King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud’s decision to remove Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and promote his favorite son, Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, has been long anticipated. It raises profound questions about the future stability of America’s oldest ally in the Middle East.
Vladimir Putin has been such a dominant figure in international relations since coming to power in 1999 that it’s hard to imagine a world without him. Moreover, Russia is so large — spanning 11 time zones — and so diverse in ethnic and socioeconomic terms, that’s it’s equally difficult to foresee Russian reaction to the absence of someone who has really functioned much like the czars of old. But nothing is eternal, not even in Mother Russia, so sooner or later, things will change.
The dysfunctional relationship among the Lee siblings might have stayed behind closed doors but for two inconvenient details. First, they were fighting over the house of Lee Kuan Yew, the man who was virtually synonymous with Singapore for five decades. Second, the eldest among the siblings is the current Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong.
File photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping
Beijing, naturally, is where the action happens in China’s political theater. But to really understand the country’s complex power structure — and the intense, ongoing struggle for supremacy — it is also important to look backstage. That would be Guangdong Province, nearly 2,000km to the south.
As the global economy picks back up, it is difficult to imagine populism maintaining momentum. A new Pew study finds, “Nearly a decade after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, economic spirits are reviving. … A median of 51% in the 17 advanced economies surveyed believes that their current economic situation is good, 45% think it’s bad,” and there is “strong upbeat sentiment in northern Europe.”
And Adnan Khashoggi helped sell enough of these weapons to become one of the world’s wealthiest men: a fortune once estimated at £2.4 billion, friendships with Saudi and Hollywood royalties, homes all over the world, a superyacht later sold to Donald Trump, a personal bodyguard nicknamed Mr Kill.
Fired FBI Director James Comey levelled a series of damaging accusations against the president of the United States, testifying that Donald Trump pressured him to close a probe into a top former aide, fired him in an attempt to change the course of the larger Russia probe, and then launched a campaign of “lies” to discredit him.
President Donald Trump has a plan. It’ll be ready in two weeks. From overhauling the tax code to releasing an infrastructure package to making decisions on Nafta and the Paris climate agreement, Trump has a common refrain: A big announcement is coming in just “two weeks.” It rarely does.
It may be difficult for the Arabs of today to seriously reflect on the meaning of the defeat they suffered 50 years ago, given their current calamitous predicament. A half-century ago in the free sanctuary of Beirut, Arabs engaged in introspection and self-criticism, seeking to answer the central questions of their political life: What went wrong, and how did we reach this nadir? That unique moment of guarded hope and promise lasted but a few years.
…Analysis of the respective stock markets and incumbent political parties of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom finds a result opposite that identified in the US, indicating that investors should interpret historical statistical relationships with a healthy skepticism.
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