Monday, May 18, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Brian Stelter Calls Out 'Vicious' Cycle of Trump's Anti-Media Attacks
The Observer View on Trump's Continued Goading of China
Donald Trump’s histrionic threat last week to “cut off the whole relationship” with China produced a scornful response from Beijing. “Such lunacy is a clear byproduct of the anxiety the US has suffered since China began its global ascent,” the Global Times, the Chinese government’s mouthpiece, commented. The “Washington elites” were in a panic over the pandemic, it claimed.
While the tone was unfortunate, neither assertion wholly lacked truth. The US and its western allies do have concerns – some legitimate, some exaggerated – about China’s rise to superpower status. And the mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis by Trump, who appears increasingly unbalanced, makes China’s president, Xi Jinping, look undeservedly competent by comparison.
Trump’s threat, as foolish as it is impractical, typified the irrational behaviour of the US leader. His target was no surprise. Trump and his “America first” acolytes have long contended that China is ripping off America by indulging in unfair trade practices, stealing its commercial secrets and destroying manufacturing jobs.
In current jargon, they want to “decouple”, and this process – the Chinese call it “suppression” – is now accelerating. Higher tariffs on Chinese imports, and controls on hi-tech US exports and Chinese inward investment, were extended last week to include new measures targeting the telecoms giant, Huawei. A compromise trade deal agreed earlier this year is in jeopardy. » | Observer editorial | Sunday, May 17, 2020
Labels:
China,
Donald Trump
Saturday, May 16, 2020
'It Eats Him Alive Inside': Trump's Latest Attack Shows Endless Obsession with Obama
President Barack Obama and President-elect Donald Trump once sat together in the Oval Office. “I was immediately struck by Trump’s body language,” wrote journalist Jon Karl in his memoir Front Row at The Trump Show. “I was seeing a side of him I had never seen. He seemed, believe it or not, humbled.”
It was November 2016 and, just for once, Trump was not in charge of the room, Karl recalls. Obama was still president, directing the action and setting the tone. His successor “seemed a little dazed” and “a little freaked out”. What the two men discussed in their meeting that day, only they know.
But what became clear in the next three and a half years is that Obama remains something of an obsession for Trump; the subject of a political and personal inferiority complex.
Observers point to a mix of anti-intellectualism, racism, vengeance and primitive envy over everything from Obama’s Nobel peace prize to the scale of his inauguration crowd and social media following.
Ben Rhodes, a former Obama national security aide, tweeted this week: “Trump’s fact-free fixation on Obama dating back to birtherism is so absurd and stupid that it would be comic if it wasn’t so tragic.” » | David Smith in Washington | Saturday, May 16, 2020
Saudi Arabia’s Big Dreams and Easy Living Hit a Wall
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia knows about head-spinning change.
“One day there was nothing, the next day there was everything,” a business student, Noura Khalid, 23, said in Riyadh in December, describing how it felt to watch her once-staid country welcome international rap stars and wrestling champions, cars steered by women. movie theaters, gender-mixed cafes and other previously unimaginable innovations in just the last few years. “There’s no break! It’s happening so quickly.”
Now the kingdom faces yet more whiplash.
Not only is the coronavirus redefining daily life for Saudis, but plummeting oil prices are robbing the kingdom of the enormous wealth that was underwriting the new Saudi Arabia. The twin blows threaten to sink Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s sweeping social and economic agenda, and have already curtailed the vast welfare state that has given most Saudis a comfortably subsidized life. » | Vivian Yee | Saturday, May 16, 2020
Labels:
MbS,
Saudi Arabia
Friday, May 15, 2020
Covid-19 : le confinement royal et estival d'Elizabeth II
Voilà la reine d'Angleterre bloquée à Windsor jusqu'à nouvel ordre. Plusieurs médias britanniques, dont le Times, annoncent que la souveraine, âgée de 94 ans, devrait y rester pendant plusieurs mois, au moins jusqu'en septembre prochain. Pas question de rejoindre le palais de Buckingham, qui restera fermé au public pendant tout l'été et où plusieurs événements officiels sont d'ores et déjà annulés, comme les garden-parties ou la fameuse parade Trooping the Colour, célébrée habituellement en juin. Elizabeth II devrait également manquer cet été ses traditionnelles vacances en Écosse, dans son château de Balmoral qu'elle affectionne tant. » | Par Marc Fourny | vendredi 15 mai 2020
Trump Puts US in Worst Disaster in Modern History, Says Professor | Morning Joe | MSNBC
Labels:
Coronavirus,
Donald Trump,
Morning Joe,
MSNBC
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Smoke Fags, Save Lives
There’s not much to laugh about these days, but the news that smokers might be protected from Covid-19 is certainly one of them. With study after study showing that smokers are under-represented in coronavirus wards, the renowned French neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeux, is working on a randomised control trial to test the effect of nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients.
This is far from being a crackpot theory. Changeux has explained his hypothesis at length here. In simple terms, he says that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors play a key role in the development of the disease and that nicotine can put a brake on it. If he is right – and the banter heuristic says he is – it would not only save thousands of lives but would also be one in the eye for the ‘public health’ groups who have been claiming that smoking and vaping are risk factors for Covid-19. » | Christopher Snowden | Thursday, April 23, 2020
Noam Chomsky: Trump Is Culpable in Deaths of Americans
In an interview with the Guardian's economic correspondent, Richard Partington, the radical intellectual argued the US president was stabbing average Americans in the back while pretending to be the country’s saviour during the worst health crisis in at least a century
'You Should Ask China': Trump Terminates Press Conference after Clash with Reporters
Has there ever been a ruder, more disagreeable president than Trump? – Mark
Labels:
Donald Trump
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Why Is the US Removing Military Assets from Saudi Arabia? | Inside Story
American weapons and fighter jets were sent to the Kingdom last year after Saudi-Aramco oil facilities were attacked. They were also intended as a deterrent, as tensions rose between Tehran and Washington.
But the reduction in the U.S. military presence is believed by some to be based on assessments Iran no longer poses an immediate threat to U.S. strategic interests. So, what's exactly changed? And is oil politics at play?
Presenter: Peter Dobbie | Guests: Joel Rubin, President of the Washington Strategy Group; Mahjoob Zweiri, Director of Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University; Mohammad Marandi, Head of the American Studies Department at Tehran University
Labels:
Inside Story,
Saudi Arabia,
US military,
USA
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Coronavirus: Death Awaits Many Americans
Labels:
Coronavirus,
Donald Trump,
USA
Hundreds Queue for Food Parcels in Wealthy Geneva
More than 1,000 people queued on Saturday to get free food parcels in Geneva, underscoring the impact of the coronavirus epidemic on the working poor and undocumented immigrants even in wealthy Switzerland.
The line of people stretched for more than 1km outside an ice rink where volunteers were handing out about 1,500 parcels to people who started queuing as early as 5am.
“At the end of the month, my pockets are empty. We have to pay the bills, the insurance, everything,” said Ingrid Berala, a Geneva resident from Nicaragua who works part-time. “This is great, because there is food for a week, a week of relief … I don’t know for next week.” » | Reuters in Geneva | Saturday, May 9, 2020
Coronavirus: Yuval Noah Harari, Philosopher and Historian, on the Legacy of Covid-19 – BBC HARDtalk
Friday, May 08, 2020
How V-E Day Echoed Around the World
The term first appeared in The New York Times on Sept. 10, 1944, just over three months after the Allies took the beaches at Normandy and began their march inland. Nine days later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered government agencies to begin making plans for the demobilization of the roughly three million civilians supporting the war effort. “The transition from war to peace should be carried forward rapidly,” Roosevelt said. “This is the time to do the planning, although the war — even in Europe — is not over.”
Over the next six months, the Allied forces squeezed the German army along two fronts back to its prewar borders, and by spring, the end of the war felt close at hand. On May 7, 1945, the news of Germany’s surrender spread quickly around the world. » | Friday, May 8, 2020
Labels:
VE Day
Britain Was Led by Churchill Then — It’s Led by a Churchill Tribute Act Now
Somehow the quiet made it louder. By rights, marking the 75thanniversary of VE Day in the midst of a pandemic that has confined us to our homes – forcing us to keep our distance from one another, denying us the right to gather in crowds – should have muffled this commemoration. A celebration in private would surely feel like no celebration at all. Katherine Jenkins singing to an empty Albert Hall, streets with no street parties and the pubs all shut: how could that add up to anything other than a damp squib?
And yet Friday’s marking of the end of the second world war struck a deeper chord than it might, had it been just another sunny bank holiday. Yes, the usual rituals had to be suspended. There could be no wreath-laying at local memorials: instead, Prince Charles and Camilla laid two small wreaths on their own, in a crowd-less corner of Balmoral, watched by a lone piper. There could be no veterans’ parades, no reunions for those who had served, no grateful handshakes from the politicians: 102-year-old former staff sergeant Ernie Horsfall had to make do with a Zoom call from Boris Johnson. And there were limited opportunities for silliness: the Winston Churchill impersonators were all dressed up with nowhere to go, forced to perform their cigar-and-V-sign shtick online. » | Jonathan Freedland | Friday, May 8, 2020
Labels:
75th anniversary,
VE Day
Tuesday, May 05, 2020
USA: Trump Is an Abject Failure
US economy: Failure! Thirty million plus have registered as unemployed in four or so weeks. The true number is much higher than this.
Coronavirus pandemic: Trump has totally and utterly failed to come to grips with the problem.
Trump’s main concern is Wall Street. What he should be concerning himself with is saving the lives of Americans.
What a nightmare Trump has inflicted upon America and the world. Get rid of President Trump at the very earliest convenience, for the sake of America, for the sake of Americans, and for the sake of the rest of the world. – Mark
Labels:
Donald Trump
Monday, May 04, 2020
Don Lemon to Trump: What Is It about Obama That Gets Under Your Skin?
Analyst: Trump's White House Departure Will Be Ugly If He Loses (2019)
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