Chinese leader Xi Jinping's coercion is destroying his own economy --
Football provides a useful way to understand the dead end into which Xi Jinping is leading the Chinese economy. This month, a 7-0 loss by China’s men’s team to Japan in an Asian Cup qualifier marked the colossal failure of a decade-long multi-billion dollar project to turn China into a footballing s...
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3630108
The [Chinese economic] model that has powered four decades of breakneck economic growth was reliant on cheap exports and wasteful state-led investment in property and infrastructure. It is no longer sustainable. It has led to soaring debt and diminishing returns, with China littered with ghost cities, containing 60 to 100 million empty or incomplete homes, while companies accounting for 40% of China’s home sales have defaulted. It is widely agreed that China needs to rebalance its economy, that consumers need to spend more, since private consumption accounts for just 39% of the economy – extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68%). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80% of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net.
China's leader Xi Jinping ho
Make No Mistake: Destroying Hospitals Is Part of the Kremlin’s Strategy --
Opinion | The news from Kyiv on July 8 about another attack on Ukrainian cities, with missiles hitting medical infrastructure – including Ukraine's largest children's hospital – is shocking.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/644459
The news from Kyiv on July 8 about another attack on Ukrainian cities, with missiles hitting medical infrastructure – including Ukraine's largest children's hospital – is shocking. Alas, these events come as no surprise when we look at how attacking hospitals is not unintentional, but part of a strategy Russia has deployed before.
We saw this in Syria following Moscow’s 2015 intervention. If the trend in Ukraine continues, it is plausible that the Russian army will continue to use its toolbox that we have already seen in Syrian cities.
Russia sent military forces to support President Bashar al-Assad's regime at a time when Syrian rebels were mere miles away from the presidential palace in Damascus. Taking advantage of the civil war, Moscow e
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces ---
The premier's policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from
For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.
The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
[...]
Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud fact
Don’t fall into the trap of ‘picking sides’ over Gaza: Hamas’s attacks were unconscionable, razing Gaza to the ground would be abhorrent. In both cases, basic humanity is at stake ---
![Don’t fall into the trap of ‘picking sides’ over Gaza: Hamas’s attacks were unconscionable, razing Gaza to the ground would be abhorrent. In both cases, basic humanity is at stake --- [Opinion] - Feddit](https://lemdro.id/pictrs/image/1324bc6b-631c-4d59-bec7-2da603cb6fd7.png?format=webp)
Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/5185724
Original link is here: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/israel/gaza-war/63691/alan-rusbridger-gaza-war-israel-hamas