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A history of chemical weapons in Syria - Yahoo

The horror of the gas attacks during World War I led to the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. The OPCW was formed in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international treaty against the use, development, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons and their precursors. Any chemical used for warfare is deemed a chemical weapon by the convention. All states who have signed the treaty have agreed to chemically disarm by destroying any of their stockpiles of chemical weapons, as well as any facilities that produce them. As of March 2016, 192 states have signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Israel has signed, but not ratified the treaty, while Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan have neither signed nor ratified the agreement, according to a fact sheet from the OPCW. Syria signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013 and submitted to inspections and removal of what it said were stores of chemical weapons in 2014, though opposition groups maintained they had not given a full account. The OPCW says that nearly 95 percent of the world’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons have been destroyed under their verification.

Africa deserves better from Comic Relief | David Lammy | Opinion | The Guardian

Most of all, Comic Relief should challenge its audience not just to feel guilty, but angry: angry that wars that have plagued the continent are permitted by an international market that places more restrictions on the exchange of bananas than it does on AK-47s; incandescent that the corruption in many states is fuelled by “donations” from shell companies linked to corporations that are listed on our own stock exchange. In 2015 the programme spent zero minutes talking about trade and governance. There was little or no discussion about what caused the poverty presented to us, let alone what the long-term solutions might be.

Trump Marks the End of America As World’s "Indispensable Nation" | RealClearDefense

Mr Trump, in this respect, is no anomaly. Pat Buchanan rode “America First” a long way against George HW Bush of New World Order fame in 1992; and after the Iraq and Afghan wars and the financial crisis, it became a national phenomenon. Internationalists such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio went nowhere this year; Bernie Sanders joined Mr Trump in attacking global involvement; and Hillary Clinton was hit from all sides for being too internationalist and too wedded to the idea of the US as the “indispensable nation”, the Bill Clinton phrase that encapsulated the thinking of every president from Harry Truman to George W Bush. President Barack Obama was the transitional figure away from that tradition, and Mr Trump’s election is the decisive break. The US is, for now, out of the world order business.

Tony Blair’s Lesson for President Trump - The New York Times

It’s dangerous nonsense. In the Cold War era the world was glued together by these global institutions and by the fear and the discipline of two superpowers. In the post-Cold War era the world was glued together by these big global systems and a U.S. hegemon. We’re now in the post-post Cold War world, when U.S. leadership and the glue of these big global systems are needed more than ever — because the simultaneous accelerations in technology, globalization and climate change are weakening states everywhere, spawning super-empowered angry people and creating vast zones of disorder. If we choose at this time to diminish America’s global leadership and these big stabilizing systems — and just put America first, thereby prompting every other country to put its own economic nationalism first — we will be making the gravest mistake we possibly could make.

It Can Power a Small Nation. But This Wind Farm in China Is Mostly Idle. - The New York Times

More than 92,000 wind turbines have been built across the country, capable of generating 145 gigawatts of electricity, nearly double the capacity of wind farms in the United States. One out of every three turbines in the world is now in China, and the government is adding them at a rate of more than one per hour.

U.S. Wary of Its New Neighbor in Djibouti: A Chinese Naval Base - The New York Times

In recent years, China has moved aggressively to increase its power projection capabilities through the rapid modernization of its navy. Military spending has soared, with Beijing’s defense budget expected to reach $233 billion by 2020, more than all Western European countries combined, and double the figure from 2010, according to Jane’s Defense Weekly. In 2016, the United States spent more than $622 billion on the military, Jane’s said. These days, Chinese naval vessels, including nuclear submarines, roam much of the globe, from contested waters of the Yellow Sea to Sri Lanka and San Diego. China’s decision to establish an overseas military installation comes as little surprise to those who have watched Beijing steadily jettison a decades-old principle of noninterference in the affairs of other countries.

Terrorism: A history of violence | Middle East Eye

Politicians of all parties and many countries have sought to persuade their societies that terrorism is a unique and special form of crime. They place terrorists in a category of psychopathic evil, marked out by their capacity for inhuman violence. They place terrorists beyond the pale of civilised society and, therefore, beyond the reach of negotiation and settlement. They say that terrorism is the most dangerous and gravest problem of our time. Most of this political narrative is self-seeking nonsense. It allows politicians to strike resolute poses. It allows them to seek and obtain special powers and to expend huge sums on combatting terrorist threats, to the great benefit of defence and security interests, both public and private. Few concepts are more widely discussed than terrorism, and few as poorly understood Few concepts are more widely discussed than terrorism, and few as poorly understood. The idea is constantly reinvented, reshaped and distorted to fit transient political agendas.

Britain Rattles Postwar Order and Its Place as Pillar of Stability - The New York Times

Slow economic growth has undercut confidence in traditional liberal economics, especially in the face of the dislocations caused by trade and surging immigration. Populism has sprouted throughout the West. Borders in the Middle East are being erased amid a rise in sectarianism. China is growing more assertive and Russia more adventurous. Refugees from poor and war-torn places are crossing land and sea in record numbers to get to the better lives shown to them by modern communications.