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#China - Xi's article on learning Party history published

An article by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, on learning the CPC history has been published.

The article by Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was published Thursday in this year's 13th issue of the Qiushi Journal, a flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee.

In his article, Xi said learning the history of the Party, including its remarkable achievements, arduous journey, historical experience and fine traditions, would help better understand the capability of the Party and the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics, as well as the reason why Marxism works.

The article called on Party members to gain a profound understanding of the historical inevitability of upholding the Party's leadership, strengthen their confidence in the Party's leadership, and unswervingly follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The article stressed strengthening faith in Marxism and Communism, belief in socialism with Chinese characteristics, and confidence in realizing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The article also called on Party members to develop strong moral character, stay loyal to the Party, and unite and lead the people in better implementing the new development philosophy and fostering a new pattern of development, so as to pool strengths for the national rejuvenation.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0703/c90000-9867919.html

'A personality type that feels absolutely no guardrails': How Saudi Arabia's leader charmed Washington while cracking down on opponents

Michael Isikoff

Joseph Westphal was wowed from the start. As President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia in 2015, Westphal started paying regular visits to the rising new power in the royal court: the country’s new defense minister, Mohammed bin Salman, favored son of King Salman.

“First of all, we shared a really nice sense of humor,” said Westphal. “I mean we, we laughed, we joked around. ... It was just laughing about life, and talking about things that maybe happened to me or happened to him.”

More important, Prince Mohammed, who is known as MBS, was pledging to start to rein in the country’s religious police and grant greater rights to Saudi women — steps that U.S. officials had long been calling for. “Yes, absolutely,” Westphal replied when asked if he viewed MBS at the time as an agent of change. “From the very beginning. Absolutely.”

Westphal’s relationship with the young Saudi prince is one glimpse into a much broader and, from today’s perspective, unsettling phenomenon: the strange and successful courtship by MBS of America’s foreign policy and corporate elite, presenting himself as a cultured reformer who was positioned to revolutionize his rigidly conservative country.

The story of that courtship — and its embarrassing aftermath, as MBS’s ruthless crackdowns on dissent and his bloody military adventure in Yemen became ever more apparent — is the subject of “The Rise of the Bullet Guy,” Episode 5 in Yahoo News’ "Conspiracyland" podcast: “The Secret Lives and Brutal Death of Jamal Khashoggi.”

It is a courtship that came to a final, crashing and ignominious end when, in October 2018, a so-called Tiger Team of Saudi assassins brutally murdered the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — drugging him with illicit narcotics brought from Cairo, suffocating him and then carving up his body with a bone saw and depositing his body parts in plastic bags.

It was a crime that the CIA soon concluded had been authorized by the crown prince himself, noting — among other factors — that MBS’s right-hand man had met with the team before they left to kill Khashoggi in Istanbul, and that seven members of the hit squad were part of MBS’s personal security detail, answerable only to him.And yet the shocking nature of Khashoggi’s murder has tended to obscure the preceding years, when at first top Obama administration officials, and then President Donald Trump and his influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, embraced MBS with few reservations and extolled his supposed virtues.“He’s the only person I’ve met in 30 years of my involvement or more with Saudi Arabia who has put that kind of a vision on the table for the transformation of the country,” said John Kerry, Obama’s secretary of state, in an interview for “Conspiracyland” about his assessment of MBS at the time.

Kerry’s Georgetown home was the setting for perhaps the most iconic moment in MBS’s courtship of the U.S. government. It was in June 2016, and the new Saudi defense minister, during a trip to the United States, was invited to a Ramadan dinner at Kerry’s house. As he entered, MBS spotted the grand piano in the living room, promptly sat down and started to play Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata.”

“I mean, we were all surprised,” recalled Kerry. “Somebody had trained him well.”

But even as he impressed the guests in Kerry’s living room, others saw the dark impulses of a would-be tyrant. Ben Rhodes, then Obama’s deputy national security adviser, recalls a summit in Riyadh the previous April, when Obama raised U.S. concerns about Saudi Arabia’s worsening human rights record, including a mass execution of 47 prisoners and the case of a Saudi blogger who had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison — and 1,000 lashes with a whip.

“Obama’s like, ‘What are you guys doing? I’m not gonna defend this,’” said Rhodes in an interview for “Conspiracyland.” But suddenly, “MBS stands up in the middle of the room, and, and begins to lecture Obama: ‘You don’t understand the Saudi justice system. And if we didn’t do this, our people would demand vengeance.’ And then he offers to get Obama a briefing on the Saudi justice system. I mean, dripping condescension. You know? And I just remember sitting there and thinking, like, ‘What is going on here?’”

“It spoke to a personality type that feels absolutely no guardrails, you know?” Rhodes added. “I mean, if you’re comfortable standing up in a room full of people and lecturing the president of the United States … because he’s raising concerns about mass executions in your country, you are not the guy people [are] reading about … in the New York Times and the Washington Post, who’s [described as] a reformer. I mean, it just laid bare the utter bullshit of the narrative around MBS to me. And I’m, I’m sitting there thinking, you know, ‘How are people calling this guy a modernizer?’"

But there was an issue of far more concern to U.S. officials than the young prince’s condescending lecture to Obama. With virtually no warning to Washington, MBS had launched a merciless war in Yemen, targeting the Houthis — a religious minority group loosely aligned with the Iranians who had seized control of the country’s capital. Saudi warplanes, using American weapons, had unleashed a relentless wave of bombings that were slaughtering civilians by the thousands, sparking outrage from human rights groups.

There was “countless documentation of U.S.-manufactured bombs being used on markets, on schools, on people’s homes, on hospitals, on clinics throughout the country,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, then the director of Human Rights Watch’s Mideast Division and now the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.Officials in the Obama administration were well aware of the compromising position this put them in. The State Department’s legal office even launched an inquiry into whether the United States was complicit in war crimes. (The lawyers never reached a firm conclusion.) But the White House was torn about what to do.

At the White House, officials were “repelled by what we were seeing,” said Rob Malley, who was then on the National Security Council and charged with coordinating U.S. policy in the region. “But the first instinct was, ‘Well, let’s see if we could give them advice on how to make sure that they don’t kill civilians again.’ But it turns out time and again, whether it’s a mosque, whether it’s a market, whether it’s whatever it is, that they would not only hit it once, they hit it twice, sometimes more.”

Still, said Malley, Obama was reluctant to provoke a confrontation with the Saudis. At the time, relations were tense over the Iranian nuclear deal, which Riyadh opposed, and he wanted the Saudis' help in the war against the Islamic State group.

“There was a meeting [about the war in Yemen] of the Principals Committee, chaired by President Obama,” said Malley. “There were voices expressing a lot of concern.” But Obama “felt he could not, given everything else that was happening in the region, afford a crisis with one of the few countries with which we still retained ... strong relations and cooperation on a whole host of issues, counterterrorism first and foremost.

“I was extremely — how could I put it? — troubled by the whole decision, because we should not have been complicit in this war,” added Malley, who has rejoined the National Security Council under President Biden. “And, you know, the U.S. makes enormous — mistakes is probably too, too kind a word, to describe many, many of its actions.”There was no doubt in the minds of Malley and other U.S. officials that it was MBS who was driving the train. “He seemed to be already oblivious to the consequences of the actions that he took,” said Malley. “And this was his war … because he was the one who appeared to order it.”

It was a harbinger of even more disturbing moves to come.

https://news.yahoo.com/a-personality-type-that-feels-absolutely-no-guard-rails-how-saudi-arabias-leader-charmed-washington-while-cracking-down-on-opponents-090017268.html

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Opinion: Why Biden and Democrats can take credit for an improving economy

Opinion: by Paul Waldman

Two months ago, when the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report for April showed that a mere 266,000 jobs had been created, falling short of expectations, Republicans were positively gleeful, insisting that it showed that President Biden’s entire economic program was an abysmal failure and only a return to Donald Trump’s policies could save America.

On Friday, we got the BLS report for June, and it showed that 850,000 new jobs were created. This will not lead anyone to abandon their prior beliefs, I can assure you. Some Republicans are so desperate to explain it away that they’re saying that current strong job growth is a product of their 2017 tax cut.But there’s no question it’s extremely good news, especially given all the rhetoric we’ve been hearing about how Americans are too lazy to go back to work, and restaurants and hotels can’t find the staff to accommodate the upsurge in customers they have as covid-19 restrictions are lifted.The leisure and hospitality sector — restaurants, bars, hotels — added an extraordinary 343,000 new jobs in June. It’s almost as if all those business owners complaining that they couldn’t find workers at the wages they wanted to pay found a solution to their dilemma — by paying higher wages. Imagine that.

And we should note that the decision by so many Republican governors to cut off enhanced unemployment benefits did not have an impact on this report. By the time the data was collected, only Iowa, Alaska, Missouri and Mississippi had begun ending those benefits.

Whether the economic picture is good or bad, we’re always going to debate whether the administration had anything to do with it. But as we emerge from the pandemic, Biden may have a better case than most presidents to take credit.

The first reason is that unlike that of his predecessor, Biden’s administration has executed a vaccine rollout with competence and efficiency, even if it’s running up against a stubborn refusal to be vaccinated from certain Americans. Without most of the country vaccinated, a recovery would be impossible.

Second, the Democratic economic strategy to handle this pandemic — which dates back to before Biden was president — seems to be working.

When he spoke to reporters Friday about the June jobs numbers, Biden argued that the $1.9 trillion stimulus he signed in March made the difference. “At the time, people questioned whether or not we should do that even though we didn’t have bipartisan support,” he said. “Well, it worked.”

It would be better, though, to think about the government’s effort not as just about that bill, but the entire strategy of aggressive spending — essentially, pouring as much money as possible into the economy, no matter how much it increased the deficit. And this dates back to the beginning of the relief effort in March 2020, with smaller bills and then the $2.2 trillion Cares Act.

Does that mean Trump helped this recovery happen? Not really. Remember that at every stage, as Congress passed multiple relief bills through 2020, Democrats demanded more money be spent while Republicans wanted less, or sometimes nothing at all. Trump himself was typically erratic, calling for new spending one day and issuing veto threats the next; he would ultimately sign whatever bill was put in front of him, though he barely knew what they contained.

Democrats pushed for that increased spending out of both practical and ideological motives: They thought it would work, and they believe government should act aggressively to respond to crises. Republicans tried to minimize the size of the bills for the opposite reasons, though they did see the political danger, especially for Trump’s reelection campaign, if they didn’t do enough.

In other words, while Republicans were reluctantly involved in fashioning stimulus bills passed in 2020, the go-for-broke strategy was entirely devised by Democrats. That then continued with Biden’s stimulus after he took office.

And though things could certainly change, at the moment it seems to have been the right strategy, even if we could argue about how well particular components worked. The catastrophic inflationary spiral some predicted doesn’t look like it’s coming to pass. We’re on pace for a rapid recovery. Wages are rising, and consumer confidence is on a steep upward trend.

And there’s something else at work, something that has become a theme of the Biden presidency. Here’s what he said Friday:

Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, employers are competing with each other to attract workers. That kind of competition in the market doesn’t just give workers more ability to earn higher wages, it also gives them the ability to demand to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace.

That doesn’t necessarily make everyone happy; a disturbing poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress found 60 percent of Republicans saying higher starting wages for workers are a bad thing because they show that unemployment benefits are too generous.

And to be sure, the American economy has an awfully long way to go before it treats everyone with dignity and respect. But we may at least have made a start.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/02/why-biden-democrats-can-take-credit-an-improving-economy/

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Draconian rules - #Pakistan’s Removal of Unlawful Online Content Rules, 2021

THE Asia Internet Coalition has once again struck back against Pakistan’s Removal of Unlawful Online Content Rules, 2021, describing the latest version (published last month by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication) as containing all the same “problematic provisions” as previous drafts, with only “minor changes”. Echoing concerns of local rights advocates and digital experts, the association of major technology firms also noted with alarm that these rules go far beyond the scope of its parent act, the draconian Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016. The rules are also currently being challenged in the Islamabad High Court on the grounds of being unconstitutional, a development which had at least led to the attorney general conceding the need for more stakeholder consultation.

That was in April. Some months later, given the absence of any substantive feedback being incorporated into the rules, it is apparent that despite sustained attempts to engage with lawmakers in good faith, human rights defenders’ concerns continue to fall on deaf ears, validating their worst fears regarding the state’s intentions for digital governance.

The centrepiece of an explicit and relentless drive to monitor and control virtually all aspects of our lives, the rules are impractical, oppressive and guaranteed to cause immense social and economic harm. There is no imaginable outcome in which they will lead to progress and growth — rather, they are designed to afford the state even more excessive and arbitrary powers, with little to no oversight and accountability. The cost of this campaign to forcefully promote a statist monoculture will be paid for by citizens for decades to come, as every avenue for creativity and innovation is stifled. Since the rules were first floated, the government has led stakeholders down a meandering path of insincere dialogue. But unless it wishes to plunge the country into a digital dark age, there is only one course of action it must undertake: denotify the rules and commit to a comprehensive overhaul of Peca.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1632894/draconian-rules

#Pakistan - Briefing on National Security And a shot across the bow by US

The precarious security situation in Afghanistan and its dangerous ramifications for Pakistan led the security establishment to hold a high-level briefing for over 40 important parliamentarians under the aegis of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security. Parliamentarians are usually taken into confidence only when polices formulated by the establishment lead to a cul de sac. Pakistan is in a pretty pickle these days. While the Afghan government never trusted Pakistan, now the Taliban too are unwilling to heed its advice. The USA is reportedly behind the FATF decision to prolong Pakistan’s stay in the gray list. The sword of the IMF meanwhile continues to hang over Pakistan’s head. Whether Pakistan will be able to retain its GSP-Plus status is anybody’s guess. As a warning shot, the USA has included Pakistan in the child soldier recruiter list, a designation that could lead to strict sanctions on military assistance.

The parliamentarians tried to seek all the “sensitive” information they needed from the security establishment. Politicians frequently claim that the establishment encroaches upon the elected governments’ turf and makes policies that harm the country. It is now for the political leaders to step up to the plate. A PML(N) leader who attended the briefing has asked the government to call a joint session of Parliament to prepare a national response to the situation.

There are several challenges the country is facing. Proxies, the meeting was told, were being triggered by external forces as was evident from the increase in terrorism in Balochistan and last week’s explosion in Lahore.

With a civil war raging in Afghanistan, there would be an inevitable influx of refugees into Pakistan. This has caused complicated problems in the past. This time there is a likelihood of individuals belonging to terrorist groups sneaking into Pakistan pretending to be refugees.

It was maintained during the briefing that Pakistan’s territory was not being used in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Hopes were expressed that Afghanistan too would not let its soil to be used against Pakistan. Neither the Afghan Taliban, nor the Afghan government, showed interest in taking out or reining in these networks in the past. There is little likelihood of their obliging Pakistan now. The complicated problems can only be dealt with through collective brainstorming in Parliament.

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/02/briefing-on-national-security/

US adds Pakistan, along with 14 other countries in list of Child Soldiers Prevention Act

The list identifies foreign governments with government-supported armed groups that recruit or use child soldiers and subject them to certain restrictions.

The US has added Pakistan along with 14 other countries in a list of Child Soldiers Prevention Act which identifies foreign governments having government-supported armed groups that recruit or use child soldiers, a designation that could result in restrictions on certain security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment.

The US Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) requires publication in the annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report a list of foreign governments that have recruited or used child soldiers during the previous year (April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021).

The countries which have been added to the annual TIP list of the US State Department are Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

According to the State Department, the governments identified on the list are subject to restrictions, in the following fiscal year, on certain security assistance and commercial licensing of military equipment.

The term child soldier means any person under 18 years of age who takes a direct part in hostilities or who has been compulsorily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces.

It also means any person under 15 years of age who has been voluntarily recruited into governmental armed forces, police, or other security forces or any person under 18 years of age who has been recruited or used in hostilities by armed forces distinct from the armed forces of a state.

It also includes any such person who is serving in any capacity, including in a support role, such as a cook, porter, messenger, medic, guard or sex slave.The CSPA prohibits assistance to governments that are identified in the list under the following authorities: International Military Education and Training, Foreign Military Financing, Excess Defence Articles, and Peacekeeping Operations, with exceptions for some programmes undertaken pursuant to the Peacekeeping Operations authority.It also prohibits the issuance of licenses for direct commercial sales of military equipment to such governments.

Beginning October 1, 2021, and effective throughout fiscal year 2022, these restrictions will apply to the listed countries, absent a presidential waiver, applicable exception, or reinstatement of assistance pursuant to the terms of the CSPA.

The determination to include a government in the CSPA list is informed by a range of sources, including first-hand observation by the US government personnel and research and credible reporting from various UN entities, international organisations, local and international NGOs, and international and domestic media outlets.

https://theprint.in/world/us-adds-pakistan-along-with-14-other-countries-in-list-of-child-soldiers-prevention-act/689033/

Pakistan’s prime minister embraces China’s policy toward Uyghurs in remarks on Communist Party centenary

 By Sammy Westfall

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan offered on Thursday remarks rare for the leader of a large, Muslim majority country, reaffirming his support for Beijing’s policies toward Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region.

Much of the international community had condemned the mass detention and efforts at forced assimilation of Uyghurs, which the U.S. State Department has described as “genocide.” More than 1 million Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group, have been sent to what Beijing calls “vocational education and training centers,” but which human rights groups say are detention camps, where extensive abuses have been reported.

“Because we have a very strong relationship with China, and because we have a relationship based on trust, so we actually accept the Chinese version,” Khan said in remarks marking the Chinese Communist Party’s centennial celebration. “What they say about the programs in Xinjiang, we accept it.”

Since China launched a sweeping crackdown in Xinjiang in 2017, many human rights advocates and world leaders have sounded alarm bells. The issue has gained particular traction in many Muslim-majority countries. But not with Khan. Speaking to Chinese reporters visiting Islamabad for the centenary, Khan said he finds it hypocritical that other human rights issues — such as the conflict in Kashmir between India and China — are not afforded the same attention.

Khan’s stance on the Uyghurs stands out amid his advocacy against Islamophobia in the region. An outspoken advocate of discrimination against Muslims, Khan wrote last year a letter addressed to leaders of Muslim countries, urging that they work to “end cycles of violence bred of ignorance and hate.” Pakistan is the world’s second largest Muslim-majority country, after Indonesia.

Analysts said the remarks make sense in the context of Pakistan’s relationship with China, on which it depends for political and economic support.

“Pakistan just can’t afford to go against China on such a sensitive issue,” said Filippo Boni, a scholar of China-Pakistan relations, “especially at a time when the West is very much focused on the Uyghur issue.”

Announced in 2015, one of the most conspicuous elements of the relationship is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor — a $60 billion set of Chinese infrastructure investment in Pakistan, including a $6.8 billion railway upgrade and new highways, as part of the Belt and Road initiative. Projects are still underway.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Pakistan was early to express solidarity with China, and China has sent vaccine doses to Pakistan.

In addition to his comments about Uyghurs, Khan praised China’s political system, Al Jazeera reported.

“Up until now, we were told that the best way for societies to improve themselves is the Western system of democracy,” he said. But the CPC has brought an “alternative” and “unique model.”

Khan has voiced similar views in the past. When pressed by Axios’s Jonathan Swain about his silence on the Uyghurs, Khan said any issues Pakistan has with China are discussed “behind closed doors.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/02/pakistan-prime-minister-backs-china-on-uyghurs/