Vox: “Trump is quite easy to buy off”: how Trump is putting American foreign policy up for sale

Xi continues to use the trade talks as a lure to get what he wants from the American president. First, he asked that the US stay quiet on China putting more than a million Uighur Muslims in reeducation camps. Second, he pushed for Trump to reverse the ban on US businesses working with Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE — even though Trump’s own administration says doing that is a national security risk. [...]

“This took place in Turkey and to the best of our knowledge, Khashoggi is not a United States citizen,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on October 11, 2018. “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country,” referring to his desire to sell $110 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, adding that “it would not be acceptable to me.” [...]

It was perhaps one of Trump’s most honest articulations about how he conducts foreign policy: He won’t call out a country that infringes on human dignity as long as it’s willing to inject cash into the American economy. And it’s especially fine if the affected people aren’t US citizens. Trump, in this case, put a price tag on Khashoggi’s life. [...]

This doesn’t keep happening by accident — it’s a deliberate strategy by other countries to manipulate the president. “A lot of foreign leaders are now relying either on flattery and pomp to woo Trump, or they come to Washington with proof of ‘big deals’ that will appeal to him in this way,” says Cato’s Ashford.

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UnHerd: Can Corbyn learn from the Greek tragedy?

For me, however, there are positives to take away that have implications for the entire project of the global Left. First, Tsipras showed that with a clear narrative, a message of hope and some competent advisers, the far-Left’s project can work in government. The oligarchy, whose two-party system (Pasok and New Democracy) collapsed, expected Syriza to be amateurs: in fact they brought professionalism and openness to an endemically corrupt and chaotic state.

Second, by being radical in opposition, and refusing to give up radicalism even when forced into retreat, Syriza and the wider Greek Left defeated one of the most violent and open fascist threats in the European continent. Its conservative predecessors had tolerated Golden Dawn’s infiltration of the police, and murderous violence on the streets. Without a Left prepared to risk taking power, Greece would have degenerated into a battleground of populisms. [...]

But the political forces emerging out of the 20thcentury Left face two new challenges: the so-called Green Wave, which has swelled the electoral support of Green parties everywhere; and a growing electoral threat from far right or overtly racist parties, some of which are building support among the working class communities where the Left used to be strong. [...]

In future, Left-wing parties will need to look and sound like they care about the planet more than anything else – and the truth is, our tradition has not always done so. The closer you remain to the traditional working class communities which prospered during the carbon era, the harder it is to walk the walk when it comes to zero carbon.

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UnHerd: The battle for Brexit Britain

The Brexit Party’s tilt towards regional grievances is the latest example in Western democracies of how a sharpening divide between what the French geographer Christophe Guilluy calls the “metropole and the periphery” is rapidly being politicised.

It’s a familiar enough refrain now. On one side are those who can afford to live in the big cities; they are strongly liberal and have little interest in rebalancing the settlement. On the other, are those who are stuck in the periphery and outer regions – or who choose to live there – who have seen life sucked out of their once thriving communities. Left behind and left out, these voters know that our ‘open’ cities are actually among the most ‘closed’ places on earth. [...]

The pivot suggests that Farage and the Brexit Party have realised that their future lies not in affluent southern Tory seats but in blue-collar, left-behind Britain. “There are many seats in the country”, Farage told his supporters last week, “especially Labour-held seats, where we are the main challenger”. The Brexit Party will contest every seat at the next election and it looks like those Labour redoubts scattered along coastal England, in the Midlands, the struggling north and Wales will be key targets as a result. [...]

The problem for the Tories is that they also need to make inroads into these Leave-voting areas if they are to offset their likely losses to Labour and the Liberal Democrats in Remainia. Yet Brexit Party insiders argue that this will simply never happen because of long established political traditions: voters in these areas will never turn out in large numbers for ‘the Tories’. “If you vote Tory,” Farage declared, “you will get Corbyn and you should stand aside for the Brexit Party who can beat them in those constituencies.”

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The Guardian: 'He pulled the wool over our eyes': workers blame Trump for moving jobs overseas

That includes firms doing business with the US government. According to research by Good Jobs Nation, 14,444 jobs were moved abroad by the top 100 federal contractors in the United States in Trump’s first two years in office. The rate of “offshoring” among the top 100 federal contractors actually exceeds rates throughout the Obama administration and the majority of the Bush administration, aside from 2008 when the economic recession hit.

Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at UC Berkeley, says: “There has been relatively little change since Trump took office. Plant closings are devastating. For the worker, it is damaging and it can create the kind of stresses that cause divorces, break up families, and disrupt the ability to care for parents or young children. This kind of disruption creates far-reaching anxiety and anger and we saw that politically expressed in 2016.” [...]

Trump had promised throughout his presidential campaign to save the nearby Carrier plant in Indianapolis, which has laid off hundreds of workers since he made a deal with the company in December 2016. The deal was supposed to prevent those jobs from being sent abroad to Carrier’s plant in Mexico.

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Reuters: From Iron Lady to lame duck: Hong Kong leader's departure seen as mere matter of time

On Saturday, some groups will spread their message to mainland traders in a New Territories village near the city’s border with China - a step seen as a further provocation of Communist Party leaders in Beijing. [...]

For some analysts, Lam’s statement was a sign that she may have already tendered her resignation. But Beijing will only let her go when the time is right.[...]

Beijing leaders, he said, had to weigh domestic and regional risks and find a replacement - no easy task for a job widely seen as a poisoned chalice, weighing Hong Kong’s cherished freedoms and the Communist Party’s authoritarian instincts. [...]

In the shorter term, some diplomats and analysts believe Beijing will not want to further dent the image of “one country, two systems” ahead of presidential elections in neighboring self-ruled Taiwan in January.

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The Conversation: Iran’s leader is losing his grasp on power. Does this mean diplomacy is doomed?

This was Rouhani’s greatest achievement and riskiest gamble. He faced the ire of hard-liners in Iran who continue to have a formidable presence in the parliament, as well as the security and judicial system.

They accused Rouhani of selling out Iranian sovereignty and betraying the ideals of the Islamic revolution by scaling back Iran’s nuclear program and subjecting it to an unprecedented international monitoring regime. [...]

This realisation has seriously undermined Rouhani, who appears to have adopted the language and posture of the hard-liners in relation to the US. It is unclear if this can save him in office, or embolden his critics who seem to be gaining significant momentum. [...]

Iran’s recent breaches on uranium enrichment and stockpiles were incremental steps to exert pressure on European leaders to adhere to their promises of sanctions relief. This strategy was predicated on the assumption that Europe has more to lose with the collapse of JCPOA than a rift with the United States. It can only be described as a desperate move, showing that Rouhani is fast running out of options.

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Associated Press: Judge: New Orleans can't take down Trump quotes mural

New Orleans cannot make a landowner take down a mural of infamous quotes recorded when Donald Trump was on “Access Hollywood” in 2005 because the city’s mural regulations violate freedom of speech, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. [...]

In large capital letters with cartoons replacing four words, the mural painted on a fence transcribes part of the future president’s recorded conversation, including a comment about a woman’s breasts and his boast about grabbing women’s genitals. It starts with, “I moved on her like a bitch,” with a cartoon dog in place of the word.

The mural has been covered since the city served Morris with a notice about the regulations, first with a canvas sheet with the word “censored” repeated in bright colors, then with a plain canvas sheet.

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The Guardian: Heterosexual couples may be allowed to convert marriages to civil unions

All heterosexual couples in England and Wales will be offered the chance to “convert” their marriages to civil partnerships, or vice versa, under plans being considered by ministers.[...]

Last year the prime minister, Theresa May, promised to offer every couple in future the choice between a civil partnership and marriage when they formalise their relationship.

Her decision followed a government defeat at the supreme court where judges unanimously found that it was discriminatory to restrict civil partnerships to gay couples. [...]

Providing a period for “conversion” will allow opposite-sex couples the opportunity to enter into a legal relationship that was not previously available to them. During the conversion period, same sex couples will also be allowed to transform their civil partnerships into more traditional marriages.

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The Guardian: MPs vote to extend abortion and same-sex marriage rights to Northern Ireland

The changes came via amendments to an otherwise technical government bill connected to budgets and elections for the devolved assembly. In the first amendment, tabled by the Labour MP Conor McGinn, a longstanding campaigner for equal marriage in Northern Ireland, the Commons voted 383 to 73 to extend it to the region.

In a vote soon afterwards, MPs approved an amendment by another Labour MP, Stella Creasy, to extend abortion rights to Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK where it remains illegal. The vote was passed by 332 to 9.

Both were free votes as they were viewed as matters of conscience. While the Northern Ireland minister, John Penrose, who spoke for the government, warned MPs that both potential changes would be fraught with complications, he voted in favour of both amendments.[...]

The votes could also affect efforts to revive the executive and assembly at Stormont. While Naomi Long, the Alliance leader, said they could unlock the talks, others speculated that Sinn Féin, which supports social liberalisation, now has an incentive to delay the restoration of devolution to let the amendments take effect.

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