Venezuela arrests six over drone explosions during Maduro speech

Venezuela’s government said on Sunday that six people had been detained over drone explosions at an event attended by President Nicolas Maduro as his political opposition warned of a possible crackdown after he accused his adversaries of seeking to assassinate him.

State television on Saturday evening showed the socialist leader appearing startled by what seemed to be an explosion while he was giving a speech in Caracas. Seconds later, the footage panned to hundreds of soldiers chaotically scurrying out of formation.

The World Abetted Assad’s Victory in Syria

After more than seven years of a civil war that has left half of Syria’s population displaced, cities reduced to rubble, and over 500,000 killed, President Bashar al-Assad appears to be on the brink of victory. In July, units loyal to Assad recaptured Deraa, where the peaceful protests that turned into a violent rebellion against him first began in 2011. The recapture came as Assad conquered the south, one of the last rebel holdouts.

The war is far from over, with the Kurdish east and rebel-held Idlib still out of regime hands, and any victory may prove pyrrhic given the devastation wrought. Even so, it now seems Assad is going nowhere. The Syrian dictator has outlasted Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron—Western leaders who once expected his fall “within months.”

Cracks appear in 'invincible' Xi Jinping's authority over China

Rumours have swirled in Beijing in recent weeks that China’s seemingly invincible leader, Xi Jinping, is in trouble, dogged by a protracted trade war with the US, a slowing economy and a public health scandal involving thousands of defective vaccines given to children.

Xi’s name seemed to have disappeared for a while from the cover of the People’s Daily, replaced with articles about his deputy, Li Keqiang, and large portraits of him were said to have been taken down after a young woman filmed herself throwing ink at his image.

'For how long?': Displaced Rohingya lament life in no-man's land

Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh - With a blue and white-checkered lungi tied around his waist, Nur al-Amin gazes across a narrow muddy canal running along rows of tarpaulin-roofed bamboo shacks.

"There is no work here and nothing to do," he says, recounting his monotonous routine.

Jeremy Corbyn: Labour is not a threat to Jewish life in Britain

Jeremy Corbyn has broken his silence over the antisemitism row engulfing Labour, acknowledging the party has “a real problem” over the issue but strongly rejecting the idea that it poses any threat to the Jewish community in the UK.

Writing in the Guardian following increasing calls for him to take a lead and address the concerns of many Jewish groups, the Labour leader accepted that the party’s incomplete adoption of an internationally recognised definition of antisemitism had caused genuine worries.

Jeremy Corbyn won’t compromise — no matter the cost

LONDON — The greatest danger to Jeremy Corbyn is himself.

Despite the almost-daily revelations about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which have reached all the way to the leader’s door, Corbyn remains all-but unassailable for now, most MPs and senior party aides say.

But the crisis has exposed a split at the very top of the Labour movement which — if not contained — poses a genuine threat to the Corbyn project, some senior figures now believe.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney Warns Chance Of No Deal Brexit 'Uncomfortably High'

Mark Carney has warned the chances of a no deal Brexit are “uncomfortably high”.

The Bank of England Governor said on Friday morning such an outcome was “highly undesirable”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, he said politicians must “do all things to avoid it”.

#MeToo Backlash In Corporate Canada Sees Women Locked Out

TORONTO — A lawyer is asked whether a male executive should leave the door open when meeting with a woman.

A consultant's longtime male client will only take a meeting with her if someone else is in the room.

A public relations executive hears from senior business leaders who say they are shying away from mentoring young women.

Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth

We are all in denial, some of the time at least. Part of being human, and living in a society with other humans, is finding clever ways to express – and conceal – our feelings. From the most sophisticated diplomatic language to the baldest lie, humans find ways to deceive. Deceptions are not necessarily malign; at some level they are vital if humans are to live together with civility. As Richard Sennett has argued: “In practising social civility, you keep silent about things you know clearly but which you should not and do not say.”

Kirsten Gillibrand Pays The Price For Speaking Out Against Al Franken

No one in Congress is more associated with the Me Too movement than Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). Long before Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer became infamous creeps, Gillibrand was focusing her attention on sexual assault and harassment in the military, on college campuses and in the workplace.

But the two-term senator cemented her prominence in the movement last year when she called out members of her own party. In November, she said that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. And then the following month, she became the first Democratic senator to publicly call on then-Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) to go after multiple women accused him of engaging in sexual misconduct.

China accuses U.S. of 'blackmail' amid reports of higher tariffs by Trump administration

Talk that U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports could increase further amount to “blackmail” from the Trump administration that will prompt retaliatory measures from Beijing, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said Wednesday.

“U.S. pressure and blackmail won’t have an effect. If the United States takes further escalatory steps, China will inevitably take countermeasures and we will resolutely protect our legitimate rights,” Geng Shuang, the spokesman, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Participatory Democracy: A Tool for Social Change

Participatory democracy has been a hallmark of social movements since the days of the New Left. It has been a feature of anarchist praxis since the 19th century, and a component of numerous Indigenous polities, such as the Iroquois Confederacy. In recent years, the mantle of participatory democracy has been taken up by a variety of political actors and grassroots organizers. Whereas direct democracy is sometimes reduced to divisive referenda, participatory democracy is infused with concrete elements of deliberation and civic engagement. Participatory democracy’s most notable institutional expression has come in the form of participatory budgeting. Introduced in 1989 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by the Workers’ Party, participatory budgeting has expanded to more than 3,000 cities around the world. Other participatory democratic institutional-forms are also spreading across the world: citizens assemblies coupled with referenda, communal councils in Venezuela, participatory urban design in Barcelona, and the post-state autonomous zones in Chiapas and Rojava.

Stop trying to ‘win’ Brexit

LONDON — Negotiating’s easy, right? You play hardball, you don’t give any ground and if the other side look happy about the outcome then it’s probably because they’ve pulled a fast one on you. It’s all about winning.

This view of negotiation might nowadays be termed the Trump model — inasmuch as it’s a model at all. And it appears to be guiding Brexit negotiations, where the question tends to be: Who’s winning?

Jeremy Corbyn's Anti-Semitism Crisis Escalates As Labour Referred To Human Rights Watchdog

The UK’s human rights watchdog has been urged to investigate the Labour Party as pressure continues to mount over Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the anti-Semitism row.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) has referred the party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and made a complaint to Labour about comments by Corbyn and his hosting of a Holocaust Memorial Day event in 2010 at which speakers reportedly compared the actions of Israel in Gaza to the Nazis.

Germany's 'China City': how Duisburg became Xi Jinping's gateway to Europe

For much of the 20th century, the city of Duisburg in Germany’s industrial west was a steel-and-coal town whose chimneys cloaked the skies in smoke. And yet there is something about this soot-stained spot in the Ruhr valley that seems to encourage a particularly clear-sighted view of the rest of the world.

In 1585, it was in Duisburg that Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator published a book of maps of European countries – the first ever “atlas” to carry that name. And it was here that Mercator first presented his new world map, the “Mercator projection”, that was so revolutionary for maritime navigators keen to steer merchant vessels across the high seas in the straightest possible line.

'Apartheid, formalised': Palestinians to fight Jewish state law

Palestinian citizens of Israel are planning a series of actions, including a general strike and international campaigning, in a bid to cancel a controversial law that defines the country exclusively as "the nation-state of the Jewish people".

Palestinian members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, described the legislation's adoption on July 19 as an effort to sabotage the Palestinian "story and narrative".

With the U.S. focused on election interference, Putin puts his energy gambit into action

As the FBI drills down in its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Pentagon vows to build new capabilities to take on Russian weapons, Russia is, in plain sight, also working on a global power grab with its energy gambit.

Nord Stream 2, the deal that prompted President Donald Trump to blow a gasket at the NATO summit earlier this month, has Germany doubling the amount of natural gas it is buying from Russia. Russia is also building a pipeline through Turkey, reaching Eastern Europe, hoping to close the European loop.

Labour’s Democracy Review Backs Online Voting Plan To Give Jeremy Corbyn Supporters New Power Over Policy

Jeremy Corbyn’s vision of a ‘member-led’ Labour party is set to become a reality under radical plans to introduce e-voting to transform its policy-making and internal democracy.

The party’s confidential ‘Democracy Review’ report, which has been leaked in its entirely to HuffPost UK, includes proposals to allow online ballots for annual conference, local constituencies and national policy formulation.

Europe’s left looks to Jeremy Corbyn

THE HAGUE — Traditional left-wing parties across Europe are searching for a savior.

Some believe his name is Jeremy Corbyn.

The British Labour leader’s relatively bright fortunes contrast with his peer parties’ electoral decline from Italy to the Czech Republic.

France’s once mighty Socialist Party came fifth in last year’s presidential election and was forced to sell its historic Rue de Solférino headquarters in Paris to cover its debts. The Dutch Labor Party suffered an even more precipitous political death slide last year, going from junior partner in government to seventh place.

Israel Passes a Law Stating What’s Jewish About a “Jewish and Democratic State”

On July 19th, the Knesset, led by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, passed a new “basic law,” with the anodyne title of “Israel—The Nation-State of the Jewish People Law,” commonly called the nation-state law, or khok ha’leom (literally, “nation law”). In Israel, basic laws—this one is the fourteenth—are meant to have quasi-constitutional status, and the nation-state law purports to codify what’s Jewish about a “Jewish and democratic state.” In principle, this might have been a reasonable undertaking. Another basic law, the “Law of Human Dignity and Liberty,” enacted in 1992, purported to define what is democratic about a “Jewish and democratic state,” and it has since been applied by the Supreme Court to promote greater equality among Israeli citizens. In 2000, for example, the Supreme Court overrode an old regulation of the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency, which prohibited the sale of J.N.F. property to non-Jews, after a coöperative community called Katzir had invoked it to deny the sale of a home to an Arab family. In 2012, the court required the Knesset to rewrite the laws that ultra-Orthodox students have used to claim exemption from the nation’s military draft. The nation-state law might have built on the Law of Human Dignity and stipulated what, nevertheless, a democracy with a Jewish character looks like, adopting Hebrew as an official language, say, or formalizing the legal status of Jewish state symbols, the Jewish calendar, and the national anthem, “Hatikva,” or establishing Jewish holidays (including the Sabbath) as “days of rest”—all of which the nation-state law does.

Climate Kings

National crises make governments vulnerable to autocracy—a rather obvious assessment, perhaps, but one rarely seen in debates about climate change. Take the Maldives, an atoll nation in the Indian Ocean. Rising seawater is projected to consume most, if not all, of the country this century. In 2008, the Maldives chose its first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed. Almost immediately, he made climate change preparations central to his administration. He announced plans to move 360,000 Maldivian citizens to new homelands in Sri Lanka, India, or Australia, and he promised to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon-neutral country. Nasheed also demonstrated a flair for the dramatic, staging an underwater Cabinet meeting that turned him into a viral climate celebrity. “What we need to do is nothing short of decarbonizing the entire global economy,” he said. “If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy.”

Labour MP Ian Austin Brands Jeremy Corbyn A ‘Defender Of Extremists’ As Anti-Semitism Row Deepens

A Labour MP has accused Jeremy Corbyn of “supporting and defending” extremists and anti-Semites in an astonishing attack on the party leader.

Ian Austin lashed out at the leader of the Opposition after it was revealed he is facing possible disciplinary action for clashing with the party chairman over the ruling National Executive Committee’s failure to fully adopt a widely-backed definition of anti-Semitism.

Hamilton Man Investigated For Possible Hate Crime After Walmart Threats

A Hamilton man is being investigated for a possible hate crime after a video circulated in which he tells another man, "I would kill your children."

The video takes place in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercentre, according to Patryk Laszczuk, who posted it to Facebook and YouTube, and later spoke to media including The Toronto Star. He says the video was sent to him by a co-worker, the man in the video who appears to be threatened, and recorded by the man's wife. The couple does not want to be identified and has declined media interviews.

Assam register: Four million risk losing India citizenship

India has published a list which effectively strips about four million people in the north-eastern state of Assam of their citizenship.

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a list of people who can prove they came to the state by 24 March 1971, a day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence.

India says the process is needed to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

All That’s Left Is the Vote

In the haze of summer, with books still to be read, weeds pulled, kids retrieved from camp, it’s a little hard to fathom that, three months from now, American democracy will be on the line. The midterm elections in November are the last remaining obstacle to President Trump’s consolidation of power. None of the other forces that might have checked the rise of a corrupt homegrown oligarchy can stop or even slow it. The institutional clout that ended the Presidency of Richard Nixon no longer exists. The honest press, for all its success in exposing daily scandals, won’t persuade the unpersuadable or shame the shameless, while the dishonest press is Trump’s personal amplifier. The federal courts, including the Supreme Court, are rapidly becoming instruments of partisan advocacy, as reliably conservative as elected legislatures. It’s impossible to imagine the Roberts Court voting unanimously against the President, as the Burger Court, including five Republican appointees, did in forcing Nixon to turn over his tapes. (Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to succeed Anthony Kennedy, has even suggested that the decision was wrong.) Congress has readily submitted to the President’s will, as if legislation and oversight were burdens to be relinquished. And, when the independent counsel finally releases his report, it will have only the potency that the guardians of the law and the Constitution give it.

China takes its political censorship global. Will America resist?

The United States lost an important early skirmish this week over whether American companies must comply with the Chinese government’s political demands. But the greater conflict is just beginning, which means the Trump administration must now prepare to help U.S. corporations fight Chinese coercion in future rounds.

After months of behind-the-scenes discussion, the three major U.S. air carriers — United, American and Delta — all partially caved to Beijing’s order that they change their websites to portray Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China. After the government of Xi Jinping threatened severe punishment, the White House called the demands “Orwellian nonsense.” Yet many international airlines folded quickly. The U.S. airlines eventually devised a compromise: They removed the word “Taiwan” from their websites but didn’t agree to describe Taiwan as part of China.

Egypt Court Sentences 75 To Death Over 2013 Sit-In

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court sentenced 75 people to death on Saturday, including top figures of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, for their involvement in a 2013 sit-in, state media reported.

The Cairo Criminal Court referred the sentences to the Grand Mufti — the country’s top theological authority — for his non-binding opinion as is the norm in capital cases. Though non-binding, the formality gives a window of opportunity for a judge to reverse an initial sentence.

From riches to rags

Free-spending Venezuelans once crammed store aisles in foreign countries famously uttering “dame dos” — “I’ll take two.” But the citizens of what was once South America’s richest nation per capita are now confronting a devastating reversal of fortune, emerging as the region’s new underclass.

As their oil-rich country buckles under the weight of a failed socialist experiment, an estimated 5,000 people a day are departing the country in Latin America’s largest migrant outflow in decades.

Beware Chinese Trojan horses in the Balkans, EU warns

The EU has sounded the alarm about China’s role in the Western Balkans, warning that Beijing could turn countries in the region into Trojan horses that would one day be European Union members.

European Commissioner Johannes Hahn told POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast that China’s “combination of capitalism and a political dictatorship” could appeal to some leaders in the region on the Continent’s southeastern flank.

This is not your grandfather’s KGB

Looking at Russia’s competing spy services, their overlapping operations against the United States and their sometimes careless tradecraft, some CIA veterans are wondering if the Russian spooks actually want to get caught.

The truth is, President Vladimir Putin probably doesn’t mind that his intelligence activities are so blatant that they’re a subject of daily public debate. His goal isn’t to steal secrets but to destabilize America’s political system. The more people obsess about the swarms of Russian spies, the better, from Putin’s perspective.

With anti-Muslim laws, Europe enters new dark age

LONDON — What has become of Europe? New laws targeting Muslims are reminiscent of a time when innocent Jewish children were abducted by masked monks and imprisoned in monasteries to “save” them from the eternal fire of hell. In our blind mistrust of religious differences, we are returning to the Middle Ages, when the only model for integration was the forced conversion of the minority religion to the majority.

Take Denmark, where the government has introduced new laws mandating that children living in “ghetto” neighborhoods must spend 25 hours apart from their parents every week. During this time, they’ll be taught “Danish values,” including Christmas and Easter traditions, and receive Danish language classes.

Israel's 'nation-state law' parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws

More than 80 years after Nazi Germany enacted what came to be known as the Nuremberg Race Laws, Israeli legislators voted in favour of the so-called "nation-state law". By doing so, they essentially codified "Jewish supremacy" into law, which effectively mirrors the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.

Israel's "nation-state law" stipulates in its first clause that "actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people". In other words, the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, the native inhabitants who managed to remain in their homes when European Jews conquered parts of historical Palestine in 1948, shall be without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.

China's long game to dominate nuclear power relies on the UK

China wants to become a global leader in nuclear power and the UK is crucial to realising its ambitions.

While other countries have scaled back on atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, state-backed Chinese companies benefit from the fact that China is still relying on nuclear energy to reach the country’s low-carbon goals.

A Major Bank Slipped Up And Showed Why Women Rarely File Sex Discrimination Cases

Of all the tactics companies use to silence women who speak up about sexual harassment, the way corporate lawyers question victims in depositions may be the most brutal.

In these taped confrontations, defense lawyers interrogate people on every aspect of their sexual histories, medical records and traumas from childhood.

Russia Threatens Response if Sweden, Finland Join NATO

Russia’s defense minister has said NATO’s increasing ties with Sweden and Finland are “worrying” and such actions force his nation to “take response measures.”

“A treaty was signed in May that provides for [Sweden and Finland’s] full participation in the exercises of the alliance and the possibility of using its command-and-control systems for troops and weapons,” Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday, according to state-run media. “In exchange, NATO received unrestricted access to the airspace and territorial waters of these countries.”

Is Poland Retreating from Democracy?

On a rainy afternoon in March, Andrzej Nowak’s lanky frame loomed in the cramped, faux-Renaissance entryway of the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, in Warsaw’s Old Town Market Square. For the past twenty-five years, Nowak, a decorated historian of Poland and Russia, has been conducting regular interviews with Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Law and Justice, the conservative political party that came to power in Poland in 2015. Since then, liberal leaders and intellectuals in Western Europe have begun to fear that the country, after two decades as the model student of European liberalism, is retreating from democracy. Critics point to the loyalists at the heads of public media, the increasing harassment of opposition politicians and judges, the country’s refusal to accept its European Union-mandated quota of refugees, and, especially, a series of dramatic reforms to the court system that may consolidate Law and Justice’s control. The Party says that these are necessary modernizations of Poland’s creaky institutions, which were mostly established after the country negotiated an end to Communist rule, in 1989. “You may disagree,” Nowak told me. “But Kaczyński perceived that the lack of revolutionary change after 1989 was something for which Poland paid very dearly.”

China: one in five arrests take place in 'police state' Xinjiang

One in five arrests in China last year took place in Xinjiang, the nominally autonomous western territory that critics say has been turned into a police state rife with human rights violations.

Analysing publicly available government data, the advocacy group Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), found 21% of all arrests in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang, which accounts for about 1.5% of China’s population. Indictments in Xinjiang, accounted for 13% of all charges handed down in the country last year.