Tag: war

Houthi group in north protests marginalisation of the local Zaydi Shi’ite Muslim sect and fights six wars with Saleh’s forces and one with Saudi Arabia. Arab Spring protests undermine Saleh’s rule, lead to splits in the army and allow al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to seize swathes of territory in the east. Saleh steps down in a political transition plan backed by Gulf states. The Houthis rapidly advance south from Saadeh and seize Sanaa on September 21 with help from Saleh. Hunger grows as the coalition imposes a partial blockade on Yemen, accusing Iran of smuggling missiles to the Houthis through Hodeidah alongside food imports, something it denies. Coalition air strikes that kill civilians prompt warnings from rights groups, but Western support for the military campaign continues. The Houthis launch a growing number of missiles deep into Saudi Arabia, including at Riyadh. Seeing a chance to regain power for his family by reneging on his Houthi allies, Saleh switches sides, but is killed trying to escape them. Friction also develops between fighters in Aden backed by Saudi Arabia, and those backed by its Emirati coalition partners. Violence continues in parts of Yemen outside Hodeidah.

“I’m sure of it,” Joe Russo said. “We haven’t talked to him about when he is going to do it,” but enlarging the Marvel tent and cross-pollinating characters is a key aspect of the $71.3 billion deal. The brothers made the comments during a rare public appearance during Business Insider Ignition. Moderator Janice Min, a former magazine editor and now a content executive at Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile video startup Quibi, invited them to “break the Internet” and reveal the title of the just-wrapped fourth Avengers installment. They politely declined. Min asked the brothers if they got any notes of concern from Disney (“a happy endings company”) about the bleak ending of The Avengers: Infinity War, in which a large number of prominent characters appear to meet their end. “We did not,” Joe Russo said. “The two-hour film has had a great run over 100 years,” Joe Russo said. Let’s just write sonnets for 100 years.” Anthony Russo said AGBO would encourage experimentation with formats. “When people come to our office,” Anthony Russo said, “they go, ‘This is really different.’”

Is it glory, pride, joy? Driven to excel, Adonis puts himself through the ringer, bloodying his body and sullying his psyche—and for what? Right after Adonis wins the heavyweight title, a Russian boxer named Viktor Drago challenges him to a fight. Viktor’s father, Ivan Drago, killed Adonis’s father, Apollo Creed—Rocky’s arch-rival in the “Rocky” movies of the 1970s and ’80s—in the ring in 1985’s “Rocky IV.” “It all feels so Shakespearean,” says a boxing commentator. Fights are about narrative-building, says Buddy Marcelle, a promoter who amps up the tension with his public appearances and media baiting. But “Creed II” is less about petty grievances than doing right by your forebears. The sounds are sharp and crunchy, the lights bright and harsh. In the crowd, a lady in glasses aims her phone at the ring to take a video. Throughout the film, he says he accepted the challenge “because it was my fight.” Later, he visits his father’s grave with his new baby daughter. And how it takes your breath away to see that transfiguration take place, the dissolution of darkness into bright light.

The lessons of World War I are many and varied for those who study warfare. But Schlieffen's strategy was disastrous as well, because it minimized the importance of violating Belgium’s sovereignty, something diplomats and politicians would have understood would trigger British involvement. The mindset that strategy is separate from politics also allowed Germany’s military to rationalize their defeat on the battlefield as a “stab in the back” by politicians’ lack of support, which shaped how the German military and society viewed the rise of fascism. This delegitimized the political class and kept the military from exercising institutional restraints as Weimar collapsed. But as Sir Lawrence Freedman demonstrates in his magisterial “Strategy: A History,” strategy divorced from politics leads either to irrelevance, because the strategy will not be employed, or disaster, when political leaders are confronted with the unexpected costs and consequences. It is the job of elected political leaders to determine which wars to fight, and what proportion of national effort to commit to the undertaking. Political leaders aggregate societal preferences, and there is simply no substitute for political judgments to guide strategy—no matter how much such a substitute is yearned for or what superior outcomes excluding that political judgment might provide. Thus do strategists propose technical solutions like “a Goldwater Nichols for the interagency” to streamline the cacophony of policymaking in a government created expressly to prevent consolidation of power, even though streamlining policy in the way the 1985 defense reform legislation did internal to the Defense Department would reduce the ability of Congress, think tanks, journalists and departments from influencing policy outcomes. The crafters of President Trump’s National Security Strategy heroically attempted to do just this, harnessing the president’s campaign agenda in developing the 2017 strategy. But their effort may now be judged a failure on the grounds of both irrelevance and potential disaster.

President Donald Trump has been forced to pull out of a service to remember those who gave up their lives in World War I after his bone spur injury reappeared. Bone spurs kept Trump from fighting in Vietnam and they’ll now keep him from standing up and talking at a war remembrance service in France. Trump’s bone spurs began to play up again after he was told that he wasn’t very popular in France – or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. The president will now stay in America this weekend where he plans to rehab his injury with a couple of rounds of golf down in Florida. ‘My foot is in bigly pain but I’ll tough it out because I’m a brave man. Much braver than those soldiers who died. I prefer soldiers who didn’t die,’ Trump told the media. France has expressed its relief that Trump won’t be making an appearance, saying they only asked him out of politeness in the first place. ‘Fake news. No-one is polite in France and you know it,’ Trump fired back.

Author and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses his new book 'Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military.' » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines, insightful political…

COLOGNE, Germany – As Germany ponders a suitable successor for the nuclear-capable Tornado aircraft, U.S. government officials are keeping a close eye on the proceedings -- and could have an outsized impact on Germany’s final options. Among the four competing aircraft types, three are American: the Lockheed Martin F-35, as well as variants of Boeing’s F-15 and F-18. But officials at the ministry of defense in Berlin are leaning toward a European aircraft, the Eurofighter Typhoon. Under a NATO agreement dating back to the Cold War, Germany has outfitted its Tornado fleet with a nuclear option, enabling the planes to carry U.S. atomic bombs eastward in case of a major war between the alliance and the former Soviet Union. Reuters reported in June that German officials had sent a letter to Washington asking what it would take to certify the Eurofighter for the nuclear mission. In contrast, certifying U.S. aircraft to carry U.S. atomic bombs flown by German pilots is expected to be a simpler proposition. German officials have declined to discuss the reported Eurofighter inquiry or anything related to the nuclear capabilities of the envisioned Tornado successor aircraft. “The U.S. government is actively engaged with the German Ministry of Defense to identify the requirements for its Tornado replacement program,” spokesman Johnny Michael wrote. But in the age of Trump, these matters could take a very different turn, argues Christian Mölling of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “But right now everything is political between Germany and the United States.” President Trump is known for his desire to inject an economic calculus into all sorts of policy debates, and the U.S. leverage over German-carried American nukes may just turn out to become another opportunity to boost American firms.

Image To understand the political risks for the Trump administration in starting a trade war, not to mention in undermining Obamacare or celebrating its tax overhaul, it helps to know one powerful human tendency: loss aversion. You can also find this attitude among individual voters affected by trade, and in the underlying message of President Trump’s 2016 campaign, with its emphasis on lost jobs in industries like steel making. Even some workers directly helped by globalization have focused on loss. factory in South Carolina who told The Wall Street Journal in 2016 that she was skeptical of international trade because her uncles had lost their jobs at a cotton mill 30 years earlier. In a trade war, it is the companies, and workers, that benefit the most from globalization that find their incomes at risk. Now, the sectors that stand to lose, like the auto industry, are considerably bigger than the ones likely to experience direct gains, like the aluminum and steel industries. But those lines crossed in late 2016 as Republicans gained more power to repeal the law, and now the A.C.A. Perhaps in the rollout of Obamacare, the people who had something to lose — either through higher taxes or the risk of losing a health plan they were happy with — were most engaged. Then there’s tax policy. In time, we may see the winners from globalization fight ferociously to avoid becoming the losers in a trade war.

A tense meeting between British Prime Minister Theresa May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ended abruptly after a frustrated May broke out a ‘two world wars and one world cup’ chant. The leaders were due to discuss Britain’s impending exit from the EU as well as future German investment in Britain. However, the meeting got off to an acrimonious start when May mentioned Germany’s exit from the 2018 World Cup. ‘Britain could certainly use some German advice on a quick and easy exit strategy,’ May is reported to have said. With May under increasing pressure – from both internal and external sources – some believe she might just have snapped completely when she busted out the ‘two world wars and one world cup’ chant. ‘The meeting was not going well and tensions were rising. I never expected Mrs May to jump on the table and start chanting like she was at a football match though,’ said one attending staffer. Since news of the meeting broke on BBC, Theresa May’s popularity has skyrocketed to an all-time high. There are now rumblings she intends to hold a snap election in a month’s time.

Democrats and liberal advocacy organizations face enormous challenges if they hope to prevent President Trump and the Republicans from installing a conservative justice who would shift the ideological balance of the court for generations. Mr. Trump has vowed to pick from a list of highly conservative jurists, and Republicans control the Senate, which can confirm the president’s choice by a simple majority. But the potentially monumental impact of Justice Kennedy’s departure appears to have lit a fire under Democratic lawmakers and liberal activists, who vowed Thursday morning to mount a vigorous fight in the hopes of preserving decades of liberal court precedents on abortion, civil rights, gay rights, affirmative action and the death penalty. Conservative organizations were mobilizing to support a quick confirmation of a justice who would be expected to vote against the court’s liberal precedents. rights, civil rights, workers’ rights and health care,” Ms. Pelosi declared. Liberal activists and Democratic lawmakers have demanded that a replacement for Justice Kennedy not be confirmed until after the midterm elections in the fall, arguing that voters should be given the opportunity to select the members of Congress they want to vote on the vital selection. Mr. McConnell defended his decision to move forward with filling the vacancy this year, in contrast to his handling of the nomination of Judge Garland. We’re right in the middle of this president’s very first term.” Mr. McConnell pointed to the Supreme Court confirmations of Justices Elena Kagan in 2010, Stephen G. Breyer in 1994 and David H. Souter in 1990 — all midterm election years in a president’s first term. “We should not vote on a new Supreme Court Justice before the American people vote in November,” Mr. Kaine wrote. Conservative organizations are gearing up as well to provide political support to Republican lawmakers for a speedy confirmation and to demand the appointment of a conservative jurist.