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krystalxu

China's Approach to the Middle East Looks Familiar | The Diplomat - 0 views

thediplomat.com/...the-middle-east-looks-familiar

politics US history Middle East

shared by krystalxu on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • China had typically offered infrastructure-for-energy and other business deals.
  • “There is hope in the East,” one Arab businesswoman in the United Arabian Emirates told me.
  • The implications are clear: China has long represented an alternative in the global market for influence once dominated by Washington;
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  • Chalk it up to Beijing’s shifting global agenda or a diplomatic coming-of-age.
  • At a lackluster late-October forum on energy cooperation in Beijing this year, trade officials said Arab counterparts had to “restructure their economies,”
  • one of Saudi Arabia’s chief competitors in the race to quench China’s thirst for energy.
  • The tables had turned and Saudi Arabia now seems more eager to pursue the relationship.
  • Arab politicos and intellectuals have long decried a precarious U.S
  • Some things about the American model of foreign affairs are beginning to seem inevitable.
  • , UAE enterprise Dubai Ports World pulled out of a plan to manage six U.S. ports after U.S. legislators attacked the deal as a potential security risk.
  • China surpassed the United States as the Middle East’s largest export market and also as the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil.
  • In the meantime, China built a flurry of projects designed to show its embrace of the Arab world.
  • the longest highway in the entire continent of Africa. Corruption allegations over the highway are ongoing.
  • The reasons are manifold. An absence of venture capital and innovation in Arab economic planning are among the reasons why the infrastructure didn’t revolutionize the Middle East/North Africa region.
  • Beijing appears to have abandoned its principles of noninterference on the way to the top.
  • the Middle East and North Africa enjoyed a marketplace with options.
  • But as China ascends, the promise of a rising Eastern power is no more. As far as Arabs are concerned, Beijing has done little but reinvent the U.S. model of global dominance.
anonymous

AP Analysis: Dark days ahead for Lebanon as crisis bites - 0 views

apnews.com/...eaf36ed349004fa82ee8c16791884b

lebanon crisis

shared by anonymous on 29 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • Lebanon has been hit by an economic meltdown, mass protests, financial collapse, a virus outbreak and a cataclysmic explosion that virtually wiped out the country’s main port.
  • The country’s foreign reserves are drying up, the local currency is expected to spiral further downward.
  • But the two main Shiite parties, Hezbollah and Amal, accused him of acting on behalf of their local political rivals. They insisted on naming Shiite members of the Cabinet and on keeping the Finance Ministry for their sect. Adib refused and stepped down Saturday.
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  • The Trump administration has stepped up its maximum pressure campaign on Iran and its proxy militias, including Hezbollah
  • It slapped sanctions on two senior pro-Hezbollah politicians, including the former finance minister, in the middle of efforts to form the Cabinet.
  • the militant group has effectively put the Lebanese public in the middle of an “open confrontation” with the United States.
  • “To hell, of course,” he replied.
  • In the next few weeks, the Central Bank is expected to end subsidies on basic goods. Since the local currency’s collapse, the bank has been using its depleting reserves to support imports of fuel, wheat and medicine.
  • Civil unrest would put the population in confrontation with demoralized security forces who — like other Lebanese — have seen their salaries decrease by up to 80% in U.S. dollar terms.
  • He said turf wars among local armed groups may become a daily occurrence in areas that are not controlled by any political actor and could scale up once groups driven by sectarian and political motivations become involved.
  • a new trash crisis. Hospitals struggle to cope with the financial crisis amid a surge in coronavirus cases,
  • The bottom line is that fixing the financial sector and the budget – the two key issues that the IMF is supposed to address – will have to mean that the interest of some people who have political clout suffer, so there is a lot of potential for conflict,
  • seeking to hang on to their seats.The Aug. 4 explosion at Beirut’s port — bla
liamhudgings

A Mayor In Norway's Arctic Looks To China To Reinvent His Frontier Town : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-to-reinvent-his-frontier-town

economics China Norway Arctic

shared by liamhudgings on 18 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Rune Rafaelsen has a bold plan that could raise the profile of his remote Arctic town — with a little help, he hopes, from China.
  • He is the mayor of Sor-Varanger, a municipality in the far northeast corner of Norway, close to the Russian border. His office is in the small town Kirkenes — population a little over 3,500 — which overlooks the icy gray Barents Sea.
  • "Now you can go from Asia to Europe through the Northern Sea Route.
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  • The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on the planet. While the melting sea ice has alarmed scientists and residents, newly accessible waterways mean commercial ships are increasingly plowing along polar lanes.
  • A binational working group study concluded in late 2018 that the project, estimated to cost more than $3 billion, will not be "financially feasible."
  • Rafaelsen wants to turn his tiny town into a major logistical hub, including a massive port and train line to Finland.
  • He envisions building a massive new container terminal and a 300-mile railway to the city of Rovaniemi in neighboring Finland, which would key to moving cargo into Western Europe.
  • "Our plan is that you should [have] 10 trains from Kirkenes every day ... and we should handle about 1 million containers [per year]," he says.
  • The Norwegian government drew up a concept study for a mega-port for the area. That idea is on hold amid doubts that there would be enough cargo to warrant the cost.
  • Kirkenes is the first western harbor you meet when you start from Shanghai and go along the Russian sub-Siberian coast,"
  • There has also been pushback from the Sami, an indigenous people who herd reindeer across northern Finland. A rail line could harm their livelihoods and culture, Sami leaders and the working group said
  • The lack of interest and financing have done little to dampen Rafaelsen's enthusiasm.
  • "I have promoted it a lot in China, and the Chinese [have] been here to look at the possibility,"
  • About a year ago, the Chinese government launched an Arctic white paper, considered its first formal articulation of policies for the region. It emphasized the region's strategic economic importance — calling China a "Near-Arctic State" — and elaborated on a plan to include a "Polar Silk Road" in its broad Belt and Road Initiative to build trade links across several continents.
  • In February 2019, the Norwegian town's annual winter festival was themed "The World's Northernmost Chinatown."
  • "People get angry. Now they think Kirkenes should not be Chinese at all. But it's engaged people. That's the best," he says.
  • "The issue here is population, especially in the eastern part of northern Norway," Stokvik says. "We need jobs — we need the youth to stay, not going away."
  • But Thomas Nilsen, a journalist who covers Arctic issues for the Independent Barents Observer, says he doesn't see Kirkenes ever becoming the new Singapore.
Javier E

Down the 1619 Project's Memory Hole - Quillette - 0 views

quillette.com/...-the-1619-projects-memory-hole

1619 NYT history politics culture US American idea

shared by Javier E on 21 Sep 20 - No Cached
  • The history of the American Revolution isn’t the only thing the New York Times is revising through its 1619 Project. The “paper of record” has also taken to quietly altering the published text of the project itself after one of its claims came under intense criticism.
  • The original opening text stated: The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. [emphasis added]
  • For several months after the 1619 Project first launched, its creator and organizer Nikole Hannah-Jones doubled down on the claim. “I argue that 1619 is our true founding,” she tweeted the week after the project launched
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  • The passage, and in particular its description of the year 1619 as “our true founding,” quickly became a flashpoint for controversy around the project. Critics on both the Left and Right took issue with the paper’s declared intention of displacing 1776 with the alternative date—a point that was also emphasized in the magazine feature’s graphics, showing the date of American independence crossed out and replaced by the date of the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia.
  • But something changed as the historical controversies around the 1619 Project intensified in late 2019 and early 2020. A group of five distinguished historians took issue with Hannah-Jones’s lead essay, focusing on its historically unsupported claim that protecting slavery was a primary motive of the American revolutionaries when they broke away from Britain in 1776
  • Other details of the project soon came under scrutiny, revealing both errors of fact and dubious interpretations of evidence in other essays, such as Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project piece attempting to connect American capitalism with slavery.
  • Finally back in March, a historian who the Times recruited to fact-check Hannah-Jones’s essay revealed that she had warned the paper against publishing its claims about the motives of the American Revolution on account of their weak evidence. The 1619 Project’s editors ignored the advice.
  • the passage came to symbolize the Times’s blurring of historical analysis with editorial hyperbole. The announced intention of reframing the country’s origin date struck many readers across the political spectrum as an implicit repudiation of the American revolution and its underlying principles.
  • Rather than address this controversy directly, the Times—it now appears—decided to send it down the memory hole—the euphemized term for selectively editing inconvenient passages out of old newspaper reports in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984
  • Without announcement or correction, the newspaper quietly edited out the offending passage such that it now reads:
  • The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.
  • Discovery of this edit came about earlier this week when Nikole Hannah-Jones went on CNN to deny that she had ever sought to displace 1776 with a new founding date of 1619. She repeated the point in a now-deleted tweet: “The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 was our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.” It was not the first time that Hannah-Jones had tried to alter her self-depiction of the project’s aims on account of the controversial line
  • But this time the brazen rewriting of her own arguments proved too much. Hannah-Jones’s readers scoured her own Twitter feed and public statements over the previous year, unearthing multiple instances where she had in fact announced an intention to displace 1776 with 1619.
  • The foremost piece of evidence against Hannah-Jones’s spin, of course, came from the opening passage of from the Times’s own website where it originally announced its aim “to reframe the country’s history” around the year “1619 as our true founding.” When readers returned to that website to cite the line however, they discovered to their surprise that it was no longer there.
  • It wasn’t the only edit that the newspaper made to further conceal its previous denigration of 1776. Prompted by the discovery of the first deletion, Twitter users noticed another suspicious change to the project’s text. The print edition of the 1619 Project from August 2019 contained an introductory passage reading:
  • In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.
  • The website version of the 1619 Project now reads: In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.
marvelgr

Ultimately, Napoleon Did Not Achieve His Ambitions - Here Are Eight Reasons Why He Failed - 0 views

www.warhistoryonline.com/...ltimately-napoleon-failed.html

shared by marvelgr on 13 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Napoleon had a grand vision for himself and his country. He wanted to be a new Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Only the most ambitious of endeavors could have the impact his heroes had achieved.It was this that led him to a succession of wars that spanned a continent. It led him to attain much, but also to go too far. No time was left to consolidate what had already been taken. Wars were launched on multiple fronts, most famously the invasion of Russia while his troops were fighting the British in the Iberian Peninsula. The Emperor bit off more than he could chew.
  • Throughout his Italian campaigns, he picked off Austrian armies piece by piece, using flanking movements to overcome defensive positions.As he grew older, his mental agility faded. On several occasions, he resorted to trying to win by throwing thousands of men straight at the enemy. It led to great losses in his armies and less dramatic successes in battle.
  • Napoleon expected a great deal of the people around him, both in their willingness to follow his agenda and their ability to achieve it. These unrealistic expectations saw parts of his schemes for Europe fall apart.
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  • From the start, the British Navy far outmatched that of France. An oceanic superpower whose fleet dominated the seas, Britain repeatedly beat France. The most famous defeats were both delivered by Admiral Nelson, who destroyed Napoleon’s transport fleet at the Battle of the Nile and then smashed a Franco-Spanish force at Trafalgar, where the British Admiral lost his life.
  • As a mercantile nation, the British were reliant upon international trade. Napoleon, therefore, tried to win the economic war through the Continental System, a blockade of British trade at ports across Europe. It was easier to enforce in some areas than others. Anywhere directly controlled by France, Napoleon could order the system into place. Elsewhere, he had to win cooperation through diplomacy.
  • The system was full of holes. Occupied territories became resentful of the imposition, stirring opposition to the French. France’s Atlantic ports were hit hard by the British counter-blockade, their trade and supporting industries badly savaged. In the Netherlands, Napoleon’s brother failed to crack down on smuggling, while in Russia the Tsar gave up on the blockade as unhelpful for his nation.Not only did the Continental System fail to cripple Britain, it also damaged France’s own economy.
  • Between the driving determination of Tsar Alexander of Russia; the international influence of Austria; the freshly mobilized and experienced armies of Prussia; and the financial and military power of Great Britain, this alliance was finally able to push Napoleon’s troops back into France and defeat them there. He had offended too many people, leaving his nation without potential allies. The Coalition finally brought together enough strength to bring him down.
  • Napoleon always had to win on his terms. Ultimately, that led him to lose.
criscimagnael

Finding a Way Out of the War in Ukraine Proves Elusive - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...russia-ukraine-us-endgame.html

shared by criscimagnael on 14 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • The United States accurately predicted the start of the war in Ukraine, sounding the alarm that an invasion was imminent despite Moscow’s denials and Europe’s skepticism. Predicting how it might end is proving far more difficult.
  • At the Pentagon, there are models of a slogging conflict that brings more needless death and destruction to a nascent European democracy, and others in which Mr. Putin settles for what some believe was his original objective: seizing a broad swath of the south and east, connecting Russia by land to Crimea, which he annexed in 2014.
  • And there is a more terrifying endgame, in which NATO nations get sucked more directly into the conflict, by accident or design.
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  • In interviews with senior American and European officials in recent days, there is a consensus on one point: Just as the last two weeks revealed that Russia’s vaunted military faltered in its invasion plan, the next two or three may reveal whether Ukraine can survive as a state, and negotiate an end to the war.
  • And there is the possibility that Mr. Putin, angered by the slowness of his offensive in Ukraine, may reach for other weapons: chemical, biological, nuclear and cyber.
  • A French government account of a call to Mr. Putin on Saturday by Mr. Macron and Mr. Scholz termed it “disappointing with Putin’s insincerity: He is determined to continue the war.”
  • Quietly, the White House and the senior American military leadership have been modeling how they would respond to a series of escalations, including major cyberattacks on American financial institutions and the use of a tactical or “battlefield” nuclear weapon by Mr. Putin to signal to the rest of the world that he would brook no interference as he moves to crush Ukraine.
  • Even with Ukrainians begging for more offensive weapons and American intervention, Mr. Biden has stuck to his determination that he will not directly engage the forces of a nuclear-armed superpower.
  • The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment,” Mr. Biden said in Philadelphia to the House Democratic Caucus on Friday, “and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews, just understand — and don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say — that’s called ‘World War III.’ OK? Let’s get it straight here.”
  • Mr. Sullivan said that Russia would suffer “severe consequences” if it used chemical weapons, without specifying what those would be.
  • The fear now is that the war could expand.The more the fighting moves west, the more likely it is that an errant missile lands in NATO territory, or the Russians take down a NATO aircraft.
  • Despite his military’s logistical problems, Mr. Putin appears intent on intensifying his campaign and laying siege to Kyiv, the capital; Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city; and other Ukrainian urban centers.
  • “I think Putin is angry and frustrated right now,” Mr. Burns said. He is likely to “try to grind down the Ukrainian military with no regard for civilian casualties,” he added.
  • Mr. Putin has demonstrated in past conflicts in Syria and Chechnya a willingness not only to bomb heavily populated areas but also to use civilian casualties as leverage against his enemies. Senior U.S. officials said the coming weeks could see a long, drawn-out fight with thousands of casualties on both sides, as well as among the roughly 1.5 million citizens remaining in the city.
  • “It will come at a very high price in Russian blood,” said retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander for Europe. That high cost, he added, could cause Mr. Putin to destroy the city with an onslaught of missiles, artillery and bombs — “continuing a swath of war crimes unlike any we have seen in the 21st century.”
  • Russian forces are still subjecting Mariupol to siege and bombardment, but are close to securing that strategic southern port city and, with it, a land bridge from Crimea in the south to the Donbas region in the east that has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014.
  • And if Russia can seize Odessa, a pivotal Black Sea port city, and perhaps the remaining Ukrainian coast to the southeast, it would deprive Ukraine of important access to the sea.
  • “The most probable endgame, sadly, is a partition of Ukraine,” said Mr. Stavridis, pointing to the outcome of the Balkan wars in the 1990s as a model. “Putin would take the southeast of the country, and the ethnic Russians would gravitate there. The rest of the nation, overwhelmingly Ukrainian, would continue as a sovereign state.”
  • no evidence from the conversations so far that Mr. Putin has changed course; he remains “intent on destroying Ukraine.”
  • So far there are none of the procedures in place that American and Russian pilots use over Syria, for example, to prevent accidental conflict. And Mr. Putin has twice issued thinly veiled reminders of his nuclear capabilities, reminding the world that if the conflict does not go his way he has far larger, and far more fearsome, weapons to call into play.
Javier E

Tesla May Have Already Won the Electric Vehicle Charging Wars - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...harging-electric-vehicles.html

tesla electric vehicle charging

shared by Javier E on 27 Jun 23 - No Cached
  • G.M., Ford and numerous charging companies and equipment suppliers have agreed to work with Tesla because they desperately need the company’s help. In addition to selling more electric cars in the United States than all other automakers put together, Tesla operates the country’s largest fast-charging network.
  • the decision to work with Tesla comes with big risks for the rest of the auto industry, which will be relying on Mr. Musk, a mercurial leader, for an essential technolog
  • As the Tesla plug becomes dominant, people with cars designed to use the C.C.S. plug will become increasingly dependent on adapters that, for safety, are limited in how much voltage they can handle and will charge more slowly.
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  • Tesla’s system is known for being easy to use and reliable, while C.C.S. chargers can be finicky. Frustration with the existing charging network is clearly one reason Ford and G.M. decided to throw in their lot with Tesla.
  • The decision by other automakers to ally with Tesla, and generate revenue for a competitor, is an acknowledgment that Mr. Musk’s company has the most experience operating a charging network.
  • But one reason Tesla’s system performs well is that the company designs and manufactures the whole system — the car, the software and the charging hardware. Tesla will lose absolute control once other automakers join its network.
  • Tesla has 19,700 charging ports across the United States at about 1,800 stations, according to the Energy Department, while there are 10,500 C.C.S. ports at 5,300 stations. Only 12,000 Tesla chargers will be open to Ford, G.M. and Rivian vehicles.
  • Tesla’s proprietary charging system, which it recently began calling the North American Charging Standard, is not overseen by an independent organization as other technical standards are. The company has said it intends to hand off control to such a body, though some competitors are skeptical of how much control Tesla will surrender.
  • it’s not clear who will ensure that the charging equipment is safe and works as well with Tesla rivals as it does with Tesla itself, and referee any disputes between the company and other automakers.
  • Competitors are betting that government regulators would step in if Tesla tried to create a charging monopoly. Some are glad that someone is taking the lead to remove a major impediment to sales of electric vehicles.
criscimagnael

Why China Is Miles Ahead in a Pacific Race for Influence - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ina-united-states-pacific.html

shared by criscimagnael on 01 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • Eight years after Xi Jinping visited Fiji, offering Pacific Island nations a ride on “China’s express train of development,” Beijing is fully entrenched, its power irrepressible if not always embraced. And that has left the United States playing catch-up in a vital strategic arena.
  • All over the Pacific, Beijing’s plans have become more ambitious, more visible — and more divisive. China is no longer just probing for opportunities in the island chains that played a critical role in Japan’s strategic planning before World War II
  • hina is seeking to bind the vast region together in agreements for greater access to its land, seas and digital infrastructure, while promising development, scholarships and training in return.
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  • From Papua New Guinea to Palau, the countries of the region have jurisdiction over an area of ocean three times as large as the continental United States, stretching from just south of Hawaii to exclusive economic zones butting up against Australia, Japan and the Philippines.
  • Chinese fishing fleets already dominate the seas between the area’s roughly 30,000 islands, seizing huge hauls of tuna while occasionally sharing intelligence on the movements of the U.S. Navy. If China can add ports, airports and outposts for satellite communications — all of which are edging closer to reality in some Pacific Island nations — it could help in intercepting communications, blocking shipping lanes and engaging in space combat.
  • Mr. Wang signed several new agreements, including a security deal that gives China the power to send security forces to quell unrest or protect Chinese investments, and possibly to build a port for commercial and military use.
  • Chinese officials deny that’s the plan. But the deal — along with others in the Solomons and Kiribati whose details have not been disclosed — has been made possible because of something else that’s visible and much-discussed in the Pacific: a longstanding lack of American urgency, innovation and resources.
  • American officials point out that the United States does have big military bases in Guam, along with close ties to countries like the Marshall Islands. And in February, Antony J. Blinken became the first secretary of state in 36 years to visit Fiji, where he announced that the United States would reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands and engage more on issues like illegal fishing and climate change.
  • The Yanks, it is often said, used to be more productive. Many of the airports and hospitals still in use across the Pacific were built by the United States and its allies during World War II.
  • “The United States doesn’t have a significant presence in the Pacific at all,” said Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University in New Zealand. “I’m always shocked that in Washington they think they have a significant presence when they just don’t.”
  • “There’s a lot of talk,” said Sandra Tarte, the head of the government and international affairs department at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. “And not much real substance.”
  • Mr. Blinken said last week that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” He promised that the United States would “shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”
  • The start-up embassy in the Solomons also looks less impressive on closer inspection. Replacing an embassy that closed in the 1990s during America’s post-Cold War withdrawal, the outpost will begin in leased office space with two U.S. staff members and five local hires.
  • The American Embassy, by contrast, sits on a hillside far from downtown Suva in a heavily fortified compound. It covers five nations (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu), doesn’t have a full-time ambassador — President Biden nominated someone only last week — and is known for being understaffed.
  • Joseph Veramu, a former U.N. consultant who runs Integrity Fiji, which focuses on values like transparency, said in an interview in Suva that he had invited U.S. embassy officials to events five or six times in recent years. Only once did someone come — without saying much, and refusing to allow photos.
  • But what they do want, and what China seems better at providing right now, is consistent engagement and capacity building.
  • While the United States has shown off Coast Guard vessels it is using to police illegal fishing, China is planning to build maritime transportation hubs and high-tech law enforcement centers where Chinese officers can provide expertise and equipment.
  • “China has always maintained that big and small countries are all equals,” Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader, said in a written message to Pacific foreign ministers on Monday. “No matter how international circumstances fluctuate, China will always be a good friend.”
  • Clearly, China intends to keep emphasizing that friendship means building stuff and offering promises of prosperity, while expecting news censorship, resource access and security opportunities in exchange.
  • The pressing question in this part of the world is: What does friendship mean to America?
James Flanagan

Russia Deploys Admiral Kuznetsov Carrier - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/miral-kuznetsov-carrier-2013-6

syria middle east united states

shared by James Flanagan on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The Kremlin has upped the geopolitical ante by pledging to send a heavy aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, as reported by Russian news agency Interfax
  • The warship holds several sea-based fighters and helicopters, missiles, anti-submarine systems and a crew of 2,000 people.
  • The carrier is the only one in Russia's fleet, so its deployment is an unmistakable signal of Moscow's seriousness about protecting their regional interests, some of which are directly tied to the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syria port of Tartus.
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  • In November Russia sent six warships from its Black Sea Fleet to the Mediterranean in response to the Israel-Gaza conflict. That month the U.S. also began making moves to increase the American military presence in the east Mediterranean.
  • In May a detachment from Russia’s Pacific Fleet entered the Mediterranean waters for the first time since the Cold War.
katieb0305

NATO bolsters presence in Eastern Europe as Russia tension rises - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

nato europe russia

shared by katieb0305 on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The UK has deployed hundreds of troops to Eastern Europe as NATO continues to bolster its presence in the face of perceived Russian provocation.
  • "Russia has tripled defense spending," Stoltenberg told reporters.
  • "Russia has invested heavily in a modern military equipment. They are conducting a large-scale, no-notice exercises close to NATO borders, but perhaps most importantly Russia has been willing to use military force against neighbors.
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  • said Russia withdrew the request after the ministry had asked the Russian Embassy in Madrid to clarify reports the flotilla might participate in military operations against the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.
  • On Wednesday, Russia withdrew a request for a flotilla of warships, including its flagship aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov, to refuel in the Spanish port of Ceuta as the ships head toward Syria.
  • The UK has deployed hundreds of troops to Eastern Europe as NATO continues to bolster its presence in the face of perceived Russian provocation.
  • "Russia has tripled defense spending," Stoltenberg told reporters.
  • NATO defense ministers met Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss the situation as well as the fight against ISIS.
  • Poland's paramilitary defense has grown rapidly, with more than 35,000 people signing up and undergoing military training. They range from high school students to lawyers and doctors.
  • n July, the UK said it would deliver one of four battalions to NATO's enhanced forward presence in the Baltic states and Poland.
  • Belgium, Croatia, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway will join a German-led battalion in Lithuania, while Denmark and France will contribute to the UK-led battalion in Estonia.
  • In February, the US Department of Defense announced it was spending $3.4 billion for the European Reassurance Initiative to deter Russian aggression against NATO allies.
  • A limited rotational force of 330 Marines are set to be located at the Vaernes military base in Norway, according to a statement from the Norwegian Defense Ministry.
alexdeltufo

Pakistani Rights Activist Is Shot and Killed in Karachi - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hot-and-killed-in-karachi.html

shared by alexdeltufo on 08 May 16 - No Cached
  • The drive-by shooting took place late Saturday night in the southern port city of Karachi. Four me
  • This was the third high-profile killing of a rights activist in Karachi in recent years and points to the immense dangers faced by activists in a country troubled by religious extremism a
  • Mr. Zaki, 40, a blogger, rose to prominence after he campaigned with other activists against Maulana Abdul Aziz,
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  • In a post on Sunday on Let Us Build Pakistan, a blog where Mr. Zaki was an editor, Ali Abbas Taj, the editor in chief, said that Mr. Zaki was killed because of his unwavering campaign against the Taliban and their Sunni extremist allies.
  • Human rights groups have strongly condemned the killing.
  • Mr. Butt said militant groups have started singling out activists who have been campaigning on social media against social injustice and religious intolerance.
ethanmoser

Indonesia, Japan affirm deeper ties during Abe's Asian tour | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...ies-during-abe-asian-tour.html

japan indonesia economics china

shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Indonesia, Japan affirm deeper ties during Abe's Asian tour
  • Japan and Indonesia have affirmed a deepening of economic and political ties during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is using a four-nation tour of Asia to underscore his government's role in countering China's assertiveness in the South China Sea.
  • they established in 2015 to increase maritime cooperation.
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  • Jokowi said there were agreements on development of a deep sea port and the Masela gas field in Indonesia, and for preliminary discussions of a Jakarta-Surabaya rail line.
abbykleman

'All of my skin is full of scars': A migrant worker's journey to the U.S. border - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-workers-barred-from-us-border

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  • abbykleman on 14 Dec 16
     
    "Oh wow, it's the end of the world," Aristide said. He tried to think through being deported, something he now felt was nearly certain. Would the United States take him back to Haiti on a plane? How would he feel as Port-au-Prince came into view? He had not been in the country since 2012.
ecfruchtman

Trump business terminates three overseas projects - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

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  • ecfruchtman on 15 Dec 16
     
    Alan Garten said the Trump Organization terminated its licensing deal for a Trump Hotel in Baku Azerbaijan. In addition, the company has terminated its business licensing deals in Rio de Janeiro for both a hotel project and a five-building office complex that was part of the Marvelous Port Redevelopment plan.
marleymorton

China expands global economic reach as U.S. turns inward - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...98466530

politics us

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  • marleymorton on 02 Mar 17
     
    This year, a 300-mile railway will begin slicing through Kenya, cutting travel time between the capital, Nairobi, and one of East Africa's largest ports, Mombasa, from 12 to four hours and breeding hopes of an economic and tourism revival in the region.
Javier E

The Decline and Fall of Greece - NYTimes.com - 0 views

rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/...the-decline-and-fall-of-greece

Greece Europe economic trends international order

shared by Javier E on 16 Feb 12 - Cached
  • While the debate continues over how much to give Greece and when to give it, Russell Shorto, a contributing writer for the magazine, takes you on a journey to discover how Greeks live now. In the process, he ends up unveiling much about how Greece is likely to live tomorrow, and the place it — and Europe? — may occupy in an international order that is rapidly shifting:
  • By many indicators, Greece is devolving into something unprecedented in modern Western experience. A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed.
  • The situation at the macro level is, if anything, even more transformational. The Chinese have largely taken over Piraeus, Greece’s main port, with an eye to make it a conduit for shipping goods into Europe. Qatar is looking to invest $5 billion in various projects in Greece, including tourism infrastructure. Other, relatively flush Europeans are trying to make “Greece the Florida of Europe,” Theodore Pelagidis, a Greek economist at the University of Piraeus, told me, referring in particular to plans to turn islands into expensive retirement homes for wealthy people from other parts of the continent. Whether or not the country pays its debts, he went on, other nations and foreign companies “now understand the Greek government is powerless, so in the future they will take over viable assets and run parts of the country by themselves.”
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  • Mr. Pelagidis envisions a two-tiered Greek society: the middle class, 30 to 50 percent of the population, who rebound from the current crisis, and the rest: They “will be living on 300 or 400 euros ($400 to $500) a month. This part of Greek society won’t be living a Western European lifestyle. It will be more like Bulgaria.”
Javier E

Crimea, the Tinderbox - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...crimea-the-tinderbox.html

US russia ukraine crimea history politics crisis foreign policy

shared by Javier E on 03 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The Russian military intervention in Ukraine’s autonomous republic of Crimea has brought relations between the United States and Russia to their lowest level in a quarter century. It has transgressed the sovereignty of one of the most populous countries in Europe, violated the terms of a diplomatic agreement to respect Ukraine’s borders, and placed Russia on a war footing with one of the few states in the post-Soviet world that has managed to hold multiple free elections. It is a military operation that is unsanctioned by any international body, wholly open-ended, and blessed only by the Russian Parliament.
  • The Cathedral of St. Vladimir rests on a small hill on Crimea’s southwestern coast. The church is a modern creation, gilded and graceless, but it stands on an auspicious site: the place where, it is thought, Vladimir adopted Christianity in 988 as the state religion of his principality, Rus.
  • To Russians, Vladimir is the first national saint and the truest progenitor of the modern Russian state. To Ukrainians, he is Volodymyr the Great, founder of the Slavic civilization that would eventually flourish farther north, in medieval Kiev.
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  • Just around the headland is Sevastopol, the protected port and naval base where Tolstoy once served on the ramparts. During the Second World War, it was besieged and leveled by German bombers despite a heroic stand by the Soviet Army and partisans
  • An hour’s car ride away is Yalta, where czars vacationed and Chekhov wrote “The Cherry Orchard.”
  • In 1783, when Catherine the Great wrested control from the Tatar khan and the Ottoman Turks, hundreds of thousands of Tatars fled the advancing Russian armies. A century and a half later, in 1944, those who remained behind were scooped up by Stalin and deported to Central Asia
  • Has Crimea also now become a Sudetenland? Or is it just a Grenada? Some Western commentators have already suggested the former, comparing President Vladimir V. Putin’s dispatch of Russian forces to Hitler’s 1938 annexation of German-populated parts of Czechoslovakia.
  • The United States typically interprets its own actions through the lens of its principles. It reads the principles of other countries from their behavior. In most instances that leads to precisely the hypocrisies that Russia, China and other countries find so easy to condemn.
  • This interpretive frame may be hard to understand, but some things are not wrong just because Russians happen to believe them. Russian news crews were covering a real story in Ukraine: the chaotic dismantling of a legally sanctioned government, the quick breakdown of an agreed framework for new elections, and the creeping transformation of political disputes into ethnic ones.
  • he Crimean affair is a grand experiment in Mr. Putin’s strategy of equivalence: countering every criticism of his government’s behavior with a page from the West’s own playbook. If his government has a guiding ideology, it is not the concept of restoring the old Soviet Union. It is rather his commitment to exposing what Russian politicians routinely call the “double standards” of American and European foreign policy and revealing the hidden workings of raison d’état — the hardnosed and pragmatic calculation of interests that average citizens from Moscow to Beijing to New Delhi actually believe drives the policies of all great powers.
  • In a poll carried out in late February by the independent, Moscow-based Levada Center, 43 percent of Russians called the overthrow of Mr. Yanukovych a violent coup and 23 percent labeled the developing situation a civil war. A plurality of respondents saw the entire affair as an orchestrated attempt by the West to draw Ukraine into its geopolitical orbit.
  • First, the European Union, the United States, and Russia must all agree that the principal goal is to prevent greater violence
  • European and American officials must be clear on the reasons why the international community should band together to condemn Russian actions. It is not because of the violation of national sovereignty — a concept imperfectly defended by Americans and Europeans in recent years — but because Mr. Putin’s reserving the right to protect the “Russian-speaking population” of Ukraine is an affront to the basis of international order
  • It is Mr. Putin who has made ethnic nationalism a defining element of foreign policy.
  • The future of Ukraine is now no longer about Kiev’s Independence Square, democracy in Ukraine or European integration. It is about how to preserve a vision of Europe — and, indeed, of the world — where countries give up the idea that people who speak a language we understand are the only ones worth protecting.
grayton downing

U.N. Appeals for $301 Million for Typhoon Response in the Philippines - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-typhoon-haiyan-response.html

appeals typhoon response philippines crisis

shared by grayton downing on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The United Nations appealed Tuesday for $301 million in emergency assistance to help millions of people in the Philippines affected by the typhoon that struck on Friday.
  • Hampered by impassable roads, obliterated seaports and severely damaged airstrips, international aid groups mobilized to rush food, water and sanitation equipment to the region.
  • United Nations officials in Geneva said more than 11 million people were in need of assistance and around 670,000 people had been displaced.
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  • “There are still many places that are not accessible yet,”
  • The $301 million appeal is to meet projected needs over six months, but disaster relief experts estimate the damage to the Philippine economy at between $12 billion and $15 billion, equivalent to about 5 percent of its gross domestic product.
  • “This is the worst typhoon in the modern history of the Philippines,” said German Velasquez at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva.
  • Ms. Amos, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and the emergency relief coordinator, released $25 million from a special fund to help pay for immediate assistance and was beginning what aides called a flash fund-raising drive. At least $35 million in additional aid was pledged by other governments on Monday.
  • The George Washington, which carries 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft, was ordered to depart from a port visit in Hong Kong, and the crew was recalled from shore leave immediately. Mr. Hagel also reiterated the American intent to help the Philippine government determine “what, if any, additional assets may be required.”
Javier E

Pollen Study Points to Culprit in Bronze Era Mystery - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...rit-in-bronze-era-mystery.html

archaology Bronze Age collapse history

shared by Javier E on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • To the north lay the mighty Hittite empire; to the south, Egypt was thriving under the reign of the great Pharaoh Ramses II. Cyprus was a copper emporium. Greece basked in the opulence of its elite Mycenaean culture, and Ugarit was a bustling port city on the Syrian coast. In the land of Canaan, city states like Hazor and Megiddo flourished under Egyptian hegemony. Vibrant trade along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean connected it all.
  • Experts have long pondered the cause of the crisis that led to the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilization, and now believe that by studying grains of fossilized pollen they have uncovered the cause.
  • Theories have included patterns of warfare, plagues and earthquakes.
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  • unusually high-resolution analysis of pollen grains taken from sediment beneath the Sea of Galilee and the western shore of the Dead Sea, backed up by a robust chronology of radiocarbon dating, have pinpointed the period of crisis to the years 1250 to 1100 B.C.
  • this pollen count was done at intervals of 40 years — the highest resolution yet in this region,
  • the uniqueness of the study also lay in the combination of precise science and archaeological and historical analysis, offering the fullest picture yet of the collapse of civilization in this area at the end of the Bronze Age. “Egypt is gone. Forever,” said Professor Finkelstein. “It never got back to that level of prosperity again.”
  • the team extracted about 60 feet of cores of gray muddy sediment from the center of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, passing through 145 feet of water and drilling 65 feet into the lake bed, covering the last 9,000 years. At Wadi Zeelim in the southern Judean Desert, on the western margins of the Dead Sea, the team manually extracted eight cores of sediment, each about 20 inches long.
  • Pollen grains are one of the most durable organic materials in nature, she said, best preserved in lakes and deserts and lasting thousands of years. Each plant produces its own distinct pollen form, like a fingerprint. Extracting and analyzing the pollen grains from each stratum allows researchers to identify the vegetation that grew in the area and to reconstruct climate changes.
  • The results showed a sharp decrease in the Late Bronze Age of Mediterranean trees like oaks, pines and carobs, and in the local cultivation of olive trees, which the experts interpret as the consequence of repeated periods of drought.
  • The droughts were likely exacerbated by cold spells, the study said, causing famine and the movement of marauders from north to south. After the devastation came a wet period of recovery and resettlement, according to the experts — a new order that gave rise to the kingdoms of biblical times.
Javier E

Report Finds a Los Angeles in Decline - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-a-los-angeles-in-decline.html

los ángeles urban decline cities US urbanism

shared by Javier E on 10 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • the most worrisome blow by far is a scathing verdict on Los Angeles’s civic health that was delivered in a one-two punch — the second on Wednesday — by a committee of lawyers, developers, labor leaders and former elected officials who make up something of the Old Guard here. The Los Angeles 2020 Commission presented a catalog of failings that it said were a unique burden to the city: widespread poverty and job stagnation, huge municipal pension obligations, a struggling port and tourism industry and paralyzing traffic that would not be eased even with a continuing multibillion-dollar mass transit initiative.
  • Their conclusions amounted to an indictment of a city and its culture, a place that the commission said was brimming with talent and resources but was nonetheless falling behind other major cities across the globe.
  • “Year by year, our city — which once was a beacon of innovation and opportunity to the world — is becoming less livable,”
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