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TGIF, TicToc readers! Kick-off the weekend in high spirits with these 10 feel-good stories from the past week.
1. A mind-reading exoskeleton helped a paralyzed man walk. Brain implants connected to the robotic suit let the 28-year-old move all four limbs, giving hope to patients with spinal cord injuries.
2. ...and a bionic vest is protecting the labor-intense auto industry. Assembly line workers are testing the $7,000 upper-body exoskeleton that can help extend their careers by reducing fatigue and preventing injury.
3. We found the best ballpark eats just in time for MLB playoffs. No matter who you're rooting for, the LA Dodgers pork belly bao buns and the Houston Astros Frito Pie corn dog are worth a stadium visit alone.
4. This nonprofit is diversifying the flight deck. With black women making up less than 1% of all airline pilots, Sisters of the Skies helps them navigate the industry to reach the captain's seat.
5. NASA revealed a mind-bending black hole simulation. The close-up visualization is the most-advanced yet and imitates how the supermassive phenomena warp the fabric of space and time.
6. ...and it beamed back the sounds of Mars. NASA's InSight lander, which put a seismometer on the planet, captured blistering gusts of wind, robotic arm movements and seismic activity.
7. Mattel launched the first-ever line of gender-neutral dolls. Designed to "keep labels out and invite everyone in," the genderless dolls come with an expansive wardrobe to let kids choose, or not choose.
8. New York Uber riders can chopper to JFK. The company opened its Uber Copter service between Lower Manhattan and JFK Airport to all riders and can get you there in eight minutes.
9. This Paralympian is on a crusade to ditch disability bias. Dylan Alcott is a celebrated wheelchair athlete, but his proudest feat is helping disabled people "get out there and live lives they want to live."
10. The Met returned an ancient relic to Egypt. Traffickers smuggled the 2,100-year-old gold coffin out of Africa before the museum acquired it. But now, the ornate antique is back home.
Have a great weekend! Watch your inbox for more good news every week. And send us your positive stories to amach6@bloomberg.net.
Bernie Sanders was hospitalized after a heart attack, his campaign announced Friday.
The 2020 Democratic hopeful had canceled a campaign event Tuesday after experiencing chest pain. He was subsequently diagnosed with a heart attack and treated in a hospital in the Las Vegas area. He has now been discharged.
Sanders said in a statement that he was feeling better and up to returning to the campaign trail.
"I want to thank the doctors, nurses, and staff at the Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center for the excellent care that they provided. After two and a half days in the hospital, I feel great, and after taking a short time off, I look forward to getting back to work," he said in the statement.
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House Democrats issued a subpoena to the White House for documents related to a whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump's interactions with Ukraine's leader.
It's the third subpoena House Democrats have issued since they launched a formal impeachment inquiry last week.
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Wall Street on Friday seemed fine with a jobs report everyone dreaded on Thursday. Investors saw the hiring rate—coming in below earlier estimates—as not bad enough to spark recession fears, but just bad enough to squeeze another rate cut out of the Fed. Chair Jerome Powell seemed to paint the same, moderately happy picture when he spoke in the afternoon. As for American workers, their wage growth came in at its weakest in more than a year. The question now is whether things stay the same or continue to deteriorate. —David E. Rovella
Here are today's top stories
Top American diplomats helped craft a proposed announcement by Ukraine's president that he would investigate unsubstantiated claims by President Donald Trump related to former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son. Also, a day after Vice President Mike Pence supported Trump's unprecedented call for foreign countries to investigate Biden, Congress asked Pence for documents about his own role in the scandal.
The latest Hong Kong democracy protests ended with a plain-clothes police employee shooting a protester as demonstrators called for a mass show of defiance against the government's newly imposed ban on masks. Earlier this week, police shot another protester at point-blank range.
A Chinese company is building subway cars in two U.S. factories, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. Industry rivals warn that it may soon take over the entire rail car industry.
The U.S. Treasury's inspector general said he is investigating how the department handled a request from Congress to turn over Trump's tax returns. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected the request.
The Trump administration recently created a new space agency over the objections of the Air Force. No, we're not talking about the "Space Force." There's another one, and the Pentagon wants $11 billion to pay for it.
For years, Europeans, Americans, Chinese and especially Britons dreamed of retiring in Thailand because it's warm, beautiful and inexpensive. Well, it's still warm and beautiful.
What's Luke Kawa thinking about? The Bloomberg cross-asset reporter says, even before today's underwhelming jobs report, the week was filled with data indicating that the U.S. is succumbing to global economic gravity. The debate now is whether the slowing economy is just America coming down from the sugar high of Republican tax cuts that largely benefited corporations and the rich, or the beginning of something worse.
What you'll need to know tomorrow
Microsoft alleged that Iran tried to hack the 2020 U.S. campaign.
When the story of Trump's impeachment is written, Oct. 3 is going to be one of the big days, Jonathan Bernstein writes in Bloomberg Opinion. It started off with Trump publicly asking China and Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, which was followed by bombshell after bombshell into the evening. Put it all together, and one thing is clear, Bernstein writes: The normal defenses that a president's allies in Congress would mount in such a situation are increasingly unavailable.
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AS PROTESTS EXPLODE, IRAQ MUST GET SERIOUS ABOUT REFORM by Bilal Wahab
PolicyWatch 3197 October 4, 2019
The public's demands are just and their patience is all but gone, so Baghdad needs to get on with the hard work of opening up the economy and providing critical services before the violence spirals out of control.
While Washington focuses on getting Baghdad to rein in militias and end its dependency on Iranian energy, Iraqi citizens have been seething about other matters. Fueled by anger at the government’s rampant corruption and failure to deliver services or jobs, a series of spontaneous, leaderless protests erupted in Baghdad on October 1 and spread to a number of towns in central and southern Iraq. Initially nonviolent, the demonstrations quickly drew lethal fire from security forces, which only enraged the protestors and increased their numbers. By week’s end, casualties had reached sixty-five dead and over a thousand wounded, including security personnel. The government crackdown also included an Internet blackout and curfews, which protestors promptly defied. The unrest could escalate further unless Baghdad presents credible pathways to providing employment and cleaning up corruption, areas that the United States can help with.
SYSTEM FAILURE
Iraq seemingly cannot deliver good governance. With post-Saddam leaders putting a premium on ethnosectarian representation and leaving state institutions to wither, the government has become a fractured entity with as many as 263 registered political parties. Its revenue-sharing/patronage system is too rife with abuses to drive effective economic policy, creating a vicious cycle: parties who made it into government via early elections have used their power to grant jobs and contracts to their supporters, aiming to secure votes in the next election. Meanwhile, wealth remains concentrated within the government—Iraq’s sole major export is oil, which accounts for 92 percent of the budget.
Such a system, while good at doling out transactional perks to party elites, has failed to provide the rest of the population with services, infrastructure, or jobs. Take the 2019 budget of $111.8 billion, which represents a 45 percent increase over 2018—more than half of it will go to public wages and pensions, eating away at the non-oil investment spending needed to develop a private sector. After a parade of such governments since 2003, the system seems to have run its course. There are only so many government jobs, and Iraq’s public sector is already among the world’s most bloated. Hence the bleak cry of one protestor this week: “We don’t want parties, we want a country to live in.”
Iraq’s democratic system may be failing as well. Many citizens believe that the isolated political elites are rigging the electoral system to stay in power, using their media outlets, business interests, and foreign connections to ensure their indistinguishable candidates keep winning. One poll indicated that only one in five Iraqis believe their country is still a democracy. As a result, voter turnout has steadily decreased, from 80 percent in 2005 to 44.5 percent in 2018, while protests have become seasonal affairs.
The latest outburst of public outrage was also triggered by the nationalist sentiment that has grown since the defeat of the Islamic State. The younger post-Saddam generation is proud of the army’s victory over the terrorists and the subsequent return of calm to most cities. Thus, when Prime Minister Adil Abdulmahdi announced earlier this week that he had removed the war’s most popular military figure, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, this sentiment boiled over. A fearless commander who spearheaded the battle for Mosul’s liberation and stayed on to help lead the elite Counter Terrorism Service, Saadi is the epitome of Iraqi national pride: he is Shia, but popular with Sunnis, and he rose through the ranks without relying on political patronage. His demotion brought all of the public’s simmering anger about the rigged system to the surface.
In addition, the younger, web-connected generation knows that it makes little sense for such a rich country to have so many poor people, shabby roads, dilapidated hospitals, and broken schools. Thus, when security personnel use water cannons to forcibly disperse a peaceful protest by jobseekers with graduate degrees, the resultant rage is hardly surprising. Many are also uneasy about the rise of certain militias within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which played a laudable role in saving the country from the Islamic State but are now becoming part of a new, more dangerous network that has accelerated corruption and openly challenged state authority.
Like his predecessors, the prime minister is more focused on pinpointing who to blame for the protests rather than fixing the problems that sparked them. Because the demonstrators are mainly young Shia fed up with the Shia representatives who failed them, Abdulmahdi seems inclined to fall back on contradictory conspiracy theories: one accusing Saudi Arabia and the United States of fomenting the protests, another blaming Iran and its local proxies. Such paranoia will only cripple his efforts to carry out the serious reforms his public is demanding.
HIGH STAKES
Unless the government reverses its heavy-handed approach, the protests will intensify, with potentially disquieting ramifications at home and abroad. For one thing, the domestic unrest could make it more difficult for Baghdad to do its part in warding off regional flare-ups that could draw Iraq into war. Keenly aware that Iran’s recent actions might spark conflict with Saudi Arabia, Israel, and/or the United States, Iraqi leaders have deployed energetic diplomacy to reassure the international community that they will do more to bring Iranian-backed Shia militias under control.
Also troubling is the fact that Iraq’s history offers ample precedent for a strongman or cabal to mount a coup in the face of public disorder. One theory is that Saadi was demoted in part to stymie such a possibility, given his outsize popularity. Yet much of the officer corps is still politicized and far from united. Moreover, potential coup leaders would either have to confront the PMF or partner with them, both of which would be problematic—the former option would cause a civil war, while the latter would further empower the militias. Many Iraqis yearn for decisive leadership even at the expense of democracy, but such a leader might revert to foreign adventurism in order to divert attention from domestic problems.
The PMF have stayed on the sidelines of the protests so far, leaving the riot police and SWAT teams to battle with protesters. The government’s response is causing it to lose hearts and minds with brutal efficiency. Some PMF factions might consider facing off against these security forces and presenting themselves as saviors. Traditionally, Iraq’s militias were armed wings of established political parties, but today’s most influential militias (e.g., Asaib Ahl al-Haq; Kataib Hezbollah) are free-floating entities that aspire for greater political and economic power of their own.
If the militias manage to woo the protest movement, they would notch a big win for Tehran’s goal of deepening Iranian influence and forcing the United States out of the country. This in turn would heighten the risks for Iraq’s neighbors. Iran has lost much of the Iraqi street, but it still has sway with the country’s political elite. Clearly, though, its proxies would have to grapple with Iraqi public discontent and politics at some point down the road.
THE NEED FOR REFORM
Even if the current protests fizzle, they are almost certain to return given the terrible state of Iraq’s governance and economy. Prime Minister Abdulmahdi’s task is obvious: to undertake serious reform efforts toward a clean, accountable government that delivers services and jobs. Iraqis are literally ready to die for good governance. Yet violence begets violence, and the situation could spiral beyond the government’s ability to remedy the crisis through reform. The current protests already appear to be the most serious since 2003.
So far, the prime minister has chosen to band-aid the problems with government benefits. Soon, however, he will need to channel the public’s demands, stand up to entrenched political interests, and take credible action on reforms. His cabinet is perhaps the best equipped yet to deliver on this front given its technocratic background. Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani bought him some time earlier today by calling for reform rather than the government’s resignation. Muqtada al-Sadr, however, called for new elections.
Washington has limited means to shape events at this point, but it can still play a useful part by quietly advising the prime minister and other key leaders. Public messaging would be less useful. Instead, U.S. officials should privately but forcefully press Baghdad to exercise strict control over the security forces. The high number of casualties this week will only add to the government’s enormous trust deficit. One firm step in the right direction would be to announce punishments for any security personnel who ignore the prime minister’s orders for restraint, and to investigate the murders of activists involved in the Basra protests of summer 2018.
Iraq has received years of sound foreign advice on economic reform. The failure of successive governments to follow through stems not from a lack of good counsel, but from a lack of political will—and, often as not, corruption. The protestors’ demands are just, and their patience is all but gone. Iraq’s leadership needs to say, loud and clear, “We hear you,” and then get on with the hard work of assembling a viable agenda for opening up the economy, fostering a real private sector to generate job growth, and prioritizing critical services.
Bilal Wahab is the Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute.
THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY 1111 19TH STREET NW, SUITE 500 WASHINGTON, DC 20036 202-452-0650 202-223-5364 (fax) www.washingtoninstitute.org Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.
Once upon a time, monthly jobs reports were exciting. Nobody knew whether they'd be good or bad. And when they were good they became political footballs, leading Jack Welch to tweet wild conspiracy theories and Herman Cain to call this newsletter writer stupid.
But after 108 straight months of job growth, the thrill is gone. September's numbers, released today, were as vanilla as most of the 107 months that came before. Headline payroll numbers, which will be revised a million times and so are basically meaningless, weren't as good as expected. Unemployment was lower than expected. Wage growth — the number that really matters these days — wasn't great.
I see you nodding off there! Such boring numbers were manna for the stock market, though, which found them not too weak to amplify recession fears and not too strong to put the Fed off raising interest rates again. Traders still seem to believe the Powell Put — an implied guarantee that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will always ride to the stock market's rescue — is alive and well, writes John Authers. Before the report, in fact, the bond market had priced in at least a quarter-percentage-point rate cut later this month, notes Brian Chappatta. The Fed usually does what the market wants, and today's numbers would have had to be truly exciting to change that.
Trump Now Even More Impeachable
The past 24 hours in President Donald Trump's L'Affaire Ukraine (we still need a better name for this!) have been unbelievably busy. We learned Trump had the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired for not abetting his hunt for dirt on the Bidens. We learned U.S. diplomats pushed Ukraine to announce it was investigating the Bidens. We read text messages between those diplomats that dripped with quid pro quos. And we learned that the transcript of a Trump phone call with China's Xi Jinping addressing the Bidens was stashed in the top-secret Naughty Call Box along with the Volodymyr Zelenskiy call that started this mess. All this came after Trump openly asked China and Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, apparently committing crimes on live television.
This mountain of evidence, notes Jonathan Bernstein, has annihilated the typical defenses Republicans employ for Trump: that there's no proof, that Trump's not involved, that his misconduct isn't impeachable. So now they're turning to far wackier defenses. These won't convince anybody but the die-hards. They certainly haven't convinced Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who called Trump's actions "wrong and appalling":
Trump is in this mess because he embraced right-wing conspiracy theories about the Bidens and Ukraine's role in the 2016 election, notes Tim O'Brien. Trump rose to political prominence touting the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and that success got him hooked on such nonsense, Tim notes. Now it has him on the verge of impeachment.
Further L'Affaire Ukraine Reading:
Trump is just the latest American leader to meddle in Ukraine's concerns. This hurts a key ally and sets a bad example. – Leonid Bershidsky
Let's Distract Ourselves With Simple Problems, Like Health Care
Trump gave himself a much-needed break from impeachment yesterday by flying to Florida to tout a new executive order pushing some Medicare patients into privately run Medicare Advantage plans. This may be designed to winnow down the strong advantage Dems have on the issue of health care, notes Max Nisen, but Trump's plan doesn't do much for patients. It may lower costs, but it also lowers choices. It could also be called a slippery slope to Medicare privatization.
Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi aren't exactly on speaking terms these days, but if they were, they might be able to shake hands on a different health-care plan; namely, one to cut high drug prices. Both agree on letting Medicare negotiate prices and setting foreign prices as a ceiling, notes Bloomberg's editorial board. The drug industry claims this will stifle innovation, but that's a false threat.
It's Getting Too Hot for Gucci Loafers
By now you're familiar with the shame people increasingly feel about taking long flights and driving big SUVs at a time of runaway climate change. It turns out maybe the bigger shame was on our backs and/or feet all along. By one estimate, the global textile industry spews more carbon into the atmosphere than travel and shipping combined, notes Andrea Felsted. Big-name luxury goods may be slightly less horrible for the environment, but then they also carry the stigma of conspicuous consumption at a time when we're dooming our grandchildren to foraging for sustenance in a charred future hellscape.
Palestinian academic, Mohamed Dajani, examines the mixed feelings that the most recent elections have evoked in Palestinians. Dajani notes that Netanyahu's inflammatory rhetoric does not appear to have paid dividends with voters, but he emphasizes the need for conversations regarding the peace process to return to Israeli national political discussions.
Expanding the lens to the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, Syrian journalist, Hadeel Oueis notes how Iran's deadly role in Syria loosened an unwavering societal belief in a 'resistance' narrative against Israel in certain segments of Arab society, particularly in the Gulf. Oueis reflects on how this might shape a peace process in the future.
Turning to other electoral issues, Tunisian researcher, Ghazi Ahmed argues that Tunisia's recent elections demonstrate voters' rejection of Tunisia's current economic stagnation, and that the next government should embrace this opportunity to enact economic reforms that encourage a diversified, liberalized economy and free trade agreements with Europe.
Kurdish journalist, Yerevan Saeed, explores the challenges of the Iraqi Kurdistan region's rentier economy, arguing that between economic stagnation and frustrations with the political system, Kurdish youth are expressing increasing disaffection with Kurdish institutions from the KRG to its educational systems.
Egyptian journalist, Mohamed Maher, contends that the United States' current policy of neutrality towards the Libyan conflict, combined with tacit support for Egypt's robust involvement, is the best policy to prevent further development of the Western Libyan desert into a major center of terrorism.
As always, we welcome your feedback and participation. Please write to us at editor@fikraforum.org.
Warm regards,
David Pollock Director, Fikra Forum
يبحث الأكاديمي الفلسطيني محمد الدجاني المشاعر المختلطة التي أثارتها الانتخابات الأخيرة بين الفلسطينيين. وفي حين يرى الدجاني أن خطاب نتنياهو الملتهب لا يبدو أنه نجح في تحقيق مكاسب مع الناخبين، إلا انه أكد على الحاجة إلى إجراء محادثات بشأن عملية السلام والعودة إلى المناقشات السياسية الوطنية الإسرائيلية.
خلال تناولها للصراع العربي الإسرائيلي، تلاحظ الصحفية السورية هديل عويس كيف أن دور إيران القاتل في سوريا قد ساهم في تخفيف وتغيير الأيمان المجتمعي الراسخ بشأن خطاب "المقاومة" ضد إسرائيل في قطاعات معينة من المجتمع العربي، لا سيما في الخليج. كما تشرح أثر ذلك على عملية السلام في المستقبل.
وفيما يتعلق بالقضايا الانتخابية الأخرى، يرى الباحث التونسي غازي أحمد أن الانتخابات الأخيرة في تونس قد أظهرت رفض الناخبين للركود الاقتصادي. ومن ثم، يرى أحمد أن الحكومة المقبلة يجب أن تقتنص تلك الفرصة لسن إصلاحات اقتصادية تشجع على تنويع الاقتصاد وتحريره، وإبرام اتفاقيات تجارة حرة مع أوروبا.
يستكشف الصحفي الكردي يريفان سعيد التحديات التي يمثلها الاقتصاد الريعي في إقليم كردستان العراق، حيث يرى أن كل من حالة الركود الاقتصادي والإحباطات من النظام السياسي، قد دفعا الشباب الكردي إلى التعبير عن استيائه المتزايد من المؤسسات الكردية التابعة لحكومة إقليم كردستان وأنظمتها التعليمية.
يؤكد الصحفي المصري محمد ماهر أن سياسة الحياد التي تتبناها الولايات المتحدة حاليا نحو النزاع الليبي، إلى جانب الدعم الضمني لمشاركة مصر القوية في الأزمة الليبية، هي أفضل سياسة يمكن اتخاذها لمنع الصحراء الغربية الليبية من أن تصبح مركز رئيسي للإرهاب.
وكما هو الحال دائماً، نشجع مشاركاتكم في هذه النقاشات المستمرة. يرجى الكتابة لنا على البريد الألكتروني editor@fikraforum.org.
The news comes shortly after Prince Harry issued a strong defense of Meghan Markle amid the "ruthless" treatment she's received in the British tabloids
"The instant her car was struck, she passed from earth to heaven and is in the presence of the Lord," a post from David and Priscilla Waller's Instagram read
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Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s annual speech at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership gathering is closely analyzed by Iran watchers for good reason. As with his yearly Nowruz speech, he often uses the IRGC event as an occasion to signal domestic and foreign audiences about his approach to international affairs. Most famously, his 2013 speech—delivered just weeks before Tehran reached an interim nuclear agreement with the P5+1—noted that he was not against “proper and reasonable moves in diplomacy,” declaring that this type of “heroic flexibility” is “necessary and good in certain circumstances.” After months of inconsistent messages from the Supreme Leader, many in Iran and abroad saw this as his implicit thumbs-up for the government to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Six years have passed since that compromise, and the Supreme Leader had a more aggressive message to deliver this time around. Most of his October 2 speech focused on recounting the IRGC’s achievements and offering old and new ideas for increasing its potential—an ominous subject given the degree to which IRGC elements and their proxies have helped destabilize the Middle East so far. And when talking about the ongoing crisis with the United States and the prospects for new talks, Khamenei reiterated the view he has expressed in recent months—namely, that Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy is destined to fail. Far from bringing Iran to its knees, he argued, U.S. policy is only inflicting “problems” on America.
SCUTTLING ROUHANI AND MACRON’S UN INITIATIVE
The night before the Supreme Leader’s IRGC address, Politico reported that French president Emmanuel Macron had nearly brokered a compromise agreement between President Trump and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani during the recent UN General Assembly meetings, only for Tehran to pull out and refuse the offer. Rouhani referred to Macron’s plan in a cabinet meeting held shortly before Khamenei’s speech, explaining that the French proposal—which allegedly included the removal of all U.S. sanctions imposed since 2017—“was based on our principles,” which he described as eliminating U.S. sanctions and allowing “Iran’s commercial activities to happen freely.” He blamed Washington for the proposal’s failure, saying it fell apart because of inconsistencies in U.S. positions. He then promised he would be ready for “any kind of self-sacrifice” in order to preserve the nation’s rights—his version of Khamenei’s “heroic flexibility.”
During his own speech a few hours later, Khamenei claimed that Europe’s attempts to arrange a meeting between the presidents were part of a U.S. plot to create a “symbolic image of an Iranian surrender.” Indeed, despite their mutual criticism of Washington, it is not clear if Khamenei and Rouhani are on the same page regarding the timetable or terms for new talks. Ever since the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA last year, the Supreme Leader has repeatedly lashed out at Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, accusing them of being fooled by the Americans during the original nuclear talks and arguing that Iran should not have negotiated with the Obama administration in the first place. If Khamenei did order the government to reject Macron’s proposal, it would hardly be the first time—for example, witness his scuttling of a deal that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bargained with the United States, France, and Russia in 2009, which would have shipped out most of Iran’s low-enriched uranium in exchange for reactor fuel.
RESISTANCE AS A NEGOTIATION STRATEGY
One thing Rouhani and Khamenei do seem to agree on is that Iranian “resistance” against the United States and Europe has improved the country’s leverage in negotiating the framework of future negotiations. As Rouhani recently put it, “nobody would have come to meet us in New York” if Iran had not taken confrontational measures such as shooting down a U.S. drone earlier this year and advancing the nuclear program.
Likewise, recent editorials in the weekly magazine published by Khamenei’s office have highlighted the need to further improve Tehran’s position before recommencing talks, explaining that it must not negotiate from a position of weakness. Accordingly, they argue, “today is not the time” to go back to the table.
Following this line of thought, Khamenei addressed the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran during his October 2 speech, ordering AEOI officials to continue reducing the country’s commitment to the nuclear deal until “we reach the desired results.” Iran has already taken three steps that either threaten or violate the JCPOA: exceeding the amount of low-enriched uranium it is permitted to store; increasing its level of enrichment beyond 3.67 percent; and restarting some of its advanced centrifuge R&D. According to the AEOI, the regime will take a fourth step in early November, which may include resuming enrichment at the heavily protected Fordow mountain facility.
A similar mindset has been evident in the regime’s rhetoric about regional “resistance.” Earlier this week, Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani appeared on Khamenei’s website for his first-ever one-on-one video interview, where he glorified the “victories” Iran and its allies have achieved against Israel and the United States over the years. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was interviewed as well, and expounded the same themes. For their part, IRGC leaders used their annual gathering to emphasize the power of resistance and warn that any attack on Iran would be met with a fierce response, with no limit in magnitude or targets. Khamenei then urged them to carry resistance beyond the boundaries of the Middle East. “Sometimes the country’s strategic depth is even more important than the most urgent needs,” he said, lashing out at Iranians who chant “no to Gaza, no to Lebanon” when criticizing the regime’s foreign interventions.
A “NORMAL” COUNTRY OR A REVOLUTIONARY ONE?
As in the past, Khamenei’s greatest concern about engaging with the United States seems to lie in the implications that such outreach might hold for Iran’s identity and the nature of “the revolution.” According to his IRGC speech, Washington is adamant that Iran give up its revolutionary character and become a “normal state” that conforms with the American global order.
Perhaps aware of what it may take to keep resisting such change, Khamenei finished his speech on an optimistic note, seemingly hoping to convince the public that all will be well if they can just keep enduring U.S. pressure for a while longer. After claiming the economy is growing in a way that “will gradually impact the people’s lives,” he stated that Washington’s current policy is only a short-term tactical problem. He even argued that U.S. pressure will strategically help Iran in the end by breaking the country’s reliance on oil revenues—a goal that the government has never been able to meet on its own.
Tehran’s biggest source for optimism may be its belief that Washington and Europe are eager to resume negotiations. Rouhani highlighted this point in his cabinet speech, and Khamenei’s website has emphasized how President Trump keeps asking to open talks only to be rejected again and again by the Supreme Leader. This perception may lead Tehran to set a higher bar for reentering talks, and further convince it that the resistance strategy is working.
Omer Carmi is vice president of intelligence at the Israeli cybersecurity firm Sixgill. Previously, he was a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and led IDF analytical and research efforts pertaining to the Middle East.
THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY 1111 19TH STREET NW, SUITE 500 WASHINGTON, DC 20036 202-452-0650 202-223-5364 (fax) www.washingtoninstitute.org Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.
House Democrats demanded Ukraine-related documents from Vice President Mike Pence as part of their impeachment inquiry, a significant escalation that comes as President Donald Trump is defending his efforts to pressure foreign leaders to dig up dirt on his political adversaries.
The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees' request has a deadline of Oct. 15, another signal that the impeachment inquiry is moving rapidly.
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About one in 20 Canadians consume cannabis before work, a survey found. Despite this, respondents overall concluded that cannabis consumption isn’t doing much damage at the office.
The man whose property the sign is on maintains it wasn’t intended to incite violence, and that the symbol of a target on Trudeau's head was meant for people to target their vote and “get a responsible government.”
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario School Board Council of Unions gave notice Wednesday that it would escalate job action to a full-on strike if a deal is not secured.
The HuffPost Canada politics team spread out across the country to take a look at some of the ridings that could make a real difference in the outcome of this year’s campaign.
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NEWS ALERT: Mitt Romney: Trump's actions are 'wrong and appalling'
Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday that President Trump's pressuring of Ukraine officials to investigate 2020 rival Joseph R. Biden for corruption smacks of politics and ...
Sen. Mitt Romney said Friday that President Trump's pressuring of Ukraine officials to investigate 2020 rival Joseph R. Biden for corruption smacks of politics and is "wrong and appalling."
المحاكمة التي تتعرض هاجر لها، هي محاكمة لجميع الحريات في المغرب. لكن، كما حدث أثناء محاكمة سمية وسهام بسبب إرتدائهما الصاية، فإن الضغط الشعبي من شأنه إنقاذ هاجر أيضاً وتوفير فرصة حقيقة للإصلاح أمام الشارع المغربي. وقعوا على العريضة وانشروها على أسوع نطاق:
المحاكمة التي تتعرض هاجر لها، هي محاكمة لجميع الحريات في المغرب. لكن، كما حدث أثناء محاكمة سمية وسهام بسبب إرتدائهما الصاية، فإن الضغط الشعبي من شأنه إنقاذ هاجر أيضاً وتوفير فرصة حقيقة للإصلاح أمام الشارع المغربي. وقعوا على العريضة وانشروها على أسوع نطاق:
حُكم على هاجر الريسوني بالسجن لمدة عام واحد بتهمة الإجهاض غير القانوني. انتشرت أخبار هذه القضية مع تقارير وقحة عن الأمراض النسائية، ما سلط الضوء على محنة العديد من النساء في المغرب.
أثارت هذه القضية قلق الرأي العام المغربي بأكمله.
قبل أربع سنوات، حينما خضعت سهام وسمية للمحاكمة بتهمة ارتدائهما الصاية، أطلق حراكنا حملة مدوية عبر الإعلام في المغرب وفرنسا ساهمت في تكثيف الضغط إلى أن تمت تبرئتهما.
تم اعتقال هاجر بسبب أرائها، لكن إن أظهرنا مدى دعم الرأي العام المغربي لها، فسوف نتمكن من إنقاذها وحمايات مستقبل الحريات في المغرب.
استنكر أقارب هاجر المحاكمة السياسية التي تتعرض لها والمرتبطة بأرائها وتاريخ عائلتها السياسي وحتى الصحيفة المعارضة التي كانت تعمل بها.
حيث ترتبط هذه المحاكمة على الأغلب بموقف هاجر كصحفية، وتكمن خطورتها في أنها ستمهد الطريق أمام المزيد من القمع من قبل جميع المتشددين والنافذين الذين يرغبون في فرض قوانينهم وآرائهم على الجميع.
لطالما عمل مجتمعنا من أجل حقوق الإنسان في المغرب، وقد ساهمنا في تحقيق إنجازات عظيمة معاً. كما حدث عندما ساهمنا في تعبئة الرأي العام خلال قضية أمينة الفيلالي ما أدى إلى إلغاء القانون الذي يتيح للمغتصب الإفلات بجريمته عبر الزواج من ضحيته. الضغط الشعبي دائما ما يؤتي بثماره. لذا وقعوا على هذه العريضة وانشروها على أوسع نطاق:
آفاز هي منظمة حملات عالمية قوامها 51 مليون عضو، تعمل على ايصال آراء ووجهات نظر الشعوب إلى صناعة القرار العالمي. آفاز تعني صوت أو لغة في عديد من اللغات. أعضاء آفاز موجودون في جميع دول العالم؛ ويتوزع فريقنا على ١٨ دولة في ٦ قارات ويعمل ب١٧ لغة. لمعرفة المزيد عن أكبر حملات آفاز اضغط هنا, أو تابعنا على فيسبوك و تويتر، و انستغرام.
وصلتك هذه الرسالة لأنك وقعت على حملة"إنضم الى آفاز" بتاريخ 2018-04-25 باستخدام عنوان البريد الالكتروني kamal.sahim5.news@blogger.com. لضمان وصول رسائل آفاز إلى بريدك الالكتروني، الرجاء إضافة avaaz@avaaz.org إلى جدول عناوينك. لتغيير ايميلك أو لغتك أو معلومات شخصية أخرى، تواصل معنا، أوانقر هنا لإلغاء تسجيلك.
Rep. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) shocked patriots around the world after she nodded her head when a woman at a town hall frantically claimed people need to start “eating babies” to save the world! AOC never challenged the woman’s advocacy for such evil, but instead said “we need to treat the climate crisis with urgency that it does present.” This is the Democrat party! Americans need to counter the leftist coup by bringing truth to their events! Remember, we are in the final days of the Black Friday Comes Early sale! Get 50% off products with double Patriot Points and free shipping right now!
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The Washington Institute has been sponsoring a series of discussions about sudden succession in the Middle East. Each session focuses on scenarios that might unfold if a specific ruler or leader departed the scene tomorrow. Questions include these: Would the sudden change lead to different policies? Would it affect the stability of the respective countries involved, or the region as a whole? What would be the impact on U.S. interests? Would the manner of a leader's departure make a difference? The discussions also probe how the U.S. government might adjust to the new situation or influence outcomes.
This essay, seventh in the series, discusses Kuwait, a small, oil-rich country surrounded by big neighbors with which relations have often been uneasy. Its leader, Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, is ninety years old and apparently in fragile health. His immediate heir, half-brother Nawaf, is not much younger at eighty-two. More important, perhaps, Nawaf lacks the current emir's adeptness as a diplomat. In a Gulf region experiencing sharp tensions, Sabah's exit will remove a much-needed node of stability. Whoever ultimately takes the helm will have a substantial legacy to uphold.
THE EDITORS
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is the Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, where his work focuses on the international relations, international political economy, and security of Arab Gulf states.
Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, where he specializes in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
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The Supreme Court on Friday announced it will review Louisiana abortion restrictions that could leave the state with just one abortion provider, in a case that gives the high court's new conservative majority a chance to redefine abortion rights.
The Louisiana law would require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges to a nearby hospital. It is similar to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down in 2016, finding it posed an undue burden on a woman's constitutional right to access an abortion.
The decision to take the case means the Supreme Court will likely weigh in on abortion amid a presidential campaign in which access to the procedure is already poised to be a top issue. The soonest the court will hear the case is this fall, with a decision likely in 2020.
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Astronomers get to name comets and biologists get to name species, but come up with something cool in economics and you might be memorialized with a law or a rule or a “curve.” Introducing the latest: the Sahm Rule, whose architect, Federal Reserve economist and consumer section chief Claudia Sahm, came up with it to flag the onset of recession more quickly than the current process that formally dates business cycles.
SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is struggling to raise money for a second massive technology investment fund in the wake of the failed public offering of office-rental company WeWork and sliding valuations of other major investments, according to two people familiar with the situation.
General Motors' U.S. workforce productivity has declined since the automaker recovered from a 2009 bankruptcy, even as its profit per employee has risen, a Reuters analysis shows.
The permafrost that once sustained farming is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and bizarre bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless. A Washington Post analysis found one eastern region has warmed by more than 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times — roughly triple the global average. For the 5.4 million people who live in Russia's permafrost zone, the new climate has disrupted their homes and their livelihoods. Thousands are leaving the countryside for the regional capital.
The permafrost that once sustained farming is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and bizarre bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless. A Washington Post analysis found one eastern region has warmed by more than 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times — roughly triple the global average.
For the 5.4 million people who live in Russia's permafrost zone, the new climate has disrupted their homes and their livelihoods. Thousands are leaving the countryside for the regional capital.
President Donald Trump's bitter fight against an impeachment inquiry has not slowed down the Democrats' push to investigate whether he sought personal political gain by urging Ukraine to probe Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
Ukraine's new top prosecutor said on Friday he was not aware of any evidence of wrongdoing by the son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and that he had not been contacted by any foreign lawyers about the case.
Ukraine's top prosecutor's office said on Friday that no legal action has been taken so far against people linked to the gas company Burisma, where former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's son served on the board until earlier this year.
U.S. state officials are due on Friday to launch a counterattack against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP over its attempt to shield the company and its controlling Sackler family from thousands of lawsuits accusing the company of fueling the opioid epidemic.
Massachusetts health officials on Friday are expected to defend their crackdown on sales of vaping products in a courtroom battle that will test the toughest measures yet in a rapidly developing response against e-cigarettes and their potential link to a lung disease.
Republican President Donald Trump appears to have narrowed in on his preferred foe for the 2020 election: Hunter Biden, the son of leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called on China to investigate Joe Biden, a main Democratic contender in the 2020 race for the White House, about the involvement of his son in a fund that sought to raise Chinese capital.
Teenage activist Greta Thunberg will take her campaign demanding that world leaders tackle climate change, which began as a lonely vigil outside the Swedish parliament but saw her rise to address the United Nations last month, to Iowa City on Friday.
Joan Fialkov, a 66-year-old retired teacher and lifelong Democratic voter from Pennsylvania, believes Joe Biden can restore some stability to the country after Donald Trump's presidency.
One of two white police officers who rode through the streets of Galveston, Texas, on horseback escorting a black man walking tethered to a rope is heard saying: "This is going to look really bad" in newly released police video footage of the incident.
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