Waiting for the Messiah The Jewish messianic belief plays a central role in the lives of Jewish people, but it is very different than Christians’ belief in Jesus as Christ. The redemption that Christ brought is internal transformation—being saved from one’s sinfulness, achieving the inner peace that comes from receiving God’s love. As a Jew, I rest in God’s unconditional love and the ever flowing blessings that come to me through divine grace. I do not, however, believe that the world has yet been redeemed. In a redeemed world, swords will be turned into ploughshares, nobody will go hungry, the powerless will not be oppressed, and justice will prevail everywhere. This was the vision of the Biblical Prophets, and it remains the foundation of Jewish hope for the future. ......... none of the laws of nature will be altered in the messianic era. Instead, he envisions a world governed by a King Messiah who is wise, righteous, just, and politically adept. There will be no servitude to foreign powers and there will be peace. All people will be free to devote themselves to the study of the Torah and the practice of good deeds, and there will be plenty of material goods for everyone. All of this will happen because of the righteousness and wisdom of the messianic ruler. ......... The more that we work collectively to end poverty and injustice and hate and war, the closer we get to ushering in the messianic era—a time when all people will live according to the will and wisdom of God. ........ this is a major reason why so many Jewish people become social, political, and economic activists, why Jews in the USA vote more liberally than others in the same economic brackets. Our interest in helping the less fortunate derives from a vision of what the world redeemed looks like.
The Global Zeitenwende How to Avoid a New Cold War in a Multipolar Era The world is facing a Zeitenwende: an epochal tectonic shift. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has put an end to an era. New powers have emerged or reemerged, including an economically strong and politically assertive China. In this new multipolar world, different countries and models of government are competing for power and influence. .
Give Ukraine the ability to strike every inch of Russian occupied territory (One administration official told me that if the Ukrainians got F-16s, they could bomb Moscow.) ........ “We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last week. But he did not condemn the attacks. The U.S. position seems to be that if U.S. weapons systems aren’t employed, and the attacks are focused strictly on military targets, it doesn’t object to the attacks. ........ The U.S. Air Force wants to send roughly 50 older model Reaper drones – which can fire Hellfire antitank missiles – to Ukraine because it doesn’t need them anymore. But the request has languished for months in the Pentagon bureaucracy. ........ the Biden administration refuses to provide the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) to Ukraine and has even modified HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) launchers so that they cannot fire ATACMS rockets, which would increase their range from 50 miles to as many as 180 miles. U.S. fighter-bombers such as the F-16, which the Ukrainians have been requesting, are also off the table. ......... the most valuable targets for longer-range strikes are in Ukraine, not Russia. ........ The Ukrainian military has enabled successful offensives around both Kharkiv in the east and Kherson in the south by targeting Russian headquarters, supply lines and ammunition depots to wear down enemy forces. Gaining access to longer-range “fires” will enable the Ukrainians to more effectively strike such military targets across the width and breadth of Russian-occupied territory. That includes Crimea, which remains out of HIMARS range. Such strikes, in turn, will enable future offensives that can bring this awful war to a conclusion. ........ The United States shouldn’t enable attacks against targets in Russia. But it should definitely enable more effective Ukrainian strikes on Russian supply lines and bases all over occupied Ukraine. .
How to achieve peace in Ukraine Advocating that Ukraine should turn to negotiation now is actually advocating to allow Russia to legitimize its illegal, immoral, brutal and barbaric aggression against a neighbor. ........ Simply because Russia is losing what it illegally claims to have acquired is no reason to legitimize its invasion by negotiating terms for it to keep what it is stealing. I suggest that Russia, to have the international sanctions lifted, withdraw its forces to behind internationally recognized borders and negotiate reparations for war crimes and damages. ........ This is not just some regional struggle that can be ended by a territorial adjustment. The stated goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ideologues is, at a minimum, the incorporation of Ukraine into a new Russian empire ......... Of course Russia is willing to hold peace talks, provided they lead to a settlement cementing its conquests. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the only obstacle to a peaceful settlement is the stubbornness of the West in continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons, basically saying stop the weapons supply and Ukraine will negotiate. ........... The fear of a nuclear confrontation has largely prevented the West from delivering the required quantity and quality of weaponry to Ukraine that could lead to victory. ......... The indelible precedent of a large-scale, brazen aggression committed with impunity by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council would invite new eager practitioners — China — to the feast. The world would be faced with a replication of “Munich 1938” on a grand scale. .
Ukraine’s resilience sets a global standard A year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a somewhat unpopular leader in Kyiv, viewed by his critics as a lightweight jokester. Now, in the wake of Russia’s February invasion, the wartime president is a global icon, a Ukrainian national hero, the world’s prolific video-conferencer and, yes, the least surprising figure in recent memory to receive the designation of Time’s Person of the Year. ......... His stoicism and courage seems to project the spirit of a nation that has withstood the Russian onslaught for close to 10 months at hideous cost in lives and resources. It’s now hunkering down for a possibly punishing winter, as Russia has carried out targeted strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure. At any given moment, by some measures, at least 2 million and as many as 10 million Ukrainians are living without electricity, plunged in a cold, enveloping darkness. As my colleagues reported, even then, many Ukrainians are not letting their Kremlin-inflicted woes darken their mood. .......... a larger civilizational struggle, pitting their liberal aspirations and fledgling democracy against the tyranny and authoritarianism embodied by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. .......... “They see the democracy and freedom of Ukraine as a question of their own survival.” .......... “Over $440 million of the total aid pledged is expected to be directed to Ukraine’s energy network. French officials said the final amount would likely rise,” my colleagues reported. “In a video address earlier on Tuesday, Zelensky urged the international community to make maintaining the country’s energy supply a priority, calling for over at least $850 million in aid for the sector.” .......... “Given the scale of the war and Russia’s unwillingness to accept the reality and withdraw from Ukraine, we will need to fight through the winter,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters. He added that Russia’s strikes on civilian targets and Ukraine’s energy infrastructure was a mark of its broader military failure. ........ the Biden administration was preparing to send the Patriot missile system — its most sophisticated air defense technology — to Ukraine. .......... The leadership in Beijing, not dissimilarly from Putin’s stance on Ukraine, view Taiwan as an illegitimate state bound to return to the Chinese fold. ......... “We are already facing warfare without gun smoke on a daily basis,” Tsai said, pointing to China’s “hybrid warfare” tactics, its use of escalating forms of military intimidation through naval exercises and aerial incursions, as well as cyberstrikes and online disinformation campaigns. ......... “If we do not hold ground at this point,” Tsai said, “China will test the bottom line, step by step, to create a new normal, and step by step, keep changing the status quo” until Taiwan’s sovereignty will be all the more fragile. .
Everything Democrats Could Do if Warnock Wins Without Mr. Warnock and Mr. Ossoff, President Biden could not have made substantial investments in roads, bridges, public transportation and semiconductor chip manufacturing. He could not have permitted Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. He could not have taken tangible steps to combat climate change. The 2021 tranche of federal pandemic aid, today criticized for contributing to inflation, offered critical bailouts for local governments that headed off crippling layoffs and brutal cuts to public schools. ........ Mr. Schumer’s Senate has actually confirmed federal judges at a faster rate than Mr. McConnell’s at the time of the first midterm election. So far, over 85 judges appointed by Mr. Biden have been confirmed, including a new Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. The judges, overall, are traditional liberals, many of them younger and nonwhite. Mr. Biden and Mr. Schumer were willing to elevate judges who were former public defenders, an unlikely prospect in the law-and-order 20th century. .......... There are about 75 vacancies on U.S. District Courts and nine at the appellate level. That number is bound to grow as more judges retire in the next two years.
There is speculation Kyiv has developed a strike drone with an astonishing 1,000km range.
........ If accurate, this means much of European Russia is now in reach. And that the asymmetric advantage Moscow has enjoyed this year – the ability to launch cruise missiles safely from deep inside Russia itself – is under threat. .......... “We attack where they are weak and defend where they are strong,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s former defence minister said. He described Ukraine’s military tactics as essentially “opportunistic”. Russia by contrast, he continued, was waging an all-out “unidirectional” assault to capture the town of Bakhmut, in the eastern Donbas region, despite huge losses of Russian soldiers and equipment. .......... There could be further offensives before spring, Zagorodnyuk said. ........ The latest guerilla-style raid on Monday shows Ukraine’s tactical ingenuity in its bitter battle against Russia. And Kyiv’s continuing capacity to surprise. ........ Kyiv does not always tell its allies before it conducts certain types of risky military operations ........ the Ukrainians deliberately avoid disclosing attacks the west might try to dissuade them from carrying out ......... Attacks deep inside Russian territory are an area of particular sensitivity. ....... The Biden administration has indicated it is wary of coming into direct military conflict with Russia and fearful of nuclear escalation. The Kremlin says it is already at war with the US, and the west – and considers Ukraine to be a US-run puppet state. The White House has supplied Kyiv with almost $20bn in military and security assistance so far, but has refused to deliver long-range munitions that would allow Kyiv to strike Russia directly. ....... Further surprises can be expected. .
Ecstasy Gives Way to Despair in a Liberated Ukrainian City Kherson has been whipsawed by occupation, liberation and now dread. It’s a lonely place. And cold........ In a city overflowing with fear, there is one part of town considered more lethal than any other: the river. ....... Each day Russian shells sail across the muddy gray water and blow up somewhere in the maze of apartment blocks and small homes beyond. The Dnipro River, which flows languidly around the city of Kherson, has become the front line. People duck behind trees and peek carefully around buildings, squinting across the water. This is where you can see Russian-occupied territory with your naked eye and where snipers lurk. ........ Now Kherson is deserted. It is cold. The people here say they are lonely. And the streets are glazed with ice. ............ The lights are off on the main street. The smell of soot from wood-burning fires wafts through the thin winter air. The electricity grid in Kherson, as in so many other Ukrainian cities, has been relentlessly pounded by Russian missiles, an attempt to bring this country to its knees, and people are burning logs to heat their homes. ............ “In other parts of the world, people are beginning to celebrate the holidays,” she said. “Here there is nothing to be glad about.” ......... She listed the woes: No electricity. No running water. No heat. She also has no customers. Soon, she said, she will have no job. ........... Many people left right after liberation. More have evacuated since. ......... “I haven’t been in a classroom for three years,” said Liosha, 11, counting the time off since the Covid pandemic and then the war. “I actually want to be in school.” ......... Russian troops often fire on the town at night, when people are sleeping. People here feel especially vulnerable because there are not many bomb shelters or cellars as there are in most Ukrainian cities, relics of the Cold War. The water table is too high to dig them. ....... in a city with a prewar population of around 300,000, maybe a few thousand folks are left in the center of town. .......... On Seniavyna Street on Sunday afternoon, a shell hit a 10-story apartment building. Tetiana Roshchyna was in her kitchen making meatball soup. The explosion shook the whole block. The windows exploded, creating a blizzard of glass. ......... “You have to understand this is purely a residential area,” she said. “No military. No factories. Just apartments.” ........ Kherson used to be a major industrial hub, home to one of Ukraine’s biggest ports, which shipped steel and grain to the world. Now the main port building is covered in graffiti. Its windows are smashed. Snow blows inside. ............... Anatoliy Makarenko, a neighbor, said that when he looked at the damaged buildings, he wanted “to grab an automatic weapon” and fight the Russians himself. He is 75.
War and Sanctions Threaten to Thrust Russia’s Economy Back in Time While Russia’s economy has not collapsed, an exodus of Western companies is eroding hard-won progress, and experts say the worst may be yet to come. ........ The slowdown in auto manufacturing is one of the most tangible signs of the effects of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy........... More than nine months after the invasion, neither the war effort nor the economy has collapsed, and the economic pain is still limited for many Russians. Mr. Putin has avoided any substantive domestic pressure that would threaten his leadership. But the impact of what some have described as the most coordinated and deepest economic sanctions in modern history is evident in communities across Russia — and the worst may be yet to come. .......... The sanctions have stymied Russia’s faltering attempts to modernize its economy along Western lines and to catch up to European living standards after the fall of the Soviet Union ........ That has dimmed the hope that the country could become a modern, prosperous nation in the near term. ......... “It’s like a cake that was dropped on the table and it looks more or less fine, but inside it’s all blown up’’ .......... Carmakers employ 300,000 Russians ....... up to 3.5 million more work in related industries. ......... Russian industries are highly dependent on Western components. ....... Even Mr. Putin has acknowledged the problem, admitting last week that, in some sectors, dependence on imported parts is as high as 90 percent. .......... To adapt, Russia is turning inward, cutting ties with the rest of the world and moving toward an economic model similar to one adopted by Iran, where political legitimacy rests on providing citizens with the essentials rather than spurring transformative growth .......... Russia’s government was better prepared to withstand the sanctions than many in the West expected. ......... “Sanctions have not destroyed the resilience of the Russian financial system, nor have they impacted macroeconomic stability,” Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said last week during a government meeting. ........ A combination of high oil revenues, large currency reserves and an expert team of economic officials has allowed Mr. Putin to soften the blow — much to the frustration of some Western leaders who had hoped the sanctions would have more bite by now. ......... But the loss of investment, technology and skills caused by the sanctions is likely to echo across generations, depriving many Russians of a chance at a better economic future .......... In June, AvtoVAZ, which makes Russia’s best-known domestic car brand, the Lada, announced that its new cars would meet only 1996 emissions standards and have no passenger-side airbags. ........ In a symbolic move, an AvtoVAZ affiliate, Kamaz, announced that it would use a Moscow plant vacated by Renault after the invasion to relaunch the production of a Soviet-era car brand, Moskvich, or Muscovite, which had long been an almost comical byword for the deficiencies of Communist consumer goods. ......... modern history offers few examples of successful attempts to replace imported Western technology with local substitutes ....... Russian companies lack the know-how and skilled workers to replace Western capital in technology-intensive sectors. Relying on homegrown substitutes will result in “primitivization,” Mr. Inozemtsev said. ........... “After the mobilization, the banks stopped giving out loans because the clients could be called up” ........ “What we’re seeing is falling income, broad depression, less consumption.
The Rise of the International Nationalists The political and social battles being fought in the U.S. and across Europe are part of a single conflict over the nature of Western civilization.......... Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary highlighted the importance of the year 2024 because of the conjunction of the American presidential election and the European parliamentary elections. Mr. Orban spoke of these two events as if they were simply different fronts in a single war — a war of values......... Mr. Orban’s speech highlights a striking feature of contemporary nationalism: its international character. ........ Mr. Orban sees himself as the keeper of the true flame of Europeanness. ....... A Hungarian institution whose shareholders include friends of Mr. Orban bankrolled Marine Le Pen’s 2022 run for the French presidency to the tune of more than 10 million euros. .......... Steve Bannon, a former strategist for President Trump, attempted to set up a sort of elite training academy for right-wing activists in an 800-year-old Italian monastery — an academy that would have been explicitly and deliberately international in its intake and ambitions .......... Mr. Bannon’s school was to be called the Academy for the Judeo-Christian West and sought applicants who wanted to defend Western civilization. ........ Most of them have an attachment to a set of values and a sense of national identity that might be described as “Christian.” ....... Marine Le Pen insists that her country’s national principles of liberté, égalité and fraternité ultimately stem from its “Christian heritage.” ......... One way in which this sense of Christian identity manifests itself is in hostility to Muslim immigration. ......... For today’s Christian nationalists, however, the real “other” is not Islam — it is contemporary secular culture. This secular culture is clearly the heir of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, hence the habit of referring to the moral and social principles it espouses as “Enlightenment” values. ......... From St. Petersburg, Russia, to St. Petersburg, Fla., woke ideology and the L.G.B.T.Q. lobby are the enemies, which is why Mr. Orban was able to show up in Dallas and talk to his audience in terms that they immediately and intuitively understood. .........
the war in Ukraine sometimes seems to be a grotesque extension of these culture wars into the realm of state-level warfare.
........ The Russian side presents itself as fighting in defense of a Christian civilization against a depraved secular culture that has taken root in what it calls “the West.” This is the basis on which Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Orthodox Church in Russia, feels able to give his explicit and enthusiastic backing to the war. Indeed, he claims that the sins of Russian soldiers who die fighting in Ukraine will be washed away. Mr. Putin himself berates the “outright Satanism’‘ of Western countries, as well as their “overthrow of faith and traditional values.” ....... And it is hard not to feel that Mr. Putin’s greatest crime, for some of these people, is that by resorting to naked violence, he has disgraced and discredited their project and handed their opponents a significant moral victory.
China invented covid-19 lockdowns. During the first weeks of the pandemic, the government of Xi Jinping corralled tens of millions of people to stop the disease spreading out of Wuhan. Almost three years later, lockdowns have become China’s undoing. A combination of protests and rising cases means that Mr Xi will have to navigate between mass lockdowns and mass infection—and possibly end up with both. The coming months will pose the biggest threat to his rule since he came to power in 2012 and the biggest threat to the authority of the Communist Party since the protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989. ........ Last weekend in Beijing protesters called for “freedom”; in Shanghai they demanded that Mr Xi step down. The crowds were small, but in a place as heavily policed as China it is remarkable they ever formed. ........ The zero-covid policy started as a stunning success, by sparing millions of Chinese lives. At first, less disease also meant less economic harm. For the past three years, most Chinese have got on with things. Month after month, state media trumpeted that this proves Mr Xi and the party are competent and humane, unlike decadent Western politicians presiding over mass death. .......... These words have now turned to ash. Mr Xi’s policies have left China ill-protected against an endemic virus that is becoming harder to control. ........ The party is willing to lock down millions for weeks on end, but it has failed to deal with vaccine scepticism among the elderly......... Unless China changes course, its resilience to covid will fade. The latest subvariants are more infectious than Omicron, which is more infectious than Delta. Protection from serious disease and death decays much faster in those who have only been vaccinated than it does in those who have been infected as well. ........ In a world with plenty of vaccines and antivirals, the benefits of Mr Xi’s zero-covid policy are no longer accruing, even as the economic and social costs continue to mount. The number of domestic flights in China is down by 45% year on year, road freight is 33% lower and traffic on city metros has fallen by 32%. Urban youth unemployment is almost 18%, nearly double what it was in 2018. ........ a sharp increase in restrictions as infections took hold across the country........... By making the zero-covid policy into a test of loyalty, Mr Xi has turned a health crisis into a political one. By imposing the daily apparatus of detection and enforcement, he has cut against the idea that his covid policy puts “people first” and instead
brought an unbending authoritarian state into every home
. By sticking with zero-covid despite the effects on the economy, he has cast doubt on one of the party’s chief claims to power—that only it can guarantee stability and prosperity. .......... In the best scenario China will experience an exit wave of deaths and disease, and economic disruption........ whether the system of surveillance and control that the party has laboured to create is able to withstand mass dissent. ........ During his first ten years in power Mr Xi exerted increasing control over politics and the economy without paying a price. Covid throws all of that into doubt.
, of Lord Ram ........ The temple, which is being paid for with public and private money, is scheduled to open in early 2024, a few months before India’s next general election. A vast monument constructed in marble, sandstone and teak, it will contain three storeys and 392 pillars. ...... Locals complain that the town lacks basic services such as clean water, medical facilities and garbage disposal.
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” - C.S. Lewis
Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
C. S. Lewis
— Historical Christian Quotes (@ReformedPastors) December 1, 2022
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” - C.S. Lewis
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis
“We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
The Man Who Inspired C.S. Lewis Without George MacDonald, we may not have had C.S. Lewis. ........ Clive Staples Lewis ...... The discovery of George MacDonald was the catalyst that began a chain of events in Lewis’s life that eventually led him out of atheism and into Christianity. ....... It might seem strange that fantasy could lead a man to God, but Lewis writes that MacDonald’s fantastical realms acted to “convert, even to baptize my imagination”. As Lewis read more of MacDonald’s work, he began to understand that “new quality” he could never quite put a finger on wasn’t separate from MacDonald’s faith, but rather was an essential part of it......... Fantasy literature has the unique ability to take a real-world concept and divorce it from its familiar moorings. Real wars become imaginary quests. The lust for power takes the form of an irresistible magical ring. Human greed becomes a dragon. And so readers can learn about the most incredibly complex, beautiful, or frightening shades of humanity without every truly realizing it. ........... Consider the parables of Christ—stories that convey truth about the nature of God through stories about the natural world. .......... Fantasy is just as capable of illustrating the mystery and beauty of God and what lies beyond death, but it does so by arresting our attention with stories of the fantastic rather than the natural. .......... Unable to resist these new ideas about the divine, C.S. Lewis finally capitulated in 1929, when
he knelt and accepted God as God
. Within a few years of his conversion, Lewis published “The Pilgrim’s Regress,” the first a 30-year stream of Christian apologetics works. ........... MacDonald was a man fascinated with God’s ability to love. .......... between 1851 and 1897, MacDonald authored over 50 books across a variety of genres—novels, sermons, essays, fairy tales, and plays ........ he felt that ornate ceremony and rote rituals just got in between mankind and a personal encounter with God. ........ he believed that the Christian Church was not the only thing that revealed God, but rather that all creation reveals God all the time, that there is divine mystery inherent to everything. ............
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
.
10 Awesome Facts About the Bible The Good Book is always captivating. ........ around 2.5 billion copies were printed between 1815 and 1975 ....... "Christianity is the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth." ....... The Bible is available in 426 languages and the New Testament is available in 1,115 languages, but there is more work to be done according to christianresearch.org. There are "Over 4,500 languages still wait for even one book of the Bible. This means millions either have no access to the Bible at all or can only encounter it in something other than their heart language." .
In a previously unthinkable scenario, Chinese protesters angry about the draconian COVID measures are asking Xi to go. That’s not the way he wants to start a week full of diplomatic meetings, including with European Council president Michel in Beijing. https://t.co/1Q8zaHGlmO
China is not afraid of any foreign power. What terrifies China is the free will of the Chinese people. To the CCP, a single Chinese citizen asking questions is far more dangerous than a thousand enemy soldiers.
The deadly consequences of #XiJinping's insane, inhumane, barbaric murderous zero Covid policy are there to see in the appalling horror in #Urumqi, where people died in a fire because they were locked in#CCP is not a government, it's a slaughter househttps://t.co/1qLEQewHri
State media said the compound had been categorised as low risk for Covid, But people were only allowed to leave their homes for short periods each day and the timing was controlled by authorities.#Urumqi#covid#chinahttps://t.co/Nu6xTJZtYt
Videos Show How Covid Protests Are Spreading Across China Shanghai protesters, police jostle as anger over China's COVID curbs mounts. Wave of civil disobedience unprecedented under President Xi ..... Rising frustration over Xi's zero-COVID policy ...... Apartment fire in Urumqi last Thursday killed 10 ...... Vigils turn to protests in cities including Beijing, Shanghai ...... Prestigious Beijing university students stage protest .......... The wave of civil disobedience, which has spread to other cities including Beijing, is unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago and comes amid mounting frustration over his signature zero-COVID policy. ....... China has spent nearly three years living with some of the strictest COVID curbs in the world. ....... Many of Urumqi's 4 million residents have been under some of the country's longest lockdowns, barred from leaving their homes for as long as 100 days. ...... Another protestor, Shaun Xiao, said: "I’m here because I love my country, but I don’t love my government...I want to be able to go out freely, but I can’t. Our COVID-19 policy is a game and is not based on science or reality." ....... "Down with the Chinese Communist Party, down with Xi Jinping", according to witnesses and videos posted on social media, in a rare public protest against the country's leadership. ........ China has stuck with Xi's zero-COVID policy even as much of the world has lifted most restrictions. While low by global standards, China's cases have hit record highs for days, with nearly 40,000 new infections on Saturday. ......... China defends the policy as life-saving and necessary to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system. Officials have vowed to continue with it despite the growing public pushback and its mounting economic toll. ........ The world's second-largest economy is also facing other headwinds including a global recession risks and a property downturn. ........ Widespread public protest is extremely rare in China, where room for dissent has been all but eliminated under Xi, forcing citizens mostly to vent on social media, where they play cat-and-mouse with censors. ........ the unrest is far from that seen in 1989, when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. He added that as long as Xi had China's elite and the military on his side, he would not face any meaningful risk to his hold on power. ......... This weekend, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui called for the region to step up security maintenance and curb the "illegal violent rejection of COVID-prevention measures".
"The calls for negotiations, like the strategically inane revelations of our fears of escalation—inane because they practically invite the Russians to get inside our head and rattle us—are dangerous," @EliotACohen writes: https://t.co/2hCzKRx6X2
By Eliot A. Cohen
The Atlantic
NOVEMBER 21, 2022, 11:08 AM ET
In recent weeks, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, created alarm among Ukraine’s friends by suggesting in several forums that Ukraine has fought Russian forces to a “standstill,” and that given the emerging stalemate on the ground and the onset of winter, the time may be ripe for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
Other news reports indicated that the United States was denying Ukraine long-range Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, and the national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to at least signal openness to talks with Russia. As criticism of Milley’s remarks and the administration’s seemingly qualified embrace of talks erupted, backpedaling immediately ensued. Milley, anonymous officials told The New York Times, was ahead of the rest of the administration. In public, the Biden administration insisted that any decision to turn to diplomacy would be Ukraine’s, and no deals would be made behind its back.
Milley is a man of strong views, candidly expressed in private and in public but not always carefully prepared in advance. It is a reasonable guess that he was not all that far out from where the administration is. But intentionally or not, he amplified a view that has risen from whisper to murmur: that it is time to think about how to bring the war in Ukraine to a close. On television and in foreign-policy journals, similar—indeed more pronounced—versions of these views may be heard.
There is a large dose of what one might call “baloney realism” in the judicious declarations by those—most of them tepid at best in their support of Ukraine’s cause to begin with—who say that
all wars must end in negotiations
. No, they do not have to. These self-styled foreign-policy adults evidently failed to notice that America’s protracted negotiations with the Taliban had nothing to do with the Biden administration’s ending of that war with a skedaddle rather than a deal.
Russia’s Afghan war ended the same way, although it executed its withdrawal more brutally and more skillfully than America’s. The 1991 Iraq War ended with a cease-fire negotiated (badly, on the American part) at gunpoint; the 2003 war in surrender. One need not reach for Winston Churchill’s refusal to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or Abraham Lincoln’s refusal to negotiate with Jefferson Davis to realize that not all wars end in a diplomatically arranged peace. Ukraine is fighting for its survival as a state and as a distinct people. In some sense, for that matter, this is a similarly existential conflict for the Putin regime, whose survival (though not Russia’s) requires victory.
The argument for diplomacy now is wrongheaded. Those who have systematically underestimated the will of Ukrainians to fight to the death, their skill in making use of what they have, their ability to absorb a bewildering array of modern military technologies, and their operational and tactical cunning are likely making yet more tactical misjudgments. The long, increasingly dug-in Russian front line is not comparable to the Western Front in World War I. At a length of 1,000 kilometers, even after the dispersal of Russian forces west of the Dnipro River, it is far less densely held than the trench lines of France and Belgium in 1915.
The assertion that winter makes operations difficult to the point of near impossibility is baseless. The United States has not fought a winter campaign since the Korean War 70 years ago. The Ukrainians have been fighting them every year since 2014, when Russia invaded the Donbas. In this, as in other respects, it would behoove Western experts to acknowledge that there is more that we can learn from the Ukrainians about crucial aspects of modern war than they can learn from us.
The calls for negotiations, like the strategically inane revelations of our fears of escalation—inane because they practically invite the Russians to get inside our head and rattle us—are dangerous. It is the nature of a small, embattled ally to look over its shoulder at those who support it today but may lack the grit required to do so over a long period of time. These calls telegraph a lack of strategic patience and staying power that only encourages Russia. Moreover, an official, understated discussion of talks can take a particularly disingenuous form: The decision to negotiate is yours, but we won’t give you the weapons to get any further than you have gone.
Such hypocrisy is the norm in international politics, but this is one of those moments where the stakes are too high for normal foreign policy. To his credit, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave a ringing depiction of the Western stake in the Ukraine war in his speech at the Halifax International Security Forum. He made it clear that Russia’s aggression is a threat to European security and to NATO, and that it is an assault on our fundamental values as well as the international order. The question is whether the Biden administration will have the nerve to follow through on the implications of those declarations.
Still, one might say, we need to have some notion of how this war could end or will end. One possibility—unlikely but not completely out of the question—is that at some point Ukraine will sue for peace, accepting the loss of more territory than it already lost to Russia in 2014. Absent a battlefield collapse or a cruel limitation by the Western powers of the arms supply and economic aid on which Kyiv depends, this is conceivable, but highly unlikely.
More important is our goal, and our theory of victory. The West cannot intend merely to “help Ukraine defend itself”—a mushy phrase for a mushy idea.
We must help Ukraine defeat Russian aggression and expel Russian forces from within Ukraine’s recognized international borders.
How does this lead to success? Ukrainian tank armies will not roll into Moscow to dictate peace, of course. But throughout Russian history, defeat on the periphery—Crimea in the 1850s, the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century, and Afghanistan in the 1980s—has led to political change domestically. It is perfectly reasonable to see that as our objective.
The means to that end are clear: extensive and unstinting arming of Ukraine with all weaponry short of nuclear bombs, and a crushing and comprehensive system of economic sanctions on an isolated Russia.
Although the Western states have begun to increase their arms production, they have yet to pursue the kind of bold industrial mobilization needed to arm Ukraine, rearm Western Europe, and build the arsenals that strengthen our posture in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. In the immediate term, the United States and its allies should provide Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles, which would allow Ukraine to hit with devastating effect all targets within its recognized territory, and finally sever the Kerch Strait Bridge, which is vital for Russian resupply. The West must push a lot harder to cut off Russia from the global economy, applying secondary sanctions as needed. And the United States needs to lean harder on allies and neutrals than it has so far.
In particular, the time has come to begin the comprehensive reequipping of Ukraine with a tank fleet superior to that of Russia. The easiest measure would be to tap the large numbers of mothballed German-made Leopard tanks held not only in that country but in others that have indicated their willingness to supply them to Ukraine. The United States should help reequip the Ukrainian air force—remarkably, still flying and flying effectively in the teeth of Russian air defenses—with F-16s from our own and others’ large holdings of inactive planes. And the U.S. must pressure laggard allies and clients—Israel, most notably, which desires our help against Iran but has disgracefully refused to do enough to help Ukraine defend its civilian population from waves of Iranian drones—to provide effective assistance, particularly with air defense.
There will be talks at some point. But they are less likely to resemble the Congress of Vienna than the palaver that American Marines had with Taliban forces surrounding the Kabul airport on their way out. In the meanwhile, time to pass the ammunition and to stop talking about talking.
In her two decades atop the House Democratic caucus, whether in the majority or the minority, she has been a strikingly effective leader in part because she doesn’t much give a flip about her public image. What matters to her is getting stuff done — be it passing legislation, thwarting the opposition’s agenda or protecting her members come election time. She is brutally pragmatic (too much so for some in her caucus) and has a shrewd sense of the political pressure points of allies and opponents alike. She doesn’t hog the credit for her clever ideas, nor does she waste time publicly rationalizing or blaming others for her bad ones. No one outworks her, and aides and allies have happily cultivated the legend of her endless energy. (Key points: Doesn’t need sleep. Runs on chocolate.) ......... That whole grandmother-in-pearls thing led many to assume that she could be talked down to or outmaneuvered or intimidated. More than one Republican president and congressional leader has seen his best-laid plans shatter against her vaguely awkward, excessively bright smile. ........ Mr. Bush’s second-term goal of remaking Social Security never had a prayer. Even President Donald Trump was clearly in awe of her and had no idea how to deal with her treating him like a petulant man-child. He still doesn’t. The poor guy can’t even come up with an insulting nickname for her that sticks. ......... she is a political creature not of San Francisco so much as of Baltimore, where she was raised in a local Democratic dynasty. Her father, “Big Tommy” D’Alesandro, went from Maryland’s House of Delegates to five terms in Congress to three as mayor of Baltimore. She and her brothers learned to count votes and knock on doors practically from birth. Constituent service was a quasi-religion, and starting at age 13, each D’Alesandro child spent several hours a week fielding constituent requests and helping maintain a “favor file” on everyone they assisted. “We dealt with human nature in the raw” ........ The transactional, pragmatic politics of her youth have served Ms. Pelosi well as leader. When it comes time to whip votes or cut a deal, she has her own version of a favor file to consult: She knows precisely what the members need — not to be confused with what they want — and how much they can reasonably risk to take one for the team. Time and again, she has wheedled, negotiated and threatened her restive members into line to pass legislation ranging from Obamacare, which the speaker cites as her proudest legislative achievement, to last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package and the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really more about reducing health care costs and tackling climate change. ......... She is a demanding, micromanaging control freak who loosened her iron grip on her caucus only when threatened with internal revolt. ........ And her personal brand has been burnished by her cool handling of the assault on her husband and the recently released video showing her poise during the Jan. 6 insanity. (With Congress under attack, she was ripping open a beef stick with her teeth? Ice-cold.) ......... The only leader who even approaches Ms. Pelosi in terms of effectiveness (if little else) may be from the other chamber: Mitch McConnell, the long-serving chief of Senate Republicans....... She elbowed her way to the tippy top of the congressional boys’ club, then set about distinguishing herself as the most formidable, most effective House leader since the middle of the last century. Love her or hate her, you have to acknowledge the fundamental badassery. .
Cybertruck is something special that comes along once in a long while
Russia's invading forces are on the run in Ukraine. Now the allies must commit to ending this war by giving Ukraine everything it needs to liberate the rest of its land and its people. Do not forget the people! This is the only path to peace.
When I saw so many "smart" people that I respect become so "goo-goo-gaa-gaa" over a billionaire buying @Twitter simply because they thought they got an illusion of "freedom" and decided to never question it again...that's what bothered me.
The entire reason that crypto exploded in the last two years wasn't because it was the next technology wave, which you already knew...it was simply because 40% of the world's money supply was created, and dirty money had to be washed and paid for some how.
Here is the full video: 1 min of entertainment & 57 seconds of respect.
•Rahul Gandhi asked to play national SONG. •They played national anthem of Nepal. •They stopped and played national ANTHEM of India. •But they were actually playing all 5 paragraphs of Jan Gan Man 😭 pic.twitter.com/V4o0nH3WxW
Foundation stone was laid for construction of 162 km Panagarh to Dankuni (NH-2) 6-lane road stretch at total cost of Rs. 4215 Crore.The construction of this route will enhance connectivity to Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and the Bay of Bengal
Female migrant workers in #Qatar speak out against sexual harrassment in #WorldCup2022 hotels.
As if 6500 darker-skinned dead migrant workers from Nepal, Pakistan & India wasn't enough of a price to pay for the joy of Arab sheiks in long flowing frocks. https://t.co/QW2DVpuBtlhttps://t.co/SW3ysWtnA0
