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271 - 280 from 772 . In "Opinion / Editorial"
Fixating dangerously on the past
THE marking of the hundredth anniversary of the armistice that ended the brutal slaughter of the World War I has just been completed. The poisonous seed that was planted in Sarajevo 104 year ago with the murder the Hapsburg heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand, rapidly grew up into a conflict which saw some 40 million dead and wounded. And unfortunately, as the Balkans has since discovered to its own bitter cost, that original deadly plant threw off more toxic seeds which have since grown in their turn. Kosovo is a small Balkans country with a population of barely two million. Twenty years ago, with support from NATO warplanes, Kosovo broke away from Serbia. It joined Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia as states that emerged from the wreckage of the former Serb-dominated...
November 16, 2018

Fixating dangerously on the past

The singular idea of a single EU army
A man whose house is in danger of falling down surely does not decide to build a brand new extension to it. The EU currently has a ton of problems including the British departure, the Italians refusing to comply with Brussels’ financial strictures and the Poles and Hungarians openly defying the European Commission. Therefore the decision by French President Emmanuel Macron to revive at this time the idea of a single European army is strange. If EU member states cannot currently speak with one voice, how can anyone expect their generals to march to one tune?It is even more surprising that German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed Macron’s plan for a “real European army” albeit adding it was an ambition that should happen “one day”. As ever, Merkel has her feet on the ground, even...
November 15, 2018

The singular idea of a single EU army

The icon who toppled herself
Like the once-admired statue of a Colossus, the edifice of Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi is cracking and crumbling away. This is a woman who won international acclaim for her stubborn refusal to bow to the demands of a vicious military junta which kept her under house arrest for 15 years. This is a woman who demanded that her followers in her National League for Democracy mounted only peaceful protests against the military regime. This is a woman who came to rival South Africa’s Nelson Mandela as a beacon for democracy and human dignity. And this is the woman who, now in government, has stood by while Buddhist fanatics and her security forces have launched a campaign of genocide against her country’s Muslim minority, a campaign which has seen a million Rohingya driven into...
November 14, 2018

The icon who toppled herself

Fake diplomacy
The presence of fake news, particularly on social media is well understood, even if it is not always so easy to spot. Fake diplomacy is rather different. Four hundred years ago an English diplomat said memorably that an ambassador was an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country. While this cynical analysis is undoubtedly still true at times, it ignores the many envoys who set out in good faith to represent their country abroad. The enduring problem among most Western nations is that their diplomats generally now only serve relatively short terms in any one country. They are moved on at the very point where their understanding of a country and its people is reaching its peak. Had they served more than the normal three or four years they would have been in a stronger...
November 13, 2018

Fake diplomacy

Racial profiling at Paris St-Germain
In France, authorities prohibit the collection of data on an individual’s race, religion or ethnicity. However, that seems not to be the case for the French football club Paris St-Germain which is facing a football inquiry over racial profiling.After the French investigative website Mediapart published leaked documents, the French Football Federation said its ethical council will look into PSG’s recruiting policy after club scouts illegally profiled the ethnic origins of potential young recruits.In a statement released by PSG, the club said that the practice of racial profiling took place between 2013 and 2018 but that its management was not aware of it at the time, knew about it only last month, was done in secret, and has vowed to get to the bottom of what happened.PSG knows that...
November 12, 2018

Racial profiling at Paris St-Germain

Reporters should report, not opine
CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta has been a thorn in the side of the administration ever since Donald Trump was elected president two years ago. He has been one of the most aggressive reporters on the Trump beat, winning him a huge number of fans. Acosta has his critics as well and following last week’s heated press conference, there’s a good reason why he is often criticized.In the contentious interaction in Wednesday’s White House press conference, Acosta challenged Trump on why he had, in his rallies, described the caravan of Honduran migrants seeking asylum in the US as an “invasion”. “The caravan is an invasion,” Trump said. “It is not an invasion,” countered Acosta. “They’re hundreds and hundreds of miles away. That’s not an invasion,” Acosta...
November 11, 2018

Reporters should report, not opine

Macron has six months
The European elections next May will be something of a mid-term contest in France and the signs do not look good for President Emmanuel and his En Marche party. An opinion poll this week for the first time put Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National Party, formerly the National Front, ahead of En Marche. The far-right party’s leadership is reportedly much encouraged by US President Donald Trump’s strong Senate showing in America’s mid-term vote. Analysis shows that Trump once again successfully drummed up poor working class, less educated voters, that once slumbering section of the electorate which has missed out on the boom years, seeing wages kept low while manufacturing relocated abroad. The fabulous wealth of the speculators and investment bankers who suffered little from the...
November 09, 2018

Macron has six months

Donald Trump
Is Trump really wounded?
Unlike any other recent US president, Donald Trump chose to make the mid-term elections personal. He went on the stump across the country in support of Republican candidates. Thus the Democrats are hailing their takeover of the House of Representatives as a defeat for a president that they and most of the American liberal elite loathe almost beyond reason.But Trump has pointed out that he has actually been victorious because for only the sixth time in over a century, the incumbent’s party has actually increased the number of its legislators in the Senate. Moreover, Trump’s campaigning was largely confined to constituencies where Republican senators faced a tough contest or where new nominees were staging a viable challenge to a sitting Democrat. Thus, it seems that where the President...
November 08, 2018

Is Trump really wounded?

Iran’s ayatollahs are their own worst enemy
Many analysts maintain that the renewed US sanctions against Iran will be ineffective. The argument, even among some Trump supporters, is that the bumbling Barack Obama threw away a unique opportunity to force the ayatollahs to abandon their regional aggression as well as their development of nuclear weapons. The 2015 nuclear deal failed utterly to address Iran’s malign influence throughout the Middle East and further afield. It focused only on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and even there it failed. The ayatollahs were obliged to accept only a moratorium on their nuclear program, which they very quickly began to disregard.Obama’s removal of sanctions allowed Iran to relocate billions of dollars frozen in international accounts to countries such as Russia and China which were unlikely to...
November 07, 2018

Iran’s ayatollahs are their own worst enemy

China’s Xi promises unspecified trade reforms
Almost 40 years ago Deng Xiaoping unleashed the Chinese economy under the mantra “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. What that proved to mean was socialist central control while China surged in a few decades to become the world’s top trading nation and its second biggest economy.There is hardly a piece of modern technology that has not been made or at least contains components manufactured in China. To Beijing’s dominance in electronics is being added major engineering, solar power, automotive and aircraft production. The explosion of this nation’s productivity in such a relatively short space of time has been truly remarkable.Even allowing for China’s proven unreliability with official statistics on economic growth and output, the stunning results are there for all to...
November 06, 2018

China’s Xi promises unspecified trade reforms

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