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Contents contributed and discussions participated by cjlee29

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cjlee29

Eurozone Economy Hangs On in a Modest but Uncertain Recovery - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eurozone-economy-q1.html

shared by cjlee29 on 29 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • the economic crisis that has long ravaged Europe is finally over.
  • overall economy of the 19 countries that use the euro advanced by 0.6 percent over the first three months of the year
  • gross domestic product for the period — the total value of goods and services produced — to 2.48 trillion euros, or about $2.81 trillion
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Major banks across the Continent remain reluctant to lend, starving even healthy businesses of capital needed to expand and hire.
  • “It’s almost a lost decade
  • The strongest economies in the eurozone — major exporters like Germany and the Netherlands — may have recaptured healthy momentum.
  • In Italy, disposable income for the average household — essentially, take-home pay — shrank 4 percent from 2008 to 2014
  • there are few signs that things will improve soon.
  • peak of €2.47 trillion reached in the early months of 2008
  • Many economists now discuss Europe’s prospects with the grim vernacular long used to describe Japan.
  • “Europe is just sort of hanging on,”
  • In Britain, voters face a June 23 ballot to decide whether their country ought to remain part of the European Union.
  • The United States engineered a faster and more vigorous recovery from the Great Recession via a burst of government spending and tax cuts, combined with aggressive central bank action.
  • Germany, which plays the dominant role in setting eurozone economic policy, has been unwilling to allow national governments to run larger deficits to stimulate their economies
  • the ability of European businesses to continue to rack up export growth faces challenges
  • There isn’t much help for the eurozone in the broader global economy
  • The potential growth rate in Europe is probably 1 percent,”
cjlee29

Protesters take to streets after Trump rally in California - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

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

shared by cjlee29 on 29 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Scores of protesters took to the streets Thursday night outside a Donald Trump campaign event
  • At least one police car was damaged and several scuffles broke out amid the hectic scene.
  • About 20 people were arrested
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • could not provide an official estimate on the number of protesters
  • Several scuffles broke out between Trump supporters who were leaving the rally and people in the streets who accused them of being racists
  • As a crowd formed around the car, police officers in tactical and riot gear moved into action, forming a perimeter around the crowd
  • While some demonstrators shouted insults and slurs at police officers, others focused on delivering a message of protest against the Republican front-runner's rhetoric.
  • Some were seen carrying Mexican flags as they marched in the street.
  • "I'm against Trump's nativist and nationalistic agenda
  • tired of these messages of hate
cjlee29

Divided Aleppo Plunges Back Into War as Hospital Is Destroyed - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...aleppo-syria-strikes.html

shared by cjlee29 on 28 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • Syria’s divided city of Aleppo plunged back into the kind of all-out war not seen in months on Thursday
  • At least 27 people, including three children and six staff members,
  • The escalation also threatened to derail renewed attempts at peace talks in Geneva by the United Nations
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • disrupt or stop humanitarian aid
  • There was no indication that the Syrian government forces of President Bashar al-Assad and their Russian allies were any closer to retaking the entire city.
  • become apparent in recent days that the truce was unraveling in the surrounding area
  • The International Committee of the Red Cross called on all parties to stop indiscriminate attacks
  • Mr. Anees said the rebels appeared to have started using more powerful munitions since the cease-fire crumbled in the city over a week ago.
  • The hospital was the main referral center for pediatrics, with eight doctors, 28 nurses, an emergency room, intensive care unit and operating room, all now destroyed.
  • In another area, a small boy was captured on video crying over the body of his brother, calling him “the love of my father.
cjlee29

U.S. in a Bind as Saudi Actions Test a Durable Alliance - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...lain-alliance-with-saudis.html

shared by cjlee29 on 05 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • It could not bring itself, at least in public, to condemn the execution of a dissident cleric who challenged the royal family, for fear of undermining the fragile Saudi leadership that it desperately needs in fighting the Islamic State and ending the conflict in Syria.
  • usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports
  • cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • For years it was oil that provided the glue for a relationship between two nations that share few common value
  • no longer binds the nations as it once did
  • American perception that the Saudis are critical to stability in the region continue to hold together
  • beheading many of them in a style that most Americans associate with the Islamic State
  • In 2011, Saudi leaders berated President Obama and his aides for failing to support President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt during the Arab Spring
  • The nuclear deal with Iran only fueled the Saudi sense that the United States was rethinking the fundamental relationship
  • argued that the administration was naïve to think that Iran would abide by any negotiated accord.
  • Mr. Obama invited the Saudis to join a meeting at Camp David to reassure Arab allies that the United States was not abandoning them
  • seeing it as a huge distraction from the bigger battle against the Islamic State
  • Mr. Obama called to urge the Saudis to join the Syrian peace process talks
  • the Saudis were reluctant partners, telling their Western counterparts that they would go along, but predicting that Mr. Kerry’s effort would collapse because Iran would never agree to any process that led to Mr. Assad’s removal.
  • The kingdom faces a potentially perfect storm of low oil income, open-ended war in Yemen, terrorist threats from multiple directions and an intensifying regional rivalry with its nemesis, Iran,
  • The Saudis were saying, Mr. Clawson wrote, that “if the United States will not stand up to Iran, Riyadh will do so on its own.”
  • The Saudi concern that the Obama administration is about to embrace Iran is almost certainly overblown
  • Since the nuclear agreement, the Iranians have tested ballistic missiles twice
  • And last week, Iranian naval ships fired rockets within 1,500 yards of a United States aircraft carrier group.
cjlee29

The Return of History - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-return-of-history.html

shared by cjlee29 on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • there are two kinds of history: dead and living. “Dead history is something on a shelf or in a museum,” he said. “Living history is part of your consciousness, something in your blood that inspires you.”
  • The Islamic State’s treatment of history is particularly extreme, but a similar return of history is occurring with varying degrees of intensity all across the old world.
  • The jihadists in Syria and Iraq, Mr. McCants told me, are “infatuated” with Harun al-Rashid, the great Abbasid caliph whose court reportedly inspired “One Thousand and One Nights.” “They see him as the pinnacle of success, and the caliphate that he ruled over as the golden age,”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The eighth-century caliph being idolized by the Islamic State practiced a far more lenient rule than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does. Harun was tolerant of Shiites and religious minorities. His court would engage in freewheeling debates over matters of faith. “You could play musical instruments,” Mr. McCants said. “He loved to drink wine, he loved men.”
  • From Confucian China to Buddhist Myanmar to Hindu India, history has become the source of a fierce new conservatism that is being used to curb freedoms of women and stoke hatred of minorities.
  • The past is alive as it never has been before
  • . It seems almost to serve as a kind of armor against an alien and impure present.
  • Islam, with its rich textual history and detailed recordings of the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad, offers the faithful an especially aggressive blueprint for turning the past into a weapon against the present. But the return of history is not specific to Islam.
cjlee29

Kabul blast rocks embassy area; Taliban claims 'suicide attacks' - CNN.com - 0 views

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

shared by cjlee29 on 11 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Taliban have claimed they had begun "suicide attacks" in the same area.
  • Meanwhile, the Taliban -- the Islamist militant group that controlled much of the country before a 2001 U.S.-led invasion -- claimed responsibility for "suicide attacks" in Kabul's Sherpoor area Friday
  • Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said "suicide attacks started on a guesthouse of invaders in the Sherpoor area of Kabul in the evening.
cjlee29

Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane Near Syrian Border - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ria-russia-military-plane.html

shared by cjlee29 on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • feared
  • a long-feared escalation that will further strain relations between the NATO member country and Russia.
  • NATO announced that it would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday in Brussels to discuss the episode
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • rebels possibly wielding TOW antitank missiles and other weapons had shot down a Russian helicopter sent to the scene of the crash to look for survivors.
  • called the incident a “stab in the back” by those who “abet” terrorism and warned it would have “serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.”
  • Mr. Putin did not specify what those consequences might b
  • a large Russian tour operator, Natalie Tours, announced it was suspending sales to Turkey, where Russians account for about 12 percent of all tourists last year.
  • “Russia-Turkey relations will drop below zero,”
  • The two countries are also significant trade partners.
  • The shoot down occurred as Russia and the West were slowly edging toward some manner of understanding to unite forces to confront the Islamic State in the wake of the bloody terrorist attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian charter flight over Egypt that combined killed 354 people.
  • The warplane incident also underscores the uneasy relations between Turkey and other members of the NATO alliance
  • , who fear being dragged into a larger conflict through an impetuous act by the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
  • Russia’s entry into the heavily trafficked skies around Syria in September had raised immediate concerns about mishaps
  • The Russian military said that the plane’s two pilots had ejected
  • Shadi al-Ouwayni, an activist in rural Latakia Province, where the pilot’s body was recovered, said one pilot was shot as he drifted to the ground in his parachute while the other was captured by a local militia called the 10th Brigade. The pilots landed in different, but rebel controlled, locations, he said.
  • “One of the Russian pilots was shot as he was trying to land,” he said. “The other was injured and captured.”
cjlee29

Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...bal-powers-can-smash-isis.html

shared by cjlee29 on 18 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • President Obama called for President Bashar al-Assad to go.
  • no American advisers on the ground to pinpoint airstrikes and has to rely on Iraqis for targeting information in their country
  • largely ineffective on both counts. Now, they say, it is time for the United States to abandon the dual focus and take a stand.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • One option is for the United States to align with Russia, Iran and the Syrian government, establishing an alliance to carry out an intensified war against the group.
  • The other option is for the United States to prioritize the removal of Mr. Assad, whose military has been responsible for far more carnage in Syria than the Islamic State. As long as Mr. Assad is in power, it will be difficult to get many Sunni rebels to help in the fight against the group.
  • “Assad is not a sideshow,” he said. “He is at the center of this massive dilemma.”
  • If the United States went this route, it would immediately have the support of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but it would require a great deal of diplomatic heavy-lifting to persuade Mr. Assad’s two most important backers — the Russians and the Iranians — to agree to his removal.
  • When the Obama administration began carrying out a bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria last year, it did so with caution to minimize civilian casualties. That meant, for example, it did not go after known targets in Raqqa, Syria — the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital — where more than one million people live.
  • The Russians, however, insist that the focus should be on defeating the Islamic State, and that Mr. Assad is an ally in that battle.
  • . Some Russian and Israeli experts argue that an effective military approach would have to meet brutality with brutality
  • “stop talking and start doing.”
  • For the long term, eradicating the Islamic State and other violent jihadi groups will probably require drastic reforms in the nature of governments in the Middle East
  • ISIS thrives on the failures of Middle Eastern governments
  • In Europe and the United States, more attention to integrating Muslim communities, so young men do not turn radical, is also needed, analysts say.
  • “ISIS is tapping into a deep emotional wound amid Arabs and Muslims
  • This, he said, is the “missing part” to a long-term strategy to defeat radical Islam
cjlee29

In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of Blame - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...but-many-strands-of-blame.html

shared by cjlee29 on 18 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
  • Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
  • Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • It has overcome its former partner and eventual rival, Al Qaeda, first in battle, then as the world’s pre-eminent jihadist group in reach and recruitment.
  • “declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”
  • Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
  • In an echo of the Cold War, Russia has committed its own planes and missiles, a challenge to the West’s perceived indecision and inaction.
  • struggles in the Middle East, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, between Shiite and Sunni, are also playing out.
  • Each was shaped by the larger forces of the Islamic world, in particular religious zeal, Al Qaeda and America’s war with Iraq. Each rejected the secular culture of the West, which many say was the target of the attacks in Paris.
  • An American airstrike finally killed Mr. Zarqawi in June 2006. Four months later, his successors declared the founding of the Islamic State of Iraq.
  • in March 2008 an American lieutenant colonel, recalls vividly finding the Islamic State’s black, gold-fringed banner some 50 miles north of Baghdad.
  • They were not the only ones — Mr. Obama likened the group to the “J.V. team.”
  • The climax of the Islamic State’s rise came in June 2014, when it routed the Iraqi military police and captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, erasing the century-old border between Iraq and Syria established after World War I.
  • “They rushed to announce the caliphate and appoint a leader,” he said. “This is a duty incumbent on Muslims, which had been absent for centuries and lost from the face of the earth.”
  • The question for the Islamic State, after years of expansion and success on its terms, even evidence of using mustard agent, is whether Paris proved one move too far — a brutality the world will not tolerate.
  • : Aerial attacks have in fact damaged its moneymaking oil infrastructure.
cjlee29

Putin Suspends Russian Flights to Egypt Amid Security Fears - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...egypt.html

shared by cjlee29 on 06 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians
  • Mr. Putin also ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the Russian tourists already in Egypt, including the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, from which the doomed Russian jet departed, could be brought home safely.
  • until now played down the possibility of terrorism
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Nearly all of the victims on the plane were Russian citizens.
  • On Friday, a growing number of airlines banned passengers from checking their bags on Sharm el Sheikh flights, including the British carriers easyJet
  • EasyJet said that eight scheduled flights from Sharm el Sheikh — seven bound for London, and one for Milan — would not be departin
cjlee29

North Korea Said to Be Preparing for Nuclear Test - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...reparing-for-nuclear-test.html

shared by cjlee29 on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • North Korea has insisted that the United States first agree to negotiate a peace treaty with the North to replace the 1953 Korean War armistice, which left the Korean Peninsula technically in a state of war.
cjlee29

U.S. Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...syria-russia-airstrikes.html

shared by cjlee29 on 13 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • With the enhanced insurgent firepower and with Russia steadily raising the number of airstrikes against the government’s opponents, the Syrian conflict is edging closer to an all-out proxy war between the United States and Russia.
  • The increased levels of support have raised morale on both sides of the conflict,
  • Spirits are rising on the government side as well.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Instead of a dim light at the end of a tunnel, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss military matters, the alliance is seeking something closer to victory.
  • as Russian airstrikes against Syrian insurgents have picked up, so have insurgent attacks
cjlee29

Russian Cruise Missiles Help Syrians Go on the Offensive - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...russia-syria-conflict.html

shared by cjlee29 on 08 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russia has focused its earliest operations on the insurgent coalition known as the Army of Conquest, or Jaish al-Fatah, rather than on the Islamic State, according to the official from the pro-government alliance
  • Wednesday was the first time since the spring that the government’s forces had moved “from defense to offense,” the official said.
  • While Russian officials said the missiles launched from the Caspian Sea had targeted the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, Western officials said the great majority of the attacks had been directed against rebel groups fighting Mr. Assad. There were no reports of large explosions in Islamic State-held areas to the east, making it less likely that the cruise missiles had hit the group’s strongholds.
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