Tag Archives: WorldNews

Turkish troops advance into Syria as Trump washes his hands of the Kurds

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  • Civilians flee as airstrikes and artillery hit border region
  • Trump on Kurds: ‘They didn’t help us in Normandy’

Turkish troops have advanced into north-eastern Syria, following airstrikes and artillery barrages aimed at US-backed Kurdish forces who control the region.

The Turkish military confirmed on Wednesday it had “launched the land operation into the east of the Euphrates river” and later said it had hit 181 “militant targets”.

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President Trump is at war with the rule of law. This won’t end well | Rebecca Solnit

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At the top there’s corruption, down below there’s dismantling and disarray. Americans are entering a period of immense danger

Do Americans still have a government? I do not know. What I do know is that President Trump and the upper echelons of the executive branch are at war with the legislative branch, the rule of law, the constitution, federal civil servants and the American people. It’s a conflict that pulls in many directions, and if the president threatened civil war the other day as something that could happen if he doesn’t get his way, we can regard the ordinary state of things as a low-intensity civil war or a slo-mo coup that’s been going on from the beginning. Tuesday’s White House refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry only escalates their defiance and their chaos.

The chaos takes so many forms. Innumerable stories have made it clear that even the president’s own aides and cabinet members treat him like a captive bear or a person having a psychotic breakdown – like someone unstable who must be kept from harming himself and others. They have done that by heaping on the flattery, and by warping and limiting the information he receives, and often by doing their best to prevent his directives from being realized.

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A new India is emerging, and it is a country ruled by fear | Amit Chaudhuri

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Modi’s vision for the country is one that stifles dissent and difference, in defiance of its people’s history

Four months have passed since Narendra Modi and the BJP came back to power in India, and more seems to have happened there than in the last 40 years. The sense of severance that many experience today, of being divorced from the workings of the nation, exceeds even the helplessness felt during the suspension of civil liberties in the emergency of 1975 to 1977 and the political traumas that followed.

This is because – without the matter being explicitly articulated – citizen has been set against citizen: not just Muslim against Hindu or, say, Kashmiris against the rest of India, but those who subscribe to the BJP’s new conception of the nation against those who do not, leaving one without trust in the other.

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Brexit: Johnson poised to end talks after call with Merkel ends in deadlock – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments, including German chancellor telling PM Northern Ireland must stay in customs union for a deal

11.34am BST

The government has just published a 155-page “No Deal Readiness Report” (pdf).

11.32am BST

This is from Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister.

The UK government’s attempt to shift the blame for the Brexit fiasco to anyone but themselves – today it’s Merkel – is pathetically transparent.

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‘In my great and unmatched wisdom’: Trump makes modest claim about his intellect

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Trump – the ‘very stable genius’ – is no stranger to narcissistic statements, and he was at it again on Monday afternoon

Donald Trump perhaps broke a record for aggrandizement on Monday, when he referred to his “great and unmatched wisdom” following his decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria.

Trump is no stranger to grandiose, narcissistic statements. He has frequently referred to himself as a “very stable genius” – and not tongue-in-cheek. He actually did so recently, in reference to his controversial phone call to the Ukraine president, Volodmyr Zelenskiy, which sparked an impeachment inquiry into him.

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Trump is the kid caught in the cookie jar – impeachment is imperative | Robert Reich

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Don’t assume the Senate won’t convict and remove a president who sees the danger and grows more desperate by the day

Donald Trump will almost certainly be impeached in the House, possibly as soon as Thanksgiving. The odds are rising that he’ll be convicted in the Senate.

Related: Did Trump commit a crime? The impeachment inquiry, explained

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