Showing posts with label china. Show all posts
Showing posts with label china. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Time For China And India To Shed "Neutrality"



China did not know beforehand that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. India did not.

And while the two militaries clash on Ukrainian territory with the overwhelming damage to Ukrainian lives and property, it is at one level. It is localized war.

Putin can not complain about economic sanctions. For one, they have not been a surprise. And he, on his part, has issued retaliatory economic sanctions.

Nobody owes the Putin regime a world power status. He is not even fighting for second place. Or third, or fourth, or fifth. China is the second largest economy. India is the third largest. And if Russia were not an authoritarian kleptocracy, it migth be a vibrant knowledge economy. Putin is the problem.

These nuclear threats by Putin can not be thought of as empty words. Autocrats are known to commit suicide. The Putin inner circles often get described as a prison yard. You watch your back, I will watch mine.

Putin is not threatening Finland, or Britain. We all know a nuclear threat by either Russia or the US is a threat to the entire planet.

China and India must step in.

By that I do not mean China and India should now do what Britain has been doing, what many NATO countries have been doing. I am not asking that you take sides. But I am asking that you stop staying on the sidelines. Get actively involved in the conversation. Weigh in on both sides.

China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia all need to step into the void and help resolve the situation. This game of brinkmanship has gone too far already.

The Chinese and the Indian leadership need to demand that the heads of states of Russia, the United States, Ukraine, Finland, Sweden, Britain, France and Germany meet them for a summit in a neutral territory like Brazil or South Africa, or even Indonesia and hold in person negotiations to walk back from the brink.

Putin's nuclear threats to Finland and Britain are not localized threats. They are immediate nuclear radiation threats to Russia and Europe, and an existential threat to the entire planet. That threatening posture can not be allowed to stand.

China and India should work to impose a no first use policy on all nuclear powers. Nothing less makes any sense.



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Monday, May 02, 2022

China, India, South Africa, Brazil Can Not Stay Neutral To Russia's Nuclear Threats

There are legitimate reaasons to not take sides in a war. Not being one of the two warrring parties is a good one.

Why Ukraine? Why not Syria? Why not Yemen? Why Afghanistan? Why Iraq? Such questions can be asked. Why not?

If Europe can buy oil from Russia, why not India? Fair enough.

Perhaps NATO should not have expanded as much as it did, like China says. That is a point. And can be discussed.

But Putin's nuclear threats wash all that away. Neutrality is no longer an option. Putin threatens the whole world at once when he makes his nulcear threats.

Both China and India have no first use policies on nuclear weapons. And these two powers that aspire to be global powers must now do everything possible to impose that policy on every country that has nuclear weapons. Making nuclear threats should be outlawed and ostracized. And the US and Russia should be pushed to eliminate more than 95% of their nuclear weapons by 2030.

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Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Russia, China And Saudi Arabia: Democracy's Headwinds

The US has already made it explicit it seeks no regime change in Russia, it does not want to shake the applecart in China, and only wants more oil from Saudi Arabia. That is the restated official policy. And it is disappointing but understandable.

The hope lies not with this or that government but with the masses.

Democracy's headwinds need to blow. They need to blow all the way to organizing elections to a new constituent aseembly right inside the United States of America. America needs a new constitution. America needs a Philadelphia all over again.

If Putin needs to go, fine. If China needs to shake, fine. If Saudi Arabia is to become a republic, so be it. And if a new America is 100 states, then I am glad. This country needs to assert one person one vote democracy at home before it can lecture the world.

Cyber warriors not in communication with any government are already on the march. Half a million are ready to attack Russia. What Putin has already done in Ukraine is sufficient reason. Peace talks can happen, must happen, but Putin must go.

When you talk of political reform, you mean to suggest you want the best for that country. China needs political reform because there is no other way for it to go back to a 10% growth rate. The patriotic thing for the CCP to do is to break itself up voluntarily like AT&T.

Yemen is its own Ukraine. It has been the prevailing racism in international affairs that Ukraine is front and center but Yemen is nowhere to be seen. That has to change. Just like the fight for democracy in Russia is taking place in Ukraine, the fight for democracy in Saudi Arabia seems to be taking place in Yemen.

Assad belongs at The Hague. His war crimes can be proven with simple searches on Google Images.

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Tuesday, March 22, 2022

March 22: Ukraine



20 Days In Mariupol . We were the only international journalists left in the Ukrainian city, and we had been documenting its siege by Russian troops for more than two weeks. We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage. ....... Time was measured from one shell to the next, our bodies tense and breath held. Shockwave after shockwave jolted my chest, and my hands went cold. ......... As a teenager growing up in Ukraine in the city of Kharkiv, just 20 miles from the Russian border, I learned how to handle a gun as part of the school curriculum. It seemed pointless. Ukraine, I reasoned, was surrounded by friends. ........ In the first few days of the war, the Russians bombed the enormous Freedom Square in Kharkiv, where I had hung out until my 20s. ....... We pulled into Mariupol at 3:30 a.m. The war started an hour later. ........ About a quarter of Mariupol’s 430,000 residents left in those first days, while they still could. But few people believed a war was coming, and by the time most realized their mistake, it was too late. ........ One bomb at a time, the Russians cut electricity, water, food supplies and finally, crucially, the cell phone, radio and television towers. The few other journalists in the city got out before the last connections were gone and a full blockade settled in. ......... The absence of information in a blockade accomplishes two goals. Chaos is the first. People don’t know what’s going on, and they panic. At first I couldn’t understand why Mariupol fell apart so quickly. Now I know it was because of the lack of communication. ......... Impunity is the second goal. With no information coming out of a city, no pictures of demolished buildings and dying children, the Russian forces could do whatever they wanted. If not for us, there would be nothing. ......... Ambulances stopped picking up the wounded because people couldn’t call them without a signal, and they couldn’t navigate the bombed-out streets. ........ Sometimes we would run out to film a burning house and then run back amid the explosions. ........ There was still one place in the city to get a steady connection, outside a looted grocery store on Budivel’nykiv Avenue. Once a day, we drove there and crouched beneath the stairs to upload photos and video to the world. The stairs wouldn’t have done much to protect us, but it felt safer than being out in the open. ........... For several days, the only link we had to the outside world was through a satellite phone. And the only spot where that phone worked was out in the open, right next to a shell crater. I would sit down, make myself small and try to catch the connection. ....... Everybody was asking, please tell us when the war will be over. ......... Every single day, there would be a rumor that the Ukrainian army was going to come to break through the siege. But no one came. ......... By this time I had witnessed deaths at the hospital, corpses in the streets, dozens of bodies shoved into a mass grave. I had seen so much death that I was filming almost without taking it in. ............ We had recorded so many dead people and dead children, an endless line. ........ The Russian Embassy in London put out two tweets calling the AP photos fake and claiming a pregnant woman was an actress. ......... The only radio you could catch broadcast twisted Russian lies — that Ukrainians were holding Mariupol hostage, shooting at buildings, developing chemical weapons.

The propaganda was so strong that some people we talked to believed it despite the evidence of their own eyes.

....... The message was constantly repeated, in Soviet style: Mariupol is surrounded. Surrender your weapons. ............ We went up to the 7th floor to send the video from the tenuous Internet link. From there, I watched as tank after tank rolled up alongside the hospital compound, each marked with the letter Z that had become the Russian emblem for the war. We were surrounded: Dozens of doctors, hundreds of patients, and us. ........... People were nervous. They were fighting, screaming at each other. Every minute there was an airplane or airstrike. The ground shook. ........ We crossed 15 Russian checkpoints. At each, the mother sitting in the front of our car would pray furiously, loud enough for us to hear. .

Climate change: 'Madness' to turn to fossil fuels because of Ukraine war
Physicists Just Discovered a Weird New Tetragonal Phase of Water Ice
85K birds euthanized in South Dakota amid avian flu outbreak
Carcinogenic chemical benzene found in hundreds of US personal care products Independent lab found the chemical in more than a quarter of items it tested – sometimes at levels considered ‘life threatening’ .
Securing the TikTok Vote Is the app the next frontier of political campaigning or just another place to burnish one’s image? ...... Years ago he was all in on meditation. Why not try the social platform of the moment? ...... any TikTok newbie would quickly learn, popular songs help videos get discovered on the platform ...... This year, he’s running for Ohio’s open Senate seat; he thinks TikTok could be a crucial part of the race. ......... TikTok, with its young-skewing active global user base of one billion, would seem a natural next frontier. ...... national security experts, who think the app would be a relatively inefficient way for Chinese agencies to obtain U.S. intelligence....... A video should strike a careful balance of entertaining but not embarrassing; low-fi without seeming careless; and trendy but innovative, bringing something new to the never-ending scroll. ...... In the 2020 presidential election, about half of Americans between the ages 18 and 29 voted .

@nycmayor Good morning, TikTok! Grab your smoothie and make it a great week to #GetStuffDone. #fyp #foryoupage #nyc ♬ original sound - Mayor Eric Adams


Jimmy Kimmel Ribs Republicans Over Ketanji Brown Jackson Kimmel said Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings could make the G.O.P.’s worst nightmare could come true: “Having this decided by two Black women whose names they can’t pronounce.” ...... Jimmy Kimmel joked that the hearings “give a number of our Republican senators a chance to compete in one of their favorite events: the subtle racism jamboree.” ....... “I saw that top Republican leading the hearings, Chuck Grassley, is 88 years old. Wow. When it was his turn to speak he was like, ‘Tell us who you are, and then tell me who I am.’” — JIMMY FALLON .

Late Night Gapes at Biden’s Calling Putin a ‘War Criminal’ A Kremlin spokesman pointed the finger back at the U.S. for World War II bombings, and Trevor Noah joked, “Keep up with the times, yo!” .......... “Seriously, Russia, you’re gonna bring up something America did in the ’40s?” Noah said. “America has committed plenty of war crimes since then. Keep up with the times, yo!” ........ “Just because America committed war crimes doesn’t mean you have to, as well, Vladimir Putin, OK? I mean, what if all your friends jumped off a bridge — would you do it, too? No, seriously, would you? I’m just brainstorming ways to end this whole thing. I just want to know what you would do, you know?” — TREVOR NOAH ......... “You can tell people were ready to let loose. On my way in, I heard a guy on the street ask where the bathrooms are, and another guy said, ‘It’s wherever you want it to be.’” — JIMMY FALLON ......... “It’s funny, everything we know about St. Patrick’s Day is not true. St. Patrick was born in England, not Ireland. There are no snakes in Ireland to drive out. And that creep wearing the ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish’ T-shirt? Probably not Irish.” — JIMMY KIMMEL ........... “In fact, the world’s first recorded St. Patrick’s Day parade took place in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, in 1601. At this parade, they drank green beer and ate green beef. They didn’t dye the beef — everything was just very moldy back then.” — JIMMY KIMMEL .

Yemen rebels launch wide strikes on Saudi sites; no one hurt This is the latest escalation as peace talks stall and the war in Yemen continues .
Oil, weapons and realpolitik: Why some countries want to stay on friendly terms with Russia India relies on Russian-made weapons, Israel needs Russia’s cooperation to strike inside Syria and Gulf Arab states look to Russia to help manage the oil market. ........ A small number of countries have declared unqualified backing for Russia since its forces rolled into Ukraine, including regimes in Syria, Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. But a longer list of governments, including China, have avoided using the word “invasion,” abstained from U.N. votes castigating Russia or declined to take part in punishing sanctions on Russia’s economy. ........ Russia is watching the response of other countries closely, including customers for its defense industry and fellow oil producers. But one government in particular may hold the key for Moscow — China. Experts say only Beijing has the economic heft and global power to help soften the blow of harsh economic sanctions introduced by the United States and the European Union, or to potentially persuade Moscow to pull back from its military offensive in Ukraine. ...... Russia supplies about 60 percent of the weapons and equipment for India’s military, the cornerstone of a decades-long friendly relationship between Moscow and Delhi. ........ “I think Indian strategists calculate that they cannot afford to alienate Russia” ...... it would serve India’s interest to try to do more to get this war to end,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center think tank. “Not by coming out and condemning it publicly but more so by quietly trying to urge the Russians and Ukrainians, but especially the Russians, to wind down” .......... In a move that will frustrate Washington, India’s central bank is exploring a trade arrangement with Moscow that would use only Indian rupees and Russian rubles, bypassing Western sanctions ......... India also plans to purchase three million barrels of oil from Russia at a discount. ........ Under Israeli law, sanctions can only be imposed on a country designated as an enemy state. ...... Israel, citing its friendly relations with both Moscow and Kyiv, has offered to play a role as mediator in the conflict. ...... “We have a kind of border with Russia,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said last month, shortly before the invasion. Russia is “the important force” in Syria, Lapid said, and so Israel is in “a bit of a Baltic situation.” ........... He also said Russia and Ukraine have large Jewish communities, and that he has to be “more careful than any other foreign minister in the world.” ......... so far Gulf countries have not opted to increase oil production to control a rise in oil prices, despite requests from Washington and other Western governments. ........ The wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies see Russia as a crucial actor in a coalition of oil producers designed to manage the global oil market. In 2019, the Saudis and other oil powers invited Russia to form an expanded group known as “OPEC+,” to control output and ensure a stable, profitable oil market. The group was created to counter the effect of America’s boom in shale production. .......... The Gulf Arab states don’t want to jeopardize that arrangement over the war in Ukraine, and see Russia as an important “linchpin” for the oil producing coalition ......... “These Gulf countries want to maintain the OPEC alliance with Russia because it makes OPEC more powerful as a market manager” ........... The 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit team has placed a permanent strain on U.S.-Saudi relations, and the Emiratis are frustrated that the Biden administration has not imposed tough sanctions on Iranian-backed Houthi forces after a series of attacks on the UAE. The Gulf states also are wary of the Biden White House’s efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, fearing the restoration of the accord could bolster their arch-rivals in Tehran. ........... In Libya and Azerbaijan, Turkey has supported groups fighting Russian-backed forces. But Erdogan and Putin have forged a friendly relationship, and Turkey has bought Russian-made anti-aircraft S-400 missiles and cut energy deals with Moscow. Turkey also looks to Russia to help it maintain pressure on Kurdish groups in Syria, as Ankara fears the emergence of a Kurdish state on its border. ........... In Ukraine, the government in Kyiv has used Turkish-made drones to great effect against Russian armored convoys ............ As it tries to balance between Russia, Ukraine and NATO, Ankara has emerged as a potential mediator, along with Israel, in efforts to find a negotiated settlement to the war. ........ China’s response to the war in Ukraine could shape the conflict’s outcome and the larger clash between Moscow and the West. ......... Since U.S. and European governments imposed sanctions on Russia after the invasion, China’s exports to Russia have surged, including electrical equipment, vehicles and machinery, while Moscow has sent China petroleum products and lumber. ............. The war has complicated China’s ambitions in Europe, a key market in Beijing’s long-term plans, and its effects on the global economy could have major fallout for China’s economy, which was already sputtering before the Russian invasion. ......... only China has the power to throw Moscow a lifeline as sweeping Western sanctions squeeze its economy. .......... No matter how China responds, Russia’s economy “is in for a ton of pain” ......... South African political leaders retain loyalty to Moscow from the Cold War era, when the Soviet Union trained and armed anti-apartheid activists while the United States supported the apartheid regime for years. ........ Russia has cultivated ties across the continent through military cooperation agreements with no human rights conditions attached, and Russian mercenaries have been linked to conflicts in the Central African Republic and Mali. .



Ex-partner of Russian oligarch close to Putin said life in Russia was like 'The Godfather' and there was a 'lack of normal human morals' . The ex-partner of Putin's former banker said living in Russia was like "The Godfather." .......... She added that Putin's top aides all "hate each other" and that their government is "ruthless." ........ He once owned two shipyards, the world's largest mine, and significant real estate across Russia, but he claims it was all taken from him. The Kremlin said Pugachev is a criminal, claiming he stole hundreds of millions of dollars from loans given to Russia's central bank in 2008 .

In the War Over Ukraine, Expect the Unexpected . because China’s quarantine strategy has left it with little immunity from prior infections, the virus is now spreading like wildfire there ........ “Tens of millions of residents in Chinese provinces and cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are under lockdown amid an outbreak of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Travel has been cut off between cities, production lines have stopped and malls have been closed.” .......... What is that doing? It’s killing demand for, and tanking the price of, crude oil — which, after approaching $130 a barrel because of the war in Ukraine, fell below $100 on Tuesday. And what country desperately needs high oil prices because it has so little else to sell to the world to fund its war? Putin’s Russia. So, China’s Covid strategy is hampering Putin’s oil price strategy — probably hurting him as much as anything the U.S. is doing. We’re all still a lot more connected than we might think. ............. the three biggest are the extraordinary acts of cruelty, courage and kindness that this war is revealing and inspiring. ........ it is stunning to watch how quickly he has tied himself into knots. In the space of three weeks, Putin has gone from saying that he came to liberate Ukraine from its “Nazi” leadership and bring Kyiv back to its natural home with Russia to crushing its cities and indiscriminately shelling its civilians to break their resistance to his will. ......... How does a leader go from one day saying Ukraine and its people are integral parts of the soul and fabric of Russia — with shared languages, culture and religion — to, when rebuffed, immediately pivoting toward turning the place to rubble — without any explanation to Ukrainians, the world or his own people? ..........

It’s the kind of vicious madness that you see from a spurned lover or in an “honor killing.”

......... Marina Ovsyannikova — remember her name. She dared to tell the czar that he had no clothes. ....... Executives at Airbnb say they basically woke up in early March to discover that members of their community were spontaneously using their platform in a novel new way — transforming its booking technology into a homemade, people-to-people, foreign aid system. ...... people from 165 countries have booked more than 430,000 nights at Ukrainian homes on Airbnb with no intention of using the rooms — but simply in order to donate money to these Ukrainian hosts ........ $17 million going directly to the hosts ........ as of Sunday, about 36,000 people from 160 countries signed up through Airbnb’s nonprofit affiliate, Airbnb.org, to welcome refugees fleeing Ukraine to their homes. ....... There is no way that America’s giant Agency for International Development, USAID, could have such an impact so fast. .



America’s Economy in the European Mirror . a large part — maybe two-thirds — of the acceleration in U.S. inflation reflects global forces rather than specifically American policies and developments .......... because these global forces may abate if we finally emerge from this dark tunnel of pandemic and war, U.S. inflation may eventually decline substantially even without drastic changes in policy .........

our working-age population has in fact stagnated since 2019, largely thanks to a collapse in immigration.

....... total labor compensation is up 13.6 percent since the eve of the pandemic ........ Recovering from the pandemic was always going to be tough, and Vladimir Putin has made it tougher. .



Another Dictator Is Having a Bad Year . The most important argument against autocracy is, of course, moral: Very few people can hold unrestrained power for years on end without turning into brutal tyrants. ........ in the long run autocracy is less effective than an open society that allows dissent and debate ....... the advantages of having a strongman who can tell everyone what to do are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. ......... Putin, whose decision to invade a neighboring country looks more disastrous with each passing day. Evidently nobody dared to tell him that Russia’s military might was overrated, that Ukrainians were more patriotic and the West less decadent than he assumed and that Russia remained highly vulnerable to economic sanctions. .......... while we’re all justifiably obsessed with the Ukraine war — I’m trying to limit my reading of Ukraine news to 13 hours a day ............ there’s a superficially very different yet in a deep sense related debacle unfolding in the world’s other big autocracy: China, which is now experiencing a disastrous failure of its Covid policy. ........ in the West we’re all supposed to be over Covid, although it is still killing 1,200 Americans a day and infections are surging again in Europe, probably presaging another surge here. ......... Hong Kong, which for a long time seemed virtually unscathed, is experiencing hundreds of deaths a day, a catastrophe reminiscent of early 2020 in New York — back when there were no vaccines and we didn’t know much about how to limit transmission. ........... Quite a few commentators, not all of them Chinese, went so far as to cite China’s Covid success as proof that world leadership was passing from America and its allies to the rising Asian superpower. .......... the zero-Covid strategy is extremely disruptive in the face of highly contagious variants like Omicron, especially given the weak protection provided by Chinese vaccines. ........

all of these failures, like Putin’s failures in Ukraine, ultimately stem from the inherent weakness of autocratic government.

....... China, like Russia, is now giving us an object lesson in the usefulness of having an open society, where strongmen don’t get to invent their own reality. .

America’s Right Has a Putin Problem . Just a few weeks ago many influential figures on the U.S. right loved, just loved Vladimir Putin. In fact, some of them still can’t quit him. For example, Tucker Carlson, while he has grudgingly backed off from full-on Putin support, is still blaming America for the war and promoting Russian disinformation about U.S.-funded bioweapons labs. ......... Russia is facing disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent. .......

everything indicating that Russia will have a depression-level slump.

....... Some of this dictator-love reflected the belief that Putin was a champion of antiwokeness — someone who wouldn’t accuse you of being a racist, who denounced cancel culture and “gay propaganda.” ........ many on the right simply like the idea of authoritarian rule. Just a few days ago Trump, who has dialed back his praise for Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Kim’s generals and aides, he noted, “cowered” when the dictator spoke, adding that “I want my people to act like that.” ........ Russian forces appear to be undertrained and badly led; there also seem to be problems with Russian equipment, such as communications devices. ......... It shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Putin’s $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves would become largely unusable if the world’s democracies cut off Russia’s access to the world banking system. It also shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Russia’s economy is deeply dependent on imports of capital goods and other essential industrial inputs. ........ The point is that the case for an open society — a society that allows dissent and criticism — goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. .

A Realist Take on How the Russia-Ukraine War Could End In a conversation that carries a glimmer of hope, the foreign policy scholar Emma Ashford considers possible paths to de-escalation........ Realism is a political framework that understands international relations as a contest between relatively rational states for power and security. It’s pretty structural in that way. It sees the actions and activities of states as quite predictable, given their role and needs in the international security hierarchy. ......... it can be much less interested than other frameworks in the ideologies of individual leaders or the values they profess to hold. It wants to be structural, not personal or individualistic. ............ and he had a speech from a few years ago arguing that the crisis in Ukraine is largely the fault of the West for opening NATO to Ukraine, and that we did that despite Russian warnings that it was a red line, and through that, pushed them into a corner that led to this invasion. ............. a genuine danger to the West’s professions of perfect innocence, our unwillingness to scrutinize our own actions. ............ She’s what’s called a neo-classical realist. She begins with a structural, state-based, power-based analysis of realism, but then opens it up to more influence from domestic politics — the psychology of individual leaders, the messiness of reality. ........ Putin may be motivated by all kinds of things, by imperial tendencies, by isolation, by ideology, by nostalgia for the Russian Empire, by a desire to mark his own place in history, by these mystic philosophers that he reads ......... a realist is somebody who views the international system as a fundamentally unchanging place, where states act on their interests, where there aren’t really rules or norms that constrain states, and where security concerns are always paramount. ........... You shouldn’t confuse realism with being realistic ........ notion of sort of unending competition between states in history. ........ he says that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is fundamentally the West’s fault. ...... through constant expansion of particularly NATO into the spaces of the former Soviet Union, the West effectively pushed Russia into a corner and forced it to lash out and to seize Crimea in 2014 and to invade the rest of Ukraine. ........... A hundred percent clear he did not have to do this invasion. It seems like most of the elites in Russia thought he wouldn’t. So whenever something is that contingent on the ideas of a singular actor, I think it’s hard to call it structural. I think it’s hard to say we pushed him into a corner, and they had to do this, and they predictably did this. ......... if you are looking at Putin as a rational strategic actor who’s worried about, say, the size of NATO, I think it’s pretty clear that invading Ukraine is likely to strengthen NATO ......... What triggered the Maidan Revolution in 2014 in Ukraine was actually European Union ties for Ukraine. .......... the 1990s were an extremely difficult, hard time for many Russians. The impact of shock therapy proposed by the West, supported by the U.S., was really harsh for many Russians. ......... assume Vladimir Putin is a rational actor. Assume he is motivated by reasonable strategic considerations. Then what? What would that imply about how we should have treated him, or what would that imply about how we should treat him now? .......... I fully believe Putin is a rational person. ........ that rationality is constrained. It’s constrained by the information that he’s getting, the people that he’s getting advice from, and in the kind of personalistic dictatorship symptomatic of the Russian system, Putin is making decisions that may seem rational to him, but are not necessarily rational when viewed from the outside. ..........

this crisis may end up expanding NATO, not shrinking it

......... What off-ramp or approach to him does that offer? ........ it’s the approach that the Ukrainian government is already taking, which is to try and find some kind of negotiated settlement to this conflict ......... They’re not even talking about demilitarization in the same way anymore. Now they’re talking much more about Ukrainian neutrality and potential territorial gains. ......... that the war reveals something to the parties that enable them to come to the negotiating table and hammer out a ceasefire or hammer out a peace deal. And this won’t be easy, but I really do think it’s basically the only option for improving the situation, rather than heading to somewhere worse. ........ and that is one of the first optimistic things that I’ve heard from anyone. ......... Within, I think it was a few hours of the invasion, Zelensky offered to talk to Moscow about neutrality, right? So the Ukrainian position there shifted very fast. The Russian position has been much, much harder to discern, not least because we’re trying to cut through the fog of Russian war propaganda and Sergei Lavrov, who’s always saying outrageous things. .......... Really, really likes to stick it to Western diplomats and point out hypocrisy and not act very diplomatic. ........ and they’re no longer talking about the regime change part at all ......... give it another couple of weeks, and that might be the point where we have an opening for negotiations. ..........

the way that Ukraine has inspired many in Europe and in America

........ I don’t see the Russians necessarily agreeing to a deal if it doesn’t come with some sanctions being lifted, perhaps freeing up some of those frozen central bank reserves or something. And it’s not clear to me that people in the West are necessarily going to accept that. .......... And then within about 72 hours of the start of this conflict, they shifted to a form of economic warfare more analogous to something we haven’t seen since the 1940s. ......... And there are exceptions around energy sales in particular, but at this point, we’ve destroyed their financial system. ........ A lot of key players in both their commercial and financial architecture have simply pulled out. I mean, Visa and Mastercard aren’t working in Russia anymore. Citibank, Citigroup is pulling out of Russia. These things have gone even beyond what the sanctions themselves were potentially doing. And it is a little hard for me to imagine the kind of deal that Putin could make where it would be a dirty deal with Ukraine. Because if he’s going to stop an invasion that he believes, over time, he would win, it will probably be because he got quite a bit of what he wanted. ......... But given how we have framed Putin in the international system now in our moral cosmology, the idea that we’re going to have him wall Ukraine off from NATO and possibly hold on to a fair amount of territory in the east, and then just go back to treating Russia normally and lift the sanctions, even as he made all these gains, it’s hard for me to imagine the domestic politics of that working out in the United States and Europe. ........... but not finding a way to resolve this conflict results in worse outcomes, worse outcomes for people inside Ukraine, potentially worse outcomes for Europe, more broadly ......... there’s going to have to be some sanctions relief in exchange for actually ending the war. ....... He’s probably going to get Crimea as part of Russia ... I don’t think we’re at risk anymore of Ukraine completely losing its sovereignty. Three weeks ago, I would have told you that was a very high probability. ............. The weapons have helped the Ukrainians to resist the Russians. The sanctions are hitting hard. And what we need to do now is rather than just letting those sanctions go on forever, we need to use them as an instrument to try and improve the situation again. So we need to offer a carrot now that we’ve used the stick. ............. the assumption was that if the Russians didn’t do it fast, they would do it in a very slow, grinding fashion ........ we have already seen the Russians try to insert a puppet government in a couple of cities in east of the country — doesn’t seem to be going very well. We are no closer to sort of the actual Ukrainian government collapsing, having to flee, leaders being assassinated. ......... they may be unwilling to pour more into this conflict. They might be willing to settle for something less than the absolutist gains they were going for at the start. And this is how peace settlement, peace negotiations work in almost all wars, right? ......... It’s rarely that one side loses and another side entirely wins. It’s almost always some kind of compromise because future fighting is more costly than giving up on your absolutist gains. ......... And you’re going to be trying to do an occupation of a very, very large geographically and population wise country, when your economy is shattered. ............ if he’s even minimally strategic at this point, he’s got to be looking for some option here that isn’t an unending occupation of Ukraine .......... He’s obviously been receiving bad information. One of the few things that can really cut through that system is

his ability to look on the internet, to turn on the news, and he can see that things aren’t going well

. And so reality has a way of intruding onto that bubble in the context of this conflict. ............... this is a deal with the devil. And this is why nobody likes realists. But what I’m saying is that in the grand scheme of things, this will be better for everybody than long-term sanctions that end up eviscerating Russia while Russia destroys Ukraine. ............. People who spent 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, arguing that the U.S. goal should be to expand NATO, to expand the European Union, to focus on pushing liberal democracy and human rights in Eastern Europe, that these would be the things that would make Europe safer and more secure. It’s not at all clear to me that those claims have been proven true in any way. ........... the concerns about security that Russia has been expressing for 30 years..... and about the fact that Russia has been effectively excluded from the European security environment ............ The ambiguity that the United States has over Taiwan with the One China policy is probably part of the reason why we haven’t seen conflict over that. And Europe is maybe a place where we need to get more creative in thinking about middle ways that don’t necessarily involve NATO’s membership for everyone or NATO’s membership for no one. ......... NATO’s open door policy is not 100 percent a security policy. It’s somewhat a values policy. We want countries to become more democratic. We want them to become part of the liberal infrastructure that we think of as the West. .......... But obviously, we don’t always live up to our values. And whenever we begin talking about them, accusations of hypocrisy fly fast and furious. And most of them are warranted. ........ realists often get this rap as being immoral or amoral. And that’s not really true. ........ politicians cannot only pursue what they think is right. They have to be constrained by an understanding of what is possible in specific time and places. ......... I’m not saying that Russia has a normative right to control Ukraine. I think that’s a terrible notion. I do think that Ukraine, though, is a place where American interests are relatively small, Russian interests are much bigger, and we do not have an interest in getting in a larger conflict with Russia over that. .......... the notion that we have repeatedly told Ukraine that we would let them in NATO and defend them, and now we’re not doing it, to me, that is almost more immoral than saying upfront, this is too much of a risk for us. We will not defend you. You need to find another solution, like the Finns did during World War II, like the Austrians did afterwards. ............ I hear a lot about the Ukrainians who could die in Russia’s invasion. And properly so, I’m hearing much less about the Afghans who might die from starvation in the coming months from the Yemens who are caught in a war that America has helped to finance through our partnership with Saudi Arabia. .......... Something that you’ve pushed for in foreign policy is a belief in restraint. Can you talk a bit about why you think more American restraint would be better for more American security or for American values? ......... if you actually look at our history, maybe we should be doing less. ........ a lot of the history of the Cold War is both sides, both superpowers, sort of dancing right up to that line to try and avoid a bigger conflict, while still hurting the other side. .......... led to a search for ways of exerting our power that feel to us like they are not war. And so we have very, very aggressive sanctions policies. ......... are we fooling ourselves that they don’t understand our sanctions now as a kind of economic war, that direct arms provision from NATO won’t potentially escalate into a shooting war ......... a pathology in American foreign policy thinking today that sees almost anything the U.S. does abroad as not war, as peaceful, if it’s not dropping a bomb .......... further steps could quite easily prompt a Russian response of some kind. ........... On the financial side, we could see some sort of Russian cyber attack on the U.S. financial system or some sort of asymmetric response from them. On the issue of weapons, the weapons are a tempting target for the Russians. ......... an email I got from a listener who is a Russian expat and is somebody who doesn’t particularly like Vladimir Putin, but is furious about the sanctions because, to them, we are destroying the lives, the savings of all these ordinary Russians who had nothing to do with it. .......... many Russians who are trying to flee Russia right now, they can’t access a lot of their money because of Visa and Mastercard pulling out. And so they basically can’t get out. ........... we also overestimate the extent to which they actually hurt those in charge. So in the 2014 case, after Russia seized Crimea, we put on all these big sanctions onto Russia. And you know, one of the things that the Russian government did was it provided bailout funds to the oligarchs that were specifically sanctioned under those authorities. ........... sanctions can, in many cases, actually bolster those in charge. ....... it would not surprise me if there were not some folks around Vladimir Putin saying, we can use this to our advantage. A Russian economy that is more insulated from the West will be to our advantage. And they might be right from the point of view of their narrow clique in power. ........ we’re seriously underestimating the risks of arms transfers. ......... some misperception, misunderstanding, accidental escalation, firing that kills a number of NATO troops on the border, something like that. But anyone who studied history can tell you, that is how war starts. ..........

There’s a lot of fear right now about nuclear weapons being the endpoint of escalation.

.......... something we’re under-rating and which you gestured at earlier is massive cyber attacks. ........ we are nowhere near prepared for. ....... We don’t really know how we’d respond to them. We know we have huge vulnerabilities and all kinds of critical infrastructure and financial infrastructure. ......... So if Russia wanted to begin striking back at the U.S. and Europe in, more or less, the terms we’ve struck at them, that might be how they go about it. .......... the calls to use cyber techniques to strike directly at Russian infrastructure, stop Russian trains, make it hard for Russia to fight the war in Ukraine, those seem to be viewed pretty clearly as making the U.S. an actual party to this conflict. .......... “nuclear escalation is possible, should the United States or its NATO partners intervene in Russia’s war against Ukraine.” That’s coming out of Putin and Sergey Lavrov being very, very clear about that. ........ their willingness to engage in talks as that they are willing to try and find a solution here that doesn’t necessarily involve either complete capitulation by Ukraine or a complete withdrawal by Russia ........... in the first round of talks, the Ukrainian and Russian delegations just showed up and sort of read one another statements. .......... this is Ukrainian security at stake. It is their deal to make. ........ There’s been a sea change in German security policy in the last three weeks. The Germans went from being, basically, the most reluctant large member of NATO to offering to spend more than 2 percent of their G.D.P. on defense and committing extra funding to get up to that amount over the next four years ......... we’ve gone from a place a month and a half ago where the notion of Germany as a geopolitical actor was relatively unthinkable to a place where now Germany, as part of a broader Europe, might actually be able to act as a power center in coming years. .........

China is trying to walk a very fine line here

......... the Indian position is really interesting. So one of India’s biggest arms suppliers is Russia. In fact, at the start of this crisis, before the war actually happened, Vladimir Putin took a trip to India, had these smiling, happy pictures with Narendra Modi. And that relationship has been relatively close in recent years. When you add to that the fact that the Indians import something like 80 percent of their oil from overseas to fuel what is a giant economy, you can see why the Indians are concerned about potentially losing access to Russian markets, right? .......... They’re concerned about losing access to Russian oil, losing access to food supplies. There’s various precious minerals and metals Russia exports. And India also, obviously, has this long history of non-alignment. And so this came as a surprise to many in Washington, who are more used to the way we’ve been talking about India in the last few years as a democratic bulwark against China, right, part of America’s democratic alliance in the Indo-Pacific. But actually, India is very much sort of a third party apart from this conflict. It’s not taking either side, and it is showing that it is definitely still willing to work with the Russians in the commercial and trade space insofar as it benefits India. .......... the U.S.-Russian relationship went from actually being in a very good place in 1991 to being, basically, dead today, and how steps by both the West and Russia created this sort of long running, large scale security spiral, like we just talked about, to bring us to where we are today. ............ the First World War. ...... really nobody wanted a war, and certainly nobody wanted a World War. Yet, somehow we ended up there anyway, step by small step. .



While Putin Shrinks, Zelensky Soars
RAISING SUCCESSFUL KIDS A psychologist says parents who raise resilient, socially intelligent kids always do 5 things during ‘hard times’
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Friday, March 11, 2022

March 11: Ukraine, India

Ukraine Crisis Kicks Off New Superpower Struggle Among U.S., Russia and China Beijing and Moscow now hold a stronger hand in confronting the West than during the Cold War ......... Russia’s audacious military assault on Ukraine is the first major clash marking a new order in international politics, with three major powers jostling for position in ways that threaten America’s primacy. ........ Russia and China have built a thriving partnership based in part on a shared interest in diminishing U.S. power. Unlike the Sino-Soviet bloc of the 1950s, Russia is a critical gas supplier to Europe, while China isn’t an impoverished, war-ravaged partner but the world’s manufacturing powerhouse with an expanding military. .......... “We all thought we were looking at a Europe whole, free and at peace indefinitely,” said Michele Flournoy, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Obama administration. “We knew that Russia would conduct gray zone operations and that Putin would use his KGB playbook to create instability on his periphery. But a wholesale invasion of a sovereign country to reorient its government is a different moment.” .......... Beijing doesn’t really like Putin’s tactics ...... When pro-democracy protesters rose up in Hong Kong, Mr. Xi imposed harsh security laws, brushing off agreements his predecessors made giving autonomy to the former British colony and international financial center. ......... what the Pentagon in 2015 called the “re-emergence of great power competition” and shifted from its emphasis of counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. ......... Even with annual defense budgets that soared over $700 billion, coping with an urgent Russian-generated crisis while preparing for a Chinese threat whose peak is still years away presents an enormous challenge for the Pentagon. ........ “The United States is going to have to get used again to operating in multiple theaters simultaneously—not just militarily, but in terms of psychology and foreign-policy making” ....... Beyond the military, the new confrontation with Moscow might also accelerate a further fracturing of economic globalization. China and the U.S. are trying to unravel supply chains for critical technologies. Should the West impose crippling sanctions on Russian banks and major companies, Moscow is likely to become more reliant on Beijing, which has issued a digital currency and is building a payments system separate from the West’s. ..........

most Europeans see the Ukraine crisis as a broader threat to Europe.

.



Narendra Modi’s BJP Wins Big in Indian Elections Result of regional votes shows the enduring popularity of the leader despite the impact of the pandemic and a controversial proposal to overhaul the agricultural sector ......... It is the first time in decades that voters have returned an incumbent party to power in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP was also on track to win a majority in three other states—Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. .......

“He enjoys a huge, huge popularity among ordinary people.”

........ The BJP’s wins will strengthen the party’s control in Parliament’s upper house, where it doesn’t have a majority. ........ In a major upset, the regional Aam Aadmi Party, which runs the government of New Delhi, won a majority of seats in the huge farming state of Punjab and defeated the Indian National Congress Party ........ Its victory in Punjab now positions the Aam Aadmi Party, led by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, for a bigger presence during the 2024 national elections. ...... He has cultivated an image as a pious bachelor and devout Hindu who is wholly dedicated to public service. .

Why Is Russia Invading Ukraine and What Is Happening on the Ground? Ukrainian fighters put up fierce resistance as Putin places nuclear forces on alert ....... Russia is Europe’s major supplier of natural gas. ....... Ukraine’s defenders held on to Kyiv, and pushed back Russian troops in urban combat in its second-largest city, Kharkiv. ....... Ukrainian authorities have ordered Kyiv residents to stay indoors until Monday morning while they hunt for Russian infiltrators, who engaged in several shootouts with Ukrainian troops and civilian volunteers overnight. ....... “They have consciously chosen to hit civilians and everything that renders life normal. Power stations, hospitals, kindergartens, housing blocks—they are all targeted daily.” .......... Before the invasion, Russia had massed a fighting force totaling up to 190,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders compared with Ukraine’s 200,000-strong army, supplemented by tens of thousands of reservists. ........ Putin says the main objective is to defend the Russian-speakers in Ukraine, especially those in the two self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, which broke away from Ukrainian control in 2014. ....... eight million Ukrainians died during World War II and that his own grandfather served as a Soviet officer during the conflict. ....... Before 2014, polls showed a roughly even split in support among the population for joining the EU or a Moscow-led economic bloc. In a November survey, however, 58% favored the EU, with 21% for Russia’s group. Polling data show that even people in the south and east, where there are many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, are now in favor of the EU. ....... Russia’s military campaign marks the continuation of a policy that has seen Mr. Putin steadily expanding the country’s sphere of influence, reasserting Moscow’s dominion over former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. ........ Putin excoriated Mr. Zelensky, calling him a terrorist and urging Ukraine’s military to oust him. ...... “This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression,” she said. “And the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism. We’ve seen him do this time and time again.” ......... NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called Russia’s invasion an act of war, “deliberate, coldblooded and long-planned.” ........ Ukrainian Mig-29 jet fighters roared low overhead, in a sign that Russia, despite its formidable advantage in aviation and two days of relentlessly bombing Ukraine’s air bases, still hadn’t achieved full control of the skies. ........ Ukrainian artillery and tanks were moving through the city, and thousands of volunteers lined up at recruitment centers to receive weapons. On the roads south of Kyiv, armed villagers made their own roadblocks out of tractors and sandbags. ........ The Russian advance toward Kyiv has been slowed by antiair and antitank weapons, raising the possibility that Russian forces might be weakened by a lack logistical support before they can achieve their objective. The growing fear, though, is that Moscow may begin indiscriminate strikes against civilian targets to cow the Ukrainian government into submission. .



Endgame in Ukraine: how could the war play out? Russia’s failure to secure a swift win opens a range of possible outcomes ....... Ukraine is mounting a stronger than anticipated defence and western countries are supporting it with arms supplies. Meanwhile, Russia’s campaign has been beset by strategic errors, logistical shortcomings and intelligence blunders that vastly underestimated Ukrainian capabilities. ........ that Russia will win a comprehensive victory — remains the most likely outcome, given its overwhelming military power. ........ The civilian death toll will also be much higher than anticipated as Russia turns to more indiscriminate bombardment and deploys arms such as cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons. ........ many defence and intelligence officials say a potential retreat to western Ukraine — where Russia has so far made no attempt to seize territory — is a potential endgame. They have mooted Lviv, close to the Polish border, as a possible new capital for a rump Ukrainian state........ a partition of the country between its more Russian-speaking east and Europe-focused west........ If Russia were to attack and capture the port of Odesa, Ukraine’s third-largest city and long identified by Nato as a potential Russian target, it could cut off a rump Ukraine from the sea, crippling a crucial export route........ few think Putin would settle for failing to capture Kyiv or to topple the Zelensky government, given his stated aim to “demilitarise” the country and wrench it from its EU and Nato membership ambitions. ........ In talks in Turkey between the combatants’ foreign ministers — the most senior-level negotiations so far convened — on Thursday, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov denied Moscow had attacked Ukraine and claimed the US was funding biological weapons research in the country. Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart, said seeking ceasefire promises from Lavrov was impossible as “there are other decision makers for this matter in Russia”........ while Ukrainian officials have suggested a deal on the status of Crimea and pro-Russian separatist-controlled regions in the east could be feasible, Kyiv has ruled out Russia’s broader demands that it become neutral and give up its military capabilities. ........ western officials say anything short of a full Russian withdrawal would mean that crippling economic sanctions against Moscow were retained. “We keep tightening the noose,” said one. “Putin cannot hope for a fait accompli and for the world to go back to some kind of [normality]. There has been an irreversible change.” .........

Russian retreat, Putin toppled

......... Ukraine’s resistance so far has raised the possibility that Kyiv could continue repelling Russian efforts to seize key cities, especially if western weapons supplies continue to bolster the army’s capabilities ......... Putin himself could be a casualty of a failed invasion. They argue that the Russian president, who has ruled for more than 22 years, might be toppled by Kremlin elites, or by Russian military or security officials angry at his handling of the war, or by a groundswell of protest among Russian citizens furious at falling living standards...... the key to ending the conflict in Ukraine was increasing opposition to Putin inside Russia ...... However, Putin’s grip on power is arguably stronger than it has ever been, thanks to draconian new legislation in effect outlawing independent media in Russia and leaving Kremlin-controlled outlets as the sole source of information....... Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said this week that plans — mooted by the west but now ruled out — to supply Kyiv with Polish MiG fighters would be a “very undesirable and potentially dangerous scenario”. In turn, Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, has warned Russia that attacks on western supply lines to Ukraine would represent an escalation. ......... “Putin wants less Nato, he’s getting more Nato,” Stoltenberg said this week. “He wanted to divide us, he is getting a more united alliance.” .

Won’t fight in Ukraine, direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III: Joe Biden Joe Biden stated that the United States would not fight in Ukraine, and that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would result in World War III. .

Communication, visibility and delivery: How Yogi bulldozed Akhilesh Yadav's caste calculus The BJP has become the only party since 1977 to breach the 40% vote share mark in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. ......... Yogi Adityanath has become the first Chief Minister in 37 years to retain power after completing a full five-year term in Uttar Pradesh....... The Election Commission data showed BJP bagging a 41.3 % vote share. In 1977, the Janata party had touched a 47.8% vote share high in UP. ........ The BJP swept the UP polls, winning 255 of the 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party settled with 111 seats. ........ The BJP swept the UP polls, winning 255 of the 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party settled with 111 seats. ....... The free ration delivery along with the cash transfer scheme of the BJP government has given the party a big boost in this election. With the help of these two schemes, the BJP was able to mobilise poor voters, cutting across the caste and community lines. .

https://www.indiatoday.in/elections/story/congress-preps-for-post-result-battle-stations-senior-leaders-in-poll-bound-states-1922219-2022-03-08 'If Congress wants...': Mamata Banerjee hints at 2024 alliance against BJP Mamata Banerjee said her party can get together with the Congress to defeat the BJP in the 2024 general elections. ...... The grand old party, which has been reduced to an all-time low in the recently-concluded elections, accused the Trinamool Congress of being “agents of the BJP” in a sharp rebuttal. “The TMC is the biggest agent of the BJP. Rather, TMC should merge with Congress if it is so serious about fighting against BJP,” Congress’ Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said. ......... On Thursday, Kolkata Mayor and senior TMC leader Firhad Hakim offered: “The TMC has shown how you can put up a fight against the BJP and defeat it (in Bengal). It is high time that Congress merges with TMC and fights under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee.” ....... The Trinamool chairperson had sent shockwaves across the Congress camp in December with her “the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) does not exist anymore” remark. The attack didn’t stop there. Editorials in the TMC mouthpiece “Jago Bangla” continued its criticism of the grand old party, writing: "Congress is a failure... UPA is over..." It even went on to say that the Congress “has locked itself in the freezer”. .

How Arvind Kejriwal has disrupted Mamata Banerjee’s India plan ahead of 2024 The 2022 Assembly Elections have put Kejriwal's AAP as the major contender next only to BJP and Congress while Mamata's TMC suffered losses. What does it mean for the two parties as it gears up for 2024 Lok Sabha elections? ....... After winning the Punjab election, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is the only party after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress to have a majority government of its own in two states or more. Even the Communist Party of India-Marxist does not have majority in two states. ........ With Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh going to the polls later this year, Kejriwal’s party has a chance to cross the threshold to enter the elite club. ....... Arvind Kejriwal, on the other hand, has been working to strengthen the AAP in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat for the late-2022 elections. The AAP contested Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand elections. Both gave forgettable results for the AAP but the presence was recorded. ....... The AAP’s success in the Punjab election has given Arvind Kejriwal an edge over Mamata Banerjee in their competition to replace the Congress as the BJP’s principal challenger in 2029 if not in 2024. Soon after the Punjab victory, AAP leader Raghav Chadha said, “The AAP is going to become the challenger of the BJP. There is no doubt in my mind that in the times to come, the AAP will become the national and natural replacement.” .



After massive drubbing in 5 states, G23 battle for all-new Congress intensifies The G23's fight for a new Congress has heated up following a landslide defeat in five states in the Assembly election. ....... An intense power struggle has begun in the Congress hours after humiliating electoral setbacks in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, and Manipur. ....... ‘G23’, or the group of 23 dissenters, is closing ranks once again to force the leadership issue. Unlike the August 15, 2020, missive that had questioned Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s style of functioning, this time around, the focus would be on "democratising" the decision-making process in the Congress. The target is the composition of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), an emergency session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), accountability for the recent poll debacle, and the completion of organisational polls. ........ Priyanka in Uttar Pradesh drew a good crowd, but neither seats nor votes polled justified her efforts. Old Congressmen from UP, leaning on an old film song, said she should have understood the distinction between crowd curiosity and votes. The song from Baharen Phir Bhi Aayengi is "woh hans ke mile hum pyar samajh baithe". ......... Team Rahul was in a daze. A day before the results came out, Rahul’s picture of having a triple ice-cream sundae with faluda was apparently circulated to convey how confident he was about getting Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Goa. Three scoops for the three states. The poll outcome came as a shocker. It explains why Congress has gone into a shell again. .

How 'Delhi model' facilitated AAP's historic Punjab sweep The AAP’s historic victory in a state with no reliable voting base and a weak and invisible party organisation is a fairy tale story almost similar to what the newbie party achieved in the Delhi elections in 2015. ........ the 2022 elections have proven to be a Waterloo for the old and established parties in Punjab. ....... How did an eight-year-old party achieve this magical feat in a state where its party unit was dissolved by AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal over indiscipline after the 2017 electoral debacle? Behind the AAP revolution in Punjab, there is a single and uncomplicated factor that has vastly shaped the insurgent party’s historic victory: the ‘Delhi Model’. ......... a key factor was the electorate’s disillusionment with the established parties in the state. This is nowhere more prominent than the ruling Congress party which, despite winning an inspiring election in 2017, allowed itself to be consumed in factionalism and leadership war. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s unceremonious removal by the party’s leadership from Delhi, his running feud with newly appointed party president Navjot Singh Sidhu and the party’s known Dalit face Charanjit Singh Channi’s elevation to the hot-seat just months before elections played a key role in the party’s debacle. ....... a disillusioned voter in Punjab was desperately looking for a change and a new template of governance that could address deep-rooted corruption, patronage politics and end elite control. The Kejriwal government’s ‘Delhi Model’ of governance based on efficient delivery of public services found a strong resonance among voters in Punjab. The Delhi Model, as has been aggressively promoted by the AAP government, comprises four crucial planks of welfare delivery - quality school education, healthcare, water and electricity at affordable rates. ......... After it won the landslide in 2015 in Delhi, the AAP government singled out education as a key area of building its credentials. With slogans such as ‘education first’, the AAP-led government infused a fresh dose of energy into a moribund education system, especially the government-run schools in the capital. The AAP government under the leadership of deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who holds the education portfolio, allotted the highest funds to education, introduced new teacher training courses for students, and infused money to improve the ailing schooling infrastructure. A concerted and much focussed effort produced quick positive results. For instance, a Delhi government school, Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya in Dwarka, was ranked number one among all government-run day schools in India, while two others have made it to the top ten in 2019. Since then, many other schools have joined the rank. The net result is that more and more students from private schools are joining government schools in Delhi. ........ Beyond school education, there has been a visible transformation in healthcare access and quality. Delhi’s Mohalla Clinics have acquired national and international attention in the last few years. What also helped the broader appeal of the Delhi Model is that additional packages such as electricity subsidies (free up to 200 units), free bus rides for women, drinking water for 24X7 have earned the goodwill of most residents of the national capital. AAP’s back-to-back landslide victory in 2020 despite facing a massive challenge from the BJP is a vindication of the success of the Delhi Model. .......

the Delhi Model that assures corruption-free and efficient delivery of public services.

........ The party managed to connect with the women voters by promising them monthly cash grants of Rs 1,000, buttressing the narrative of a dignified life for women in some way within a societal setting marred by traditions of patriarchy. This seems to have worked given AAP’s good track record of delivering its key promises in Delhi and Kejriwal’s own image as an anti-corruption activist. .

G23 members demand new Congress chief, seek emergency AICC meeting G23 members Kapil Sibbal and Manish Tiwari held a meeting at former leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad's house on Friday. .

Arvind Kejriwal's AAP marches forward to become a national party | Infographic The victory in Punjab has turned Arvind Kejriwal's AAP into a fledgling national party with a simmering potential to replace the Congress as the main opposition. .

Arvind Kejriwal model of governance is now becoming national identity in politics: Manish Sisodia on AAP's win in Punjab . .



Congress preps post-poll strategy, opens backchannel talks with like-minded parties As the countdown to the declaration of state assembly polls’ result starts, Congress gets down to implement its post-poll strategies. .

The great stall of Kyiv Ground reports from Ukraine and western intelligence indicate that the key to Ukraine’s fight against Russia lies in the resilience being shown on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv. ...... US intelligence assessments estimate that Ukraine’s Air Force still has operational jets along with TB2 Unmanned Combat Aircraft Vehicles (UCAV). Coverage of these assets has so far kept Russian air strikes away from the capital, although the capital has been hit by missiles. Ukraine still has 56 operational fighter jets in its inventory and the Ukraine Air Force is still flying anywhere between 5-10 sorties every day ...... Russia has launched 328 cruise missiles on civilian facilities since the invasion began. .

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