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591 - 600 from 772 . In "Opinion / Editorial"
The South China Sea
Possession, they say, is nine-tenths of the law. There is little doubt who possesses a series of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea but Beijing’s occupation, expansion and militarization of these locations remains hotly disputed by other countries. Moreover, an international court in The Hague has ruled that China has no historic claims to these places.Indeed in the summer of 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague completely rejected what is shown on Chinese maps as the “Nine-Dash Line” which covers 85 percent of the South China Sea. A glance at the map demonstrates the weakness of Beijing’s argument. It is arguable that the Paracel Islands, south of the Chinese island of Hainan, have some geographic relation with the Chinese mainland, except that they have long...
December 28, 2017

The South China Sea

Time for a Catalan reality check
Some have criticized the Spanish government for its unbending attitude to the Catalan independence movement but at least its approach to this dangerous and difficult problem has had the virtue of consistency.There were those who that argued that Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy should have sought to negotiate with the Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont after the referendum which the then leader of the regional Catalan government decided to call. But the Spanish cabinet in Madrid stuck to its line that the vote was illegal. It sent in federal police to seize ballot papers and confront pro-independence demonstrators. Confrontations were filmed not just by journalists present but by scores of demonstrators who broadcast on social media footage taken on their mobile phones.From that evidence...
December 27, 2017

Time for a Catalan reality check

China as the Korean peacemaker?
China appears to have finally lost patience with North Korea. It backed the UN Security Council’s new sanctions, which mean that Pyongyang loses up to 90 percent of its petroleum product imports and receives no more than four million barrels of crude annually.The regime of Kim Jong-un has declared the latest sanctions, the third imposed by the UN this year, as an “act of war”. Such rhetoric is surprising in that China, along with the other 14 members of the Security Council, voted for the proposal. Is Kim declaring that Beijing is also guilty of this warlike move? But caution has never been one of Kim’s outstanding characteristics. He will probably be accounting 2017 a very good year for his militarized and buttoned-down country. His scientists have tested increasingly powerful...
December 25, 2017

China as the Korean peacemaker?

India, Pakistan should talk to each other
The initial Indian reaction to Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa’s statement expressing a wish to normalize relations with New Delhi is anything but positive. Speaking at a meeting with parliamentarians on Tuesday, Bajwa said the army was ready to back political leadership’s initiative for normalization of relations with India. This was not an earth-shaking statement. Still it merited serious consideration by New Delhi for two reasons.For one thing, Indo-Pak relations are passing through one of their worst phases and even small gestures that would help reduce the tension should be welcome. A wish to put an end to the present unhappy state of affairs comes from the chief of an institution that supposedly torpedoes all efforts by the civilian leadership to engage with India,...
December 24, 2017

India, Pakistan should talk to each other

Two Palestinian heroes
Genuine heroes are hard to come by these days but two can be found in the occupied Palestinian territories. Ibrahim Abu Thurayya, a double amputee, was shot in the head and killed by Israeli soldiers. Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi is currently being detained by the authorities for slapping an Israeli soldier across the face. Abu Thurayya lost his life and Tamimi her freedom for their protests in the wake of the US announcement that it was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The Palestinian pair have become symbols of the fight against Israeli oppression and degradation, casualties both, simply for being Palestinian.Abu Thurayya posed no threat to the Israeli military. How could he? At 20, he had to have both his legs amputated after being attacked in April 2008 during an Israeli...
December 23, 2017

Two Palestinian heroes

:The results of the vote on Jerusalem are seen on display boards at the General Assembly hall, on Thursday at UN Headquarters in New York. — AFP
Saying so doesn’t make it so
As expected, the UN General Assembly on Thursday backed a resolution effectively calling on the US to withdraw its recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Approved by 128 states, with 35 abstaining and nine others voting against, the resolution mirrored one that the US vetoed in the Security Council earlier in the week. That resolution, which every Security Council member except for the US voted in favor of, and that of the General Assembly, declared that decisions made on the status of Jerusalem were “null and void and must be rescinded”.Actually, from the start, the Jerusalem announcement had no legal justification. The US administration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital does not mean that Jerusalem suddenly became the capital of Israel. The move amounts to...
December 22, 2017

Saying so doesn’t make it so

An unfortunate echo
The British government of Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May is embattled, accused by those in her party who back Brexit, the UK’s departure from the EU, of cutting an overly generous withdrawal price with Brussels. Next May’s Brexit team will get down to talks on what, if anything, of the current EU-wide trade benefits can still be extended to the UK when it leaves the EU in 2019.Brexiteers have been infuriated that the EU has thus far dictated the negotiations. For much of this year, Brussels refused to talk about trade until the final leaving bill had been settled, along with the status of EU citizens who will remain in the UK after 2019 and what sort of a border will be established between the UK’s province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain...
December 21, 2017

An unfortunate echo

Disruptive technologies
Technology has always been disruptive. The huge investment by the canal builders of Europe was destroyed within decades by the arrival of the railways. The advent of the motorcar brought ruin to the horse, to the huge networks of stables, saddlers and farriers that had existed for some 2,000 years since the days of the Roman Empire. The arrival of affordable air travel sent fleets of passenger liners to the scrapyards.In the eyes of many, “disruptive” would be an understatement when applied to social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Everywhere young people are looking down into their mobiles, their fingers flying over onscreen keyboards, as they keep in touch with friends and acquaintances out on the web. It is only older people who consider it offensive to be in...
December 20, 2017

Disruptive technologies

Beijing complains too much
Because of the US liberal establishment’s near-demented dislike for their duly elected president, Donald Trump, Chinese criticism that US has returned to a “Cold War mentality” has been widely welcomed in and around the US political elite’s Georgetown headquarters.Beijing was responding testily to the publication of a new US national security policy that named both Russia and China as America’s geopolitical rivals and listed the potential threats they posed.Whatever the inconsistencies and indeed embarrassments in his beloved social media posts, as he comes to the end of his first year in office, it is apparent that President Trump has not wavered from the no-nonsense, America-first policies that won him the White House.He has driven his tax reforms through Congress, abandoned...
December 19, 2017

Beijing complains too much

Libya mired in madness
WHEN nations are in crisis, good men step forward at their peril. The mayor of Libya’s third city, Misrata was such a man and on Sunday his brave stand against extremism cost him his life.Mohamed Eshtewi had just returned from an official visit the Istanbul with a large municipal delegation. His brother had met him at the airport. In circumstances that have still not been explained, Eshtewi had not been met by his normal bodyguards. One unconfirmed report has it that the mayor himself said they were not necessary because he was being met by his brother.Their vehicle was ambushed at traffic lights on the road into the port city. The brother was shot in the head and Eshtewi was bundled into another car. His bullet-ridden body was found a little later outside a local hospital.As with all...
December 18, 2017

Libya mired in madness

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