Category: Feature
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Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins review – toy movie spin-off isn’t playful enough
For all the snobbery over fast food, McDonald’s commands a certain respect for the uniformity and consistency of its products, the reassuring knowledge that a Big Mac will taste the same in Spain, South Africa or Switzerland. But the odd American tourist who decides to use a lunch abroad to investigate a foreign-run Mickey D’s…
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The last humanist: how Paul Gilroy became the most vital guide to our age of crisis
In 2000, the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust published a report about the “future of multi-ethnic Britain”. Launched by the Labour home secretary Jack Straw, it proposed ways to counter racial discrimination and rethink British identity. The report was nuanced and scholarly, the result of two years’ deliberation. It was honest about Britain’s racial…
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A Tale of 2 Navies: India and China’s Current Carrier and Escort Procurement
This is part two of a three-part series reviewing Indian and Chinese carrier procurement. Part one can be found here. IAC-2 and 003 The Indian Navy’s procurement of its first indigenously built aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant (or IAC-1), was always intended to be followed by a second indigenous carrier, sometimes called INS Vishal (or IAC-2).…
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China: A non-narrative country
China celebrated its Army Day on 1st August. The USSR narrative was of liberation from capitalist oppression. The American narrative is about freedom and liberty. These values lead to a lot of mistakes but they are part of the quest for freedom. These narratives are not “the truth” but they have a drive, a global…
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US seeks cooperation with China on climate but not at any price
In the next four months or so, the world will find out whether it is possible for one branch of the US federal government – the state department – to accuse Chinese officials of committing genocide, and for another branch – led by the special envoy on climate change, John Kerry – to persuade China…
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‘The pressure is unbearable’: final days of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily
On Wednesday morning, the Apple Daily reporter Angel Kwan was at a government press conference for the Hong Kong census when her phone started buzzing with notifications. Six days earlier, hundreds of police had raided her workplace, arrested her bosses and seized dozens of computers. On Monday, the company board had said it would have…
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No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world
In the years after it was founded in 1999, the Swedish video game company Paradox Interactive quietly built a reputation for developing some of the best, and most hardcore, strategy games on the market. “Deep, endless, complex, unyielding games,” is how Shams Jorjani, the company’s chief business development officer, describes Paradox’s offerings. Most of its…
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Hong Kong’s first ‘national security’ trial begins without jury
Show caption Tong Ying-kit arrives at court in a police van in July last year. He faces a life sentence if convicted. Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP World news Hong Kong’s first ‘national security’ trial begins without jury First trial under the new law is a landmark moment for the financial hub’s fast-changing legal traditions Emma Graham-Harrison…
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What Russia’s National Security Strategy Has to Say About Asia
For the first time since 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin has updated the National Security Strategy (NSS). On July 2, Putin signed an Executive Order “On the National Security Strategy.” In a pile of Russian state concepts and strategies, NSS is a key policy document in the security realm, which, according to the law on…
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Why Atajurt’s Brief YouTube Suspension Matters
On June 16, members of the Almaty-based human rights group Nagys Atajurt Eriktileri (Kazakh for “Volunteers of the Fatherland”) tried to log onto their YouTube channel only to find this message from Google: “Your access to this Google product has been suspended because of a perceived violation.” The suspension of Atajurt’s channel is more than…