Breaking the Moscow rules

Every time Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff goes to Moscow, tempers cool in the White House, whether he returns with portraits of the US president or not. However, the Trump-Putin breach has widened. The US scolding Europe and Ukraine and siding with Russia seems a long time ago. That has little to do with Trump’s response to former “failed” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s reference to the ‘Dead Hand’—the Soviet Union’s automatic nuclear retaliation system.
Moscow didn’t even react to his order to move two nuclear submarines. Instead, Trump’s patience with Russia’s actual president has indeed run out, evidenced by his shortening a 50-day ultimatum to 10 days. European NATO leaders have done the hard work in bringing Volodymyr Zelensky back on the right side of the Trump administration, not least with plans to increase their own defence budgets, all of which has warmed Trump again, to Europe and Kyiv. Russia’s aerial attacks have more than doubled since Trump returned to office and despite fresh talks of a Trump-Putin meeting after Witkoff’s latest trip, a lot of ground has to be covered—by Moscow. As long as Putin pursues a victory to please the ghosts of tsars and general secretaries, nothing will change.

Comrade Xi Wants You To Stay Home

Fifty years from now, paranoia and purity might be cited as the main reasons the People’s Republic of China didn’t, after all, get to rule the world. High-ranking officials, especially those knowing state secrets, always had to inform those still higher up of their foreign travel plans in advance. Increasingly, under Xi Jinping’s push for “discipline” and “ideological purity”, low-ranking government employees, such as primary school teachers, nurses, rural doctors, clerks, et al are being ordered to hand in their passports and not travel abroad, even to Southeast Asia, without permission. This travel ban, as investigated by the New York Times recently, is matched by another trend: degrees from foreign universities, once so prized for employment at the highest rungs of the bureaucratic ladder, are no longer acceptable. Thus, a civil service candidate’s chances of reaching a leadership position in the CCP universe are now low to non-existent if s/he has studied abroad. Does this mean smaller bands of Chinese tourists with their tiny flags at the Louvre or the Met? How will China’s vast academy-based espionage network work? As of now, state employees alone are affected. But China has begun closing its mind even before fully opening it.

Animal Harm

A roller-coaster week for predators. In a West Bank settlement, the IDF’s civil administration killed over 250 crocodiles at a farm without telling its owner and then buried the animals at an undisclosed location. The owner claims the crocodiles were protected under international conventions but the IDF feared for public safety. In Germany, Nuremberg Zoo confirmed that it had culled 12 baboons a few weeks ago, to tackle overcrowding, and fed them to predators, provoking legal complaints. And in Denmark, Aalborg Zoo has asked patrons to donate “unwanted pets” like chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs, all alive, which would be “gently euthanised” and fed to the predators. Kill some, feed some.

CCPChinacrocodilesDmitry MedvedevDonald TrumpIDFPutinSteve WitkoffUS-Russia relationsWest Bank