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Europe

Geopolitics

China's Military Intentions Are Clear — And Arming Taiwan Is The Only Deterrence

China is spending more money on weapons and defense than ever. The reason is evident: Xi Jinping wants to take Taiwan. Europe should follow the U.S. and support Taipei militarily as the only way to deter Beijing from war.

-OpEd-

BERLIN — Fear is never the best advisor.

It is, however, an understandable emotion when China announces the biggest increase in its defense budget in memory. And when Beijing does so after siding with Russia in the Ukraine war with its supposed "peace plan" and justifying the increase with an alleged "escalating oppression" of China in the world.

The budget plan unveiled by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang calls for a 7.2% increase in defense spending. That's more than in previous years — and just the official figure.

Experts estimate the true spending is much higher, as Beijing finances its military through numerous shadow budgets.

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​Putin v. The West Began 16 Years Ago In Munich — And Nobody Noticed

The Munich Security Conference of 2023 takes place this weekend. The 2007 edition was a turning point for the world, where Vladimir Putin made his intentions clear — and today it all looks destined to arrive at the invasion of Ukraine.

-Analysis-

PARIS — The Munich Security Conference, which runs through Sunday, has often been described as the "Davos of Defense," where generals take the stage instead of CEOs. It is also where, 16 years ago, Vladimir Putin made it clear to the world that he would invade Ukraine.

This is obviously an oversimplification. Still, it's worth returning to the Munich Conference of 2007 when the Russian President announced to the West that the post-Soviet party was over.

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Putin delivered a brutal and cutting speech in the German city that was largely overlooked at the time. He had already been in power for seven years, had led the war in Chechnya, and stabilized the situation in Russia after the tumultuous 1990s. By 2007, he was ready to tell the West how he really saw the world.

He launched a scathing critique of the unipolar world, led by the sole superpower at the time, the United States, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "It is a world of one master, one sovereign," he said.

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Irrational Nuclear Fears Are The Real Risk — Just Look At Ukraine And Climate Change

Greener than renewables, safer than oil and gas, nuclear power is deeply misunderstood — to the detriment to humans and our planet.

-OpEd-

When Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, back in March, many watched on in horror.

“By the grace of God, the world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night,” said the United States ambassador to the United Nations the next morning. When power was cut to Chernobyl five days later, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister tweeted that its reserve diesel generators only had a 48-hour capacity and that radiation leaks were “imminent.” And several months later, in an August video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the ongoing occupation of Zaporizhzhia, claiming that “every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”

None of these statements were accurate.

Commentators, either through ignorance or willful denial, misunderstood the layers of redundant safety systems built into nuclear plants like Zaporizhzhia. If power from the grid was cut, generators would turn on; if primary coolant was lost, a secondary system would kick in.

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From Arrabal To Me — Chance, Forgetting And The Engines Of Creativity

A bit like the playwright Fernando Arrabal who launched an artistic project of decades after spotting a several disjointed phrases, our columnist reflects on the anodyne coincidences that led him to write these words.

-Essay-

MADRID — In art, everything is fortuitous. And so too in the piece you are reading...

In the 1960s, the Spanish playwright and artist Fernando Arrabal founded the Panic Movement, named after Pan, the Greek god of nature — and pranks. The inspiration for the artistic departure came to Arrabal when he placed two books on a big table and opened them at random. The first phrase to catch his eye was "the future acts," and then in the second book, "through coups de théâtre."

Thus a fortuitous adage, that "the future acts through coups de théâtre" or dramatic turns, became a creative spark and strangely presaged the exuberant "chaos" of the riots of May 1968.

Arrabal wanted at the time to distance himself from Surrealism, a current with which he is associated and which is equally fond of disorder. With the help of the Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and the cartoonist Roland Topor, he duly turned a post-war period still weighed with conservative torpor, into creative years.

Arrabal, who is 90 and lives in Paris, liked to startle his Catholic compatriots, painting himself in the company of Jesus at the Last Supper. He once scribbled 'I shit on the fatherland' (me cago en la patria) on one of his books.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Pierre Haski

More Than Ever, Europe Knows It Can't Allow Ukraine To Fail

Volodymyr Zelensky's visits this week to London, Paris and Brussels reinforce the intertwined fates of Europe and Ukraine. And for Kyiv that will ultimately mean more weapons support.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Volodymyr Zelensky's first trip abroad since his country’s invasion almost a year ago was to Washington. The second was reserved for Ukraine's neighbors in Europe: London and Paris yesterday, and today Brussels, to meet the "27" of the European Union.

There is obviously a logic to this order: without the United States, it must be recognized, Ukraine would undoubtedly be a Russian colony by now, and Zelensky himself a prisoner, or dead. But without Europe, Ukraine would not have a "host family," which has received millions of refugees, provided some 50 billion euros in support in one year, and promised to bring them into the EU club as soon as it is possible.

But the Ukrainian President has not come to say 'thank you.' He comes to ring the alarm, because on the battlefield, his forces are under increasing pressure from Russia, which is betting on its numerical superiority and its ability to bear heavier losses than Ukraine.

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LGBTQ Plus
Laura Valentina Cortés, Inès Mermat, Renate Mattar and Hugo Perrin

LGBTQ+ International: Lithuanian Fairy Tales, Egypt Dating App Gangs — And Other News

Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!

This week featuring:

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Society
Julia Amigo

Kleptomania, How A "Women's Pathology" Was Built On Gender And Class Bias

Between 1880 and 1930, there was a significant rise in thefts in department stores, mostly committed by women from the middle and upper classes. This situation brought with it the establishment of a new pathology: kleptomania. A century later, feminist historians have given new meaning to the practice as a protest against the social structures and oppressions of capitalism and patriarchy.

Kleptomania is defined as the malicious and curious propensity for theft. The legal language tends to specify that the stolen objects are not items of necessity; medically, it is explained as an uncontrollable impulse.

What seems clear is that kleptomania is a highly enigmatic condition and one of the few mental disorders that comes from the pathologization of a crime, which makes it possible to use it as a legal defense. It differs from the sporadic theft of clothing, accessories, or makeup (shoplifting) as the kleptomaniac's impulse is irresistible.

Studies have shown that less than one percent of the population suffers from kleptomania, being much more common among women (although determining exact numbers is very difficult).

The psychiatric disorders manual, DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) has included kleptomania since 1962. Previously, it had already received attention from, among others, Sigmund Freud. Like nymphomania or hysteria, kleptomania became an almost exclusively female diagnosis linked to the biology of women's bodies and an “inability” to resist uncontrollable desire.

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Coronavirus
Duncan Robertson

Why Making COVID Predictions Is Actually Getting Harder

We know more about COVID than ever before, but that doesn't make it easier to predict what will happen this year. It also remains to be seen if we'll put the lessons we learned into practice.

In 2020, we knew very little about the novel virus that was to become known as COVID-19. Now, as we enter 2023, a search of Google Scholar produces around five million results containing the term.

So how will the pandemic be felt in 2023? This question is in some ways impossible to answer, given a number of unknowns. In early 2020, the scientific community was focused on determining key parameters that could be used to make projections as to the severity and extent of the spread of the virus. Now, the complex interplay of COVID variants, vaccination and natural immunity makes that process far more difficult and less predictable.

But this doesn’t mean there’s room for complacency. The proportion of people estimated to be infected has varied over time, but this figure has not fallen below 1.25% (or one in 80 people) in England for the entirety of 2022. COVID is very much still with us, and people are being infected time and time again.

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Geopolitics
Kayhan-London

How Europe Can Help Iranian Protesters, Right Now — Blacklist The Revolutionary Guards

The European Union has been hesitant to classify Iran's national security force as a terrorist organization because of fears of a reprisal.

-Analysis-

Three years after a U.S. airstrike on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani, the European Union is considering whether or not to list the Revolutionary Guards, the force responsible for Iran's national security, as international terrorists. Soleimani and several collaborators were killed in a drone strike outside Baghdad, ordered by the administration of President Donald J. Trump.

The Trump administration asked the Europeans to list the Guards as terrorists as it had done, but was met by the opposition of the then-German chancellor, Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Britain's former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Now, three years on, the Europeans have reached the same point as the Trump administration.

On Jan. 2, Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on the United Kingdom's intention to list the Guards as terrorists within weeks, in reaction to the Islamic Republic's suspected attempts in past months to kill or kidnap individuals on UK soil. Germany has in turn restricted ties with the Iranian regime and recently advised dual nationals or Iranian residents in Germany not to travel back to Iran, lest they be impeded from leaving.

Elements in the Iranian regime have singled out Germany and the United States as two states fomenting months of anti-regime protests, which the Islamic Republic insists are a plot rather than indicating mass discontent against it.

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This Happened

This Happened—December 12: Paris Agreement is Signed

Often referred to as the Paris Climate Accords, the Paris Agreement is an international treaty aimed at forcing countries and companies to change their behavior to reverse climate change. It was signed on December 12, 2015 at the end of the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference near the French capital.

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Economy
Vibhav Mariwala

Post-Pandemic Reflections On The Accumulation Of State Power

The public sector has seen a revival in response to COVID-19. This can be a good thing, but must be checked carefully because history tells us of the risks of too much control in the government's hands.

-Analysis-

NEW DELHI — The COVID-19 pandemic marked the beginning of a period of heightened global tensions, social and economic upheaval and of a sustained increase in state intervention in the economy. Consequently, the state has acquired significant powers in managing people’s personal lives, starting from lockdowns and quarantine measures, to providing stimulus and furlough schemes, and now, the regulation of energy consumption.

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Coronavirus
Emma Albright

Masks And Me: Take This Pandemic Story At Face Value

Even if COVID cases are rising again, the author isn't ready to mask up again. But she's also not quite ready to say goodbye forever...

-Essay-

PARIS — Waiting in line at the pharmacy the other day, I heard a customer ask for a COVID-19 test. The pharmacist let out a long sarcastic sigh: “We’re still doing those?”

Of course they are, as cases are again rising ahead of winter here in France and many other places around the world. But the true sign of the depth of our collective COVID fatigue were the masks at the pharmacy. That is, there were none, not even the pharmacist was wearing one, even if a sign hangs in front saying they’re required.

The regular announcements that have begun airing again on French radio about the importance of masks in containing the virus sound beside the point. Indeed, wearing masks is no longer a requirement anywhere in France, merely a suggestion.

Still, masks have by no means gone away, either in society, or my mind. That becomes clearest when I’m riding the metro in Paris. As I count the ratio of masked to non-masked, and hear the daily announcements on the benefits of wearing one, a dilemma starts to creep in…

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