly and not tone down his voice in a politically correct, TV way.”
Maria Delzi

U.N. Says Aid Crisis Worsens in Central African Republic - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • he number of people displaced by fighting between Muslim and Christian militias and vigilantes in the Central African Republic has more than doubled in the past month, and increasing violence is making it harder to deliver humanitarian relief, the United Nations warned on Frida
  • More than 935,000 people have been driven from their homes in the clashes between Christian militias and the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel group that overthrew President François Bozizé in March, up from around 400,000 at the start of December, said Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency.
  • relief supplies have reached about 23,000 people
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  • A month after France sent additional troops to the Central African Republic to join African peacekeepers trying to restore stability, the violence is getting worse, “making the delivery of humanitarian relief ever more difficult,” Mr. Baloch said.
  • “Targeted attacks against civilians, looting and the presence of armed elements at some displacement sites have severely limited humanitarian access to those in need of urgent assistance,” Mr. Baloch said. “We have heard about a lot of revenge attacks.” Some attacks have taken place inside health clinics.
  • , around 512,000 people — more than half the population — have fled their homes and more than 100,000 have sought shelter and protection around the airport, where aid agencies are delivering emergency supplies.
  • presence of a French Army contingent providing security at the Bangui airport has not helped relief agencies trying to distribute aid, a task that has become “more challenging,” Mr. Baloch said.
  • World Health Organization reported on Friday an outbreak of measles in Bangui as well as in the north of the country and said it was working with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders to start an emergency vaccination program.
  • Doctors Without Borders reported that fighting had forced it to curtail operations at the Bangui airport. Clashes on Tuesday and Wednesday killed two children and wounded 40 people, the organization said.
  • Doctors Without Borders had planned to open two new health posts to provide support for vaccination and nutritional programs but suspended those plans and will operate with only an emergency team, Mr. Bergstrand said.
julia rhodes

Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The sotni, as the units are called, take their name from a traditional form of Cossack cavalry division. Activists estimate at least 32 such groups are in Kiev now, with more forming all the time.
  • Mr. Chontorog said that he had been in the square many times as a protester, but that after the violence on Thursday wanted to commit himself to the fight, which meant following orders from the commander of his hundred.
  • Thursday, a few antigovernment protesters could be seen carrying weapons. But with reports that the police have killed more than 70 demonstrators, most of the gunfire clearly came from the other side of the barricades. The interior minister reported that 29 police officers had been taken to the hospital and 67 had been captured by the protesters.
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  • Across Kiev and beyond, personal barriers that once defined the limits of behavior are crumbling, pushing this fractured but, until a few weeks ago, proudly peaceful nation into a spiral of chaos.
  • “Nationalism is what I believe in,” said the man, who gave his name only as Nikolo. “The nation is my religion.”
  • “What have humanism and pacifism ever brought to any nation?” he asked, clutching a battered metal shield and a metal rod, his soot-blackened face covered by a brown balaclava. “Revolutions are violent.”
  • But while the ranks of the protesters are diverse, the young men like Nikolo are the foot soldiers in a deepening civil conflict, the steel that refuses to bend under the pressure of thousands of riot police officers, volleys of live ammunition, snipers on rooftops and the looming threat of martial law.
  • The sotni provide a quasi-military discipline to the opposition’s street muscle. The commanders of the hundreds meet with other leaders of bands of young men under the umbrella of the Maidan Self Defense organization, which is led by Andri Parubi, a member of the opposition party Fatherland, though his control over some of the right-wing street groups appears tenuous at times.
  • But if these groups, whose members are far outnumbered by nonviolent protesters and also by the police, were the only ones driving Ukraine’s opposition to Mr. Yanukovych, the president could easily have defeated them weeks ago. Behind them stands a mass of others who recoil at pugnacious nationalism and scenes of mayhem but who now stand shoulder to shoulder with outfits like Right Sector, enraged that security forces resorted to violence to crack down on what had been a mostly peaceful protest in the mold of the Orange Revolution of 2004.
  • “We have a genetic memory of fascism here,” said Anatoly Skripnik, a businessman in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk.
  • Many protesters played down the role that the quasi-military nationalist groups, and history, are playing in the confrontation. “Some from the west are nationalists,” said Nikolai Visinski, an artist, standing on a barricade Thursday evening. “But we are all united in wanting a change of government. You don’t hear people yelling about Stepan Bandera. People just want to live in a free country.”
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