Reflections from news and commentary of the day
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Friday, May 24, 2024
Emirates Policy Center | Potential GCC-China Free Trade Agreement: Cementing Partnership ‘Beyond Oil’
Emirates Policy Center | Potential GCC-China Free Trade Agreement: Cementing Partnership ‘Beyond Oil’
https://epc.ae/en/details/brief/potential-gcc-china-free-trade-agreement-cementing-partnership-beyond-oil-
Potential GCC-China Free Trade Agreement: Cementing Partnership ‘Beyond Oil’
Mohammed Barhouma| 20 May 2024
Key Takeaways
The current circumstances are conducive to initiating a free trade agreement between GCC countries and China, owing to the consistent growth in trade between the two sides. However, various challenges must be addressed to facilitate this advancement.
Addressing these challenges and accommodating the interests of both sides could foster an “institutionalized” character in GCC-China relations – a development desired by China, given the GCC’s significance as one of Beijing’s key trade partners and an essential energy exporter.
Progressing toward a free trade agreement between the two sides could bolster China’s endeavors to align the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and GCC development plans, particularly in clean and renewable energy and climate change mitigation, notably over the next two decades.
The past few years have demonstrated a mutual political commitment between the GCC and China to enhance intra-trade prospects. GCC countries are committed to diversifying their options, steering clear of polarizations, and engaging constructively with all stakeholders.
Constant Killing - TomDispatch.com
Constant Killing - TomDispatch.com
Nick Turse, The Pentagon’s .00035% Problem
May 23, 2024
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: You know that I just can't help it. Once again, I'm pleading with this site's faithful readers to consider going to our donation page and giving us a boost so that we can keep covering subjects -- like Nick Turse's latest striking report on the killing of civilians in America's never-ending war on terror -- that the mainstream media tends to avoid so much of the time. Take a moment, if you can, to keep this website going in 2024. (And there's no way I can thank you enough for doing so!) Note as well that TomDispatch will be off-duty on the Memorial Day weekend. The next piece will appear on Tuesday. Tom]
Yes, the number of deaths in Gaza in the last seven months is staggering. At least, 35,000 Gazans have reportedly perished, including significant numbers of children (and that's without even counting the possibly 10,000 unidentified bodies still buried under the rubble that now litters that 25-mile-long stretch of land). But shocking as that might be (and it is shocking!), it begins to look almost modest when compared to the numbers of civilians slaughtered in America's never-ending Global War on Terror that began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and, as Nick Turse has reported in his coverage of Africa, never really ended.
In fact, the invaluable Costs of War project put the direct civilian death toll in those wars at 186,694 to 210,038 in Iraq, 46,319 in Afghanistan, 24,099 in Pakistan, and 12,690 in Yemen, among other places. And don't forget, as that project also reports, that there could have been an estimated 3.6 to 3.8 million (yes, million!) "indirect deaths" resulting from the devastation caused by those wars, which lasted endless years -- 20 alone for the Afghan one -- in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Today, Nick Turse reports on how the Pentagon has largely avoided significant responsibility for civilian deaths from its never-ending air wars, not to speak of failing to compensate the innocent victims of those strikes. The civilian death toll in this country's twenty-first-century conflicts is, in fact, a subject he's long focused on at TomDispatch in a devastating fashion. In 2007, he was already reporting on how the U.S. military was quite literally discussing "hunting" the "enemy." ("From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world -- unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media.") And when it comes to the subject of killing civilians without any significant acknowledgment or ever having to say you're sorry, he's never stopped. Tom
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)