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Opposition Figures Claim ISIS, Nusra Agree To Cooperate In Syria
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It is all too easy for businesspeople and politicians from western economies to criticize developing countries for taking measures to protect domestic economic interests, but critics in glass houses should not throw stones. Most western nations, including the two great bastions of free trade, the U.S. and U.K., adopted extremely protectionist policies during earlier stages of development.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISIS uses Twitter and manipulates it, participates in documentaries, publishes its own magazine, and is making a film whose teaser, worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, is available online. This terrorist empire knows how to generate buzz.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The costs to cities, coastlines and crops, as well as to the health and livelihoods of thousands, are mounting. China and the United States show the necessary determination to build a future based on low emissions through clean energy and livable cities because it makes sense for the environment and economies.
This comes seven weeks after by far the largest global climate demonstrations in history, and amidst ongoing unrest in China about the filthy air in its cities. It isn't, in other words, a reason to slack off a bit in the ongoing fight for a livable climate, a fight our civilizations are in great danger of losing. If we want this to be a start, and not a finish, we've got to build even bigger and more powerful movements that push the successors of these gentlemen to meet what science demands. Today's an achievement for everyone who's held a banner, signed a petition, and gone to jail -- and a call for many more to join us going forward!
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I approached a man who was cleaning the streets. I introduced myself as a college student from Beijing and asked, "I'm just curious, but what do you think is the 'Chinese Dream'?" He looked at me, his eyes full of alert. After a few seconds, he chuckled awkwardly. "Well, people like me," he looked at the broom in his hand and sighed, "are in no position to answer this question." "But shouldn't the 'Chinese Dream' belong to the Chinese people? What is your dream?" A long silence ensued.
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We have moved towards an economy that can simultaneously benefit some enormously and destroy unusually large numbers of others.
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Anti-imperialism has survived as a pillar of ideology, as has Sinocentrism and Russocentrism, which focus overwhelmingly on resistance to the United States and its allies.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Just as Catholics and Protestants concluded in their Wars of Religion, Sunni and Shia have to exhaust one another before concluding that neither side can determine what their religion is to be.
AP
It is not apparent that policymakers in either the U.S. or China yet seem persuaded that accommodation is necessary. Both seem to underestimate the resolve of the other and hope that they can secure all they want because the other will back down to avoid confrontation. This is how Asia today most resembles Europe in 1914.
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Instead of a challenge to the United States, China's development is winning both time and space necessary for the soft-landing of American hegemony.
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Simmering tensions between China and Japan and in the South China Sea combined with the American "pivot" to Asia have been used by some to produce a narrative that China is a destabilizing force for the region and the world. Many have accused China of being a free rider and troublemaker. Nothing can be further from the truth. On the contrary, China has been a linchpin for stability and development in this important region.
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Now that Xi and Abe have had their icy handshake, China and Japan need to move forward. Hotlines are necessary, but so is continued leadership: for President Xi, to ensure that anti-Japanese nationalism does not dictate policy towards Tokyo; for Prime Minister Abe, to tamp down tendencies towards historical revisionism.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This is not the first time that Manuel Valls has proposed changing the name of the French Socialist Party. That he has returned to the subject from the vantage point of his present position -- which is, like it or not, the head of the majority -- obviously gives his suggestion new weight.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thousands of people were waiting for us at the airport, a sea of black-red-golden flags fluttering in the cold December wind in between an almost forgotten white-green flag of the Saxon State. Once the plane had taxied to a standstill, I climbed down the escalator and saw Hans Modrow, who was awaiting me about 10 meters away from the steps with a blank expression on his face. I then turned around to tell the Minister of the Chancellery Rudolf Seiters: "It's done."
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Bloodshed in Europe and the Middle East against the backdrop of a breakdown in the dialogue between major powers is of enormous concern. The world is on the brink of a new Cold War. Some are even saying that it's already begun.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On the evening of the 9th of November 1989, when the message came in that the Berlin Wall was open, I was sitting in the Chancellery in Bonn, in a meeting on the issue of housing migrants from the German Democratic Republic. The session wasn't continued. Everyone stormed to the nearest television sets.
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The end of the Cold War, epitomized by the Berlin Wall destruction, quickly came to be seen by the West as its own triumphant victory and the USSR/Russia's unconditional surrender. Hence Russia was to be treated as a second-rank country, a regional power at best, that was expected to obediently follow whatever directions may have come from Washington and Brussels. The problem was the Russians did not share this view of themselves as a defeated nation obliged to accept the victors' terms.
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When he initiated the Asia-Pacific rebalance, U.S. President Barack Obama staked all his international strategic capital on that cast of dice. The move, however, only ended up in the birth of more imbalances in the world, which forced the U.S. to scurry between one hotspot after another.
Moscow Times
Putin wants to regain that same "respect" that the West held for Khrushchev, and he sees no other way but to underscore his own unpredictability. I suspect that the recent sorties by Russian strategic bombers over the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic, North and Black seas are a manifestation of this new unpredictability.
