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Tue FP&IE Daily Open Thread:

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Welcome to an all day open thread hosted by “Foreign Policy and International Events Group”. Drop by to share links and stories or for commentary. (or just play peekaboo and say look what I found). Who are we and what we are trying do → Launching A Dailykos Discussions and Republishing Group For International or Foreign Policy Stuff

We use sources and links that might not familiar to most kossacks, what with this being a Foreign Policy and International stuffs group. So press right mouse button on links and open in new incognito/private tab/window to reduce your tensions somewhat.

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Starting off with India, Al Jazeera has a robust feature running with curated live news update from India. India Covid Live Update. A continously updated collection of articles as and when they appear.


Chile: Outrage in Chile: Clothing celebrating Pinochet dictatorship’s “death flights” go on sale online

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A well-known international sale and auction of products website offers clothing that exalts one of the most atrocious crimes of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, that occurred during his military dictatorship: the so-called “death flights”.

This was one of the most terrible formulas used by the repressive agencies of the military dictatorship in Chile. According to the reports provided by subsequent investigations such as Valech and Rettig, which provided data on the crimes against humanity committed during the regime, dropping bodies from aircraft into the sea was a recurring practice.

In fact, there are countless accounts of the disappearance of men and women, of whom there is no trace to this day.

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France: Eric Zeusse, Marine Le Pen Has the Strongest Chance to Succeed, Of All Progressive Political Leaders in the World Today

Marine Le Pen has continued her gradual political rise in France so that in the French political polling she now stands as the likeliest to succeed the man who beat her in 2017, Emmanuel Macron. If she does that, then she will probably bring bigger changes to international relations than any national leader has done ever since U.S. President Harry S. Truman started the Cold War on 25 July 1945.

She is the daughter of the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen, but after taking over leadership of the far-right Party that he had founded, she expelled him from it, and has made increasingly clear, since then, that she is a progressive (including a passionate opposition to any imperialism) — so much so that now the Wikipedia article on her, in its section “Political Positions”, presents political viewpoints that would be hard to distinguish from those of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders in America, and of Jeremy Corbyn in UK. The biggest difference, perhaps, between her and those other progressives, is simply that whereas in U.S. and UK the dominant political ideology is imperialist-fascist (springing from the Englishman Cecil Rhodes in the late 19th Century), that’s not so in France. (Twentieth Century France had nothing like Cecil Rhodes — a leading and impassioned champion of racist aristocratic rule.) Consequently, French public opinion isn’t as hostile toward progressivism as is the case in U.S. and UK. (Progressivism is the exact opposite ideology to imperialistic fascism.) So, a larger percentage of the French are willing to consider voting for a progressive candidate. A larger percentage in U.S. and UK are closed-minded, refusing even to consider a progressive, but instead vote only for regressive candidates. Therefore, France, today, is less imperialist-fascist (less pro-aristocratic) than are U.S. and UK, both of which are more controlled by billionaires, in both of the country’s main Parties, than is the case in France.

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Over at Foreign Affairs some blunt advice (good or bad?) for the Biden Administration from Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman China and Russia’s Dangerous Convergence

How to Counter an Emerging Partnership

On March 23, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, sat down for an auspiciously timed meeting. The high-level talks came just a day after an unusually heated public exchange between senior U.S. and Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska, and in sharp contrast, the Chinese and Russian foreign ministers struck an amicable tone. Together, they rejected Western criticism of their human rights records and issued a joint statement offering an alternative vision for global governance. The U.S.-led international order, Lavrov said, “does not represent the will of the international community.”

The meeting was noteworthy for more than its rhetoric, however. Within days of it, Russia began amassing troops along Ukraine’s border—the largest number since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Simultaneously, China began conducting highly publicized amphibious assault exercises and air incursions into Taiwan’s so-called air defense identification zone at the highest frequency in nearly 25 years. These military moves have reignited concerns in Washington about the potential depth of Chinese-Russian coordination.

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SCMP Mandy Zuo Number of unhappy wives in China more than doubled since 2012

  • One in five women in China said last year that they regret getting married
  • Concerns about domestic violence, household responsibilities and unequal public policies fuel their doubts about marriage

It was one of those midnight musings, so common during adulthood, when the regrets and triumphs of our lives become vibrant characters dancing in our minds.

Liu Fang wrote a simple statement on Weibo that read: “What I regret most in my life is getting married and having a kid. How wonderful to just be alone!” Her post captured an increasingly common reality in China, where many people, primarily women, are questioning the institution of marriage itself.

Liu, 38, has been married for seven years and has a six-year-old son. When she first got married, she expected her happiness to be doubled and her sorrow halved, she said in an interview.

But the Shanghai woman, a white-collar employee at a financial data firm, said: “It turned out to be work tripled. The work in the office, the chores at home and the childcare work; I’ve been thinking about divorce all the time.”

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Canada: Eurasia review (3 May 2021) Taras Kuzio of Geopolitical Monitor Canadian Foreign Policy Can’t Simultaneously Support Territorial Integrity And Separatism – OpEd

North America ganged up on fellow NATO member Turkey in April. US President Joe Biden’s decision to recognize the 1915 massacres of Armenians as a ‘genocide’ came only two weeks after Canada banned the sale of military technology to Turkey which it had used in drones it sold to Azerbaijan. The US decision was all the more difficult to comprehend because Biden had come to power promising to rebuild Trans-Atlantic relations and re-energize US leadership of NATO.

With US-Turkish relations set to be in the doldrums for the remainder of Biden’s four-year presidency, his rush to recognize the genocide will make his avowed task impossible to accomplish. Canadian and US policies seemingly ignore the strategic importance of Turkey in the South Caucasus and Greater Middle East. Perhaps Ottawa and Washington need reminding Turkey has the second largest army in NATO.

Armenia’s alignment with Russia for over three decades is always ignored when Western policies are made toward the South Caucasus. Armenia was a founding member of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), Russia’s ostensible answer to NATO. Armenia is also a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s answer to the European Union.

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Global Voices HongKong Oiwan Lam Taiwan, ‘the most dangerous place on Earth'? Not according to Taiwanese.

British magazine The Economist's cover story on Taiwan this week elicited strong reactions on Taiwanese Twitter, with many users showing astonishment at the headline, “Taiwan: The most dangerous place on Earth.”

The Economist's story focuses on the tensions between the United States and China and depicts the self-ruling island as an arena where these hostilities play out.

Many users criticized this choice of framing:

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To round off Indlieb Farazi Saber Al Jazeera (03 May 2021) feature A Muslim history of the UK

Sadiya Ahmed has been busy during Britain’s latest COVID-19 lockdown. She has produced a podcast, created a heritage photography competition, and is working on setting up a Muslim History module to run alongside the national curriculum.

It is all part of this former tutor’s aim to ensure British Muslim history takes its rightful place within mainstream British history.

“Muslims aren’t just on the margins of British society, but are part of British society,” she says.

She wants to place their stories alongside the already documented “mainstream” British history in archives, museums and academia.

“It gives our communities an authenticated representation and claim to British history, as ‘our history’, one we are evidently part of.”

It is a mission many historians say is long overdue.

There is “a popular [mis]perception that Muslims in Britain are an alien presence, people who have arrived here only recently. In other words, they lack roots, and because of that they lack ties and emotional bonds with this country”, explains historian Humayun Ansari.

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Uganda Daily Monitor (04 May 2021)  Deep shock would grip a reincarnated African race

Viewing the world through today’s scan, it is hard to imagine a self reliant and even dominant Africa. Many people find no place in their imagination for the African in a position of superior skill and ability that would suffice for self-reliance in virtually all spheres of life. This perception of the African is well supplied by the crisis of confidence, which is rife amongst Africans themselves, and the accompanying self-doubt.

The connection between the African race and a glorious existence is a faint one. There is not a reportable amount of hope for it on home ground and the related deficit of optimism is as real as the continent’s current challenges.  However, past African races had firm grip of their affairs and might be pretty surprised that their descendents are the world’s underdogs of today, were they to witness our world now.

Enjoy The day

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