China And Pakistan Plan To Get Rich Together. The Price? Human Rights.

My big brother and I got into a shouting match about our country last summer.

We’d been talking about a trip I took a few years ago to Gwadar, a centuries-old fishing community that millions of Pakistanis ― including my brother ― see as a portent of a glamorous, wealthy and once-unimaginable future. Gwadar is located just by the entrance to the Persian Gulf, in the southwest of the exceptionally poor and rarely peaceful Pakistani province of Balochistan. Eventually, it’s supposed to become the crown jewel of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $62 billion branch of China’s “Belt and Road” plan to expand trade and relationships across Asia and Europe.

Communism is hip again – but until it means liberty, count me out, comrade

I am not a communist. Literally. Though God knows I have been called one for demanding a tea break when working in Florida. I half-pretended to be one when I worked for Marxism Today, the magazine of the Communist party of Great Britain, but I never joined. Which was lucky really, because when the business manager forgot to pay the electricity bills and everyone got sent home, they didn’t get paid as they were in the party, but I did.

Julian Assange drifts away from cause

The noble and necessary motives that led to WikiLeaks’s creation in 2006 have been undermined by its own creator, Julian Assange, who has devoured his creature and turned it into a hybrid weapon at the service of the enemies of Western democracies, particularly Vladimir Putin’s Russia. There is no other explanation for Assange’s actions in the 2016 US presidential elections, when Donald Trump’s campaign received opportune assistance from the leak of Hillary Clinton emails.

Spanish People's party shifts to right with new leader

Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP), which was cast out of government at the beginning of June after a string of corruption scandals, has shifted further to the right by choosing an outspokenly traditionalist MP as its new leader.

Pablo Casado, who served as the party’s communications vice-secretary and was also chief of staff to the former prime minister José María Aznar, was elected in a poll of PP members on Saturday.

Article 50 extension would need major shift in UK politics, say EU officials

The UK will not be saved from crashing out of the EU via an extension of the article 50 negotiations unless there is a major realignment in British politics, most likely through a second referendum or general election, senior diplomats and European commission officials have disclosed.

Among those calling for Theresa May to be ready to ask for a prolongation of the UK’s membership beyond 29 March 2019 should a no-deal scenario appear likely are the Commons’ exiting the EU select committee, chaired by Hilary Benn, and the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

With Nationality Law, Israel Openly Declares Apartheid and Racial Supremacy

Israel has for decades been running the occupied territories of Palestine—Gaza and the West Bank—with apartheid tactics. As with black South Africans under apartheid, most Palestinians have been deprived of citizenship in a real, recognized state. Their villages have been isolated by a network of what often amount to Jewish-only highways. They have trouble getting to the hospital through checkpoints. Their territory in the West Bank is patrolled by the Israeli army, and the Israeli state is actively depriving them of their property and giving it to white squatters.

Fossil Fuel Industries Outspend Clean Energy Advocates on Climate Lobbying by 10 to 1

Fossil fuel producers, airlines and electrical utilities outspent environmental groups and the renewable energy industry 10 to 1 on lobbying related to climate change legislation between 2000 and 2016, according to a new analysis released Wednesday.

The research, which will be published Thursday in the journal Climate Change, suggests that, at a time when the majority of Americans understand global warming and support government action to deal with it, industry lobbying still has far greater influence in Washington.

'Abandoned by my country': Former hostage in Syria says Canada let him down

When Carl Campeau's captors forced him to make a proof-of-life video, there was nothing he could do but play along.

And so wrapped in gauze daubed with iodine and lying on his back, Campeau spoke to the camera, claiming his leg had to be amputated after he was injured in a strike on the villa in which he was held south of Damascus.

In reality, his leg was folded underneath him.

Fossil fuel industry spent nearly $2 billion to kill U.S. climate action, new study finds

Legislation to address climate change has repeatedly died in Congress. But a major new study says the policy deaths were not from natural causes — they were caused by humans, just like climate change itself is.

Climate action has been repeatedly drowned by a devastating surge and flood of money from the fossil fuel industry — nearly $2 billion in lobbying since 2000 alone.

This is according to stunning new analysis in the journal Climatic Change on “The climate lobby” by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle.

European Union fines Google record-breaking $5 billion

European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a record-breaking $5 billion fine for violating anti-trust laws and abusing the popularity of its Android mobile Operating System.

According to the European Commission, Google used a number of underhand tactics with Android, which “denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete…[and] denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in this important sphere.”